{"id":379,"date":"2018-07-10T18:30:47","date_gmt":"2018-07-10T18:30:47","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/shop.honestreflections.net\/?p=379"},"modified":"2019-12-10T08:43:56","modified_gmt":"2019-12-10T13:43:56","slug":"379","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.honestreflections.net\/index.php\/2018\/07\/10\/379\/","title":{"rendered":"Side of the Road"},"content":{"rendered":"

“Enter through the narrow gate. For wide is the gate and broad is the road that leads to destruction, and many enter through it.”\u00a0 Matthew 7:13<\/strong><\/em>
\nI love to bike ride.\u00a0 Last month I rode 204 miles to support the fight against childhood cancer.\u00a0 All of those miles reminded me of one of my favorite analogies of the Christian life.\u00a0 The narrow road we walk on when we follow Christ, for the road must be narrow to get through the narrow gate.
\nWhen you are riding on the road with your bike, it’s best to stay as far to the side as possible to avoid getting hit by a car.\u00a0 I like to ride in the narrow edge between where the white painted line is and the edge of the asphalt.\u00a0 I think of this as the narrow road of following Christ.\u00a0 Sometimes however, I sway past the painted line and am in the much larger road where I’m more likely to get hit by a car.\u00a0 I always try to get back into the narrow lane as quickly as possible.\u00a0 It’s much safer there.
\nI think it’s a beautiful picture of what it is like to follow Christ.\u00a0 There is only one way to get to Him, one gate to pass through.\u00a0 However in life, there are many ways we can choose to live our life, many gates we could pass through.
\nWe can follow the path of money and spend all of our time trying to get through the gate of wealth.\u00a0 We can follow the path of relationships with people and try to find happiness through that gate.\u00a0 We can follow the path of diet and exercise and try to find our identity in being the perfect size.\u00a0 There are so many paths we can take, so many gates we can try to get through.\u00a0 \u00a0Gates that cause us to lose focus of Jesus.
\nWhen I’m riding along on my bike, staying in my narrow little lane\u00a0 I imagine it is like when I’m following Christ.\u00a0 Those times when I know I’m in His will, I can feel His presence, we’re in tune with each other.\u00a0 But then I swerve off the road, I enter into the big road.\u00a0 Those are the times when I take my eyes off of Jesus and focus on something else.\u00a0 It could be my own selfishness, a relationship I’m not trusting Him with or a problem I’m trying to solve on my own.\u00a0 \u00a0It’s those times I forget to ask Jesus into the situation.\u00a0 Those times I try to do it on my own strength and not with Him.\u00a0 Those are the times when I swerve into the big road.
\nGratefully, I always find my way back to the narrow road.\u00a0 I find my way back to Him.\u00a0 The quicker the better, the safer I will be.\u00a0 It’s the same in life.\u00a0 The sooner I realize I’ve lost my focus, the faster I can get the Son back in my eyes.\u00a0 The faster I get back on the straight and narrow.\u00a0 It takes work to stay on the narrow road.\u00a0 It’s ok if you swerve off of it every now and then.\u00a0 It’s inevitable.\u00a0 The important part is that you find your way back.
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“Enter through the narrow gate. For wide is the gate and broad is the road that leads to destruction, and many enter through it.”\u00a0 Matthew 7:13 I love to bike ride.\u00a0 Last month I rode 204 miles to support the fight against childhood cancer.\u00a0 All of those miles reminded me of one of my favorite… Continue reading Side of the Road<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-379","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","without-featured-image"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.honestreflections.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/379","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.honestreflections.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.honestreflections.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.honestreflections.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.honestreflections.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=379"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.honestreflections.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/379\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1542,"href":"https:\/\/www.honestreflections.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/379\/revisions\/1542"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.honestreflections.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=379"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.honestreflections.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=379"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.honestreflections.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=379"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}