Dedicated

Being dedicated to Christ. It’s a commitment to Christ for life. To tell you the truth, this blog topic crushes many hopes of people who are this close to wanting to be a Christian. Everybody wants to be a Christian for the blessings that you receive but very few will stay wanting to be a Christian when the whole world is on the opposite side of them.

Sadly, there are even Christians today that say they are following Christ but live in the opposite direction. It’s very hard. It’s extremely difficult to choose something in your life in which many others will not choose with you.

Picture this. You are with a group of friends in a forest, about 4 to 5 friends are with you. There’s two paths that you can take to hike, but you can’t choose them both, you have to pick a side. Let’s say 3 of your 5 friends choose the path to the left. It’s a wide path. You look down it and you see a lot of people outside of your friend group are taking that path. “Well since it’s a popular path, it must mean everybody knows what they are doing and you and your other 2 friends should follow them right?”, you think to yourself. Before you make a decision you take a glance at the path to the right of you, it’s a very narrow path. You look down it and all you see is roots sticking up out of the ground and maybe 1 or 2 people walking that way. The world would tell you “You should go with the popular path. After all if it’s popular, it’s proven to be the correct option.” “Plus, absolutely no one wants to go down a creepy path on their own, on a path in which they are destined to trip over roots.”

I’m going to make this decision slightly more difficult for you. What if I told you, if you reach the end of the narrow path you receive eternal life in a perfect place where nothing bad can ever enter. Now with that I furthermore tell you, that if you walk the wider path, when you get to the end you will enter a place where nothing good can enter and you are beyond miserable for eternity.

Change your decision a little bit? Alright now here’s where I’m going with this. The narrow path is what us Christians are called to follow. The wide path is what the rest of the world is following, sometimes unknowingly too. It sounded easy to pick the Christian Path when I told you the reward of getting to the end of it, but when I introduced it as the path less traveled, it suddenly was seen as untrustworthy.

But here’s the thing. God leads us every step of the way. As soon as you begin the path with God, he is with you always. Leading you to make the right decisions, showing you how to avoid those roots. However, sometimes he will allow you to trip over those roots in your relationship with him, to strengthen you. By the time, you are spending meaningful moments with God in the Bible, spreading the gospel, showing fellowship, and Glorifying God through all you do (even the gifts he gives you), you will have lived a life with no regrets. A truly fulfilled life and your reward will be eternity in Heaven.

The main reason why many deny or even refuse to follow God. Is because of the roots. See, when God strengthens us he uses our trials to his advantage. Meaning if you plan on being dedicated to God you must accept that some things in your life will have to change. You will have friends that leave you to do their own thing, family members that disown you, sometimes a government that tries to prevent you from talking about God, and sometimes you will feel like you are all alone. Maybe even wishing you followed the wider path, that everyone else was taking.

But when you trip over those roots, (sinning and realizing you have to change a few things), you are going to see that the wider more popular path had far more roots. They were hidden from your sight. However, with their path they had to do it all on their own. Even though they felt like they had it all, with each root things dissipated from their life 1 by 1. They didn’t have access to God like you have, because they were too afraid to change their lifestyle around for him.

As you start walking with God on the narrow path, suddenly everything changes. You find out that Jesus Christ died on the cross to pay for your sins and rose back 3 days later so that you could spend eternity with him in Heaven. Suddenly, those roots you kept stumbling on become beautiful flowers. Because Jesus paid for all your sins, when you sin you still have to ask for forgiveness but it’s all ultimately covered. “The wages of sin is death” but Jesus died for you so that sin is no longer used to make you stumble.

Jesus turned your sin into flowers. Now that doesn’t mean you have an endless supply of sin, don’t abuse God’s grace. Those Flowers can easily become thorns if you don’t take care of them. Water them constantly so that they don’t cause harm to you and you can walk in peace knowing that you are forgiven.

On the other side, in the wider path the roots become thorns. As they keep walking, they grow and grow and grow. It seems hopeless, they now see that if they keep going relying on their own strength it’s going to increasingly hurt to walk through all the thorns. Even though God doesn’t have the Holy Spirit in the path of the world he still puts little hints along the way reminding them of his presence. There’s one spot along the path where you can see onto the other path (the narrow one). Then in another spot, they see that there’s bandaids for their wounds laying on a nearby tree, there’s water for when they are thirsty, and food to give them energy for the journey. As they get closer to it, they see that the bandaids, water, and food wasn’t at all what they thought. The bandaids are too small for the wounds they have from all the thorns. The water was split among them and since their path was so popular many people never got a chance to even have a sip of the water due to “survival of the fittest”. Finally, the food is all junk food. It gives them fake energy. Their stomachs hurt from all the unhealthy food, especially while they are trying to avoid thorns at the same time. Now, they are feeling worse then when they had all the refreshments. Nothing was truly satisfying.

Now on the narrow path, all of these items were provided by God. Whenever the Christians walked this path, they could ask God for energy and he would strengthen them. They could ask God to be healed and he would do it. However, on this path, God isn’t a genie. He does what he wants on his time, so sometimes the Christian’s felt like they would instantly get energy when they asked but they didn’t,(it took time). It got to a point where they thought it was too difficult to walk down this long path. That being said, God gave them a book(the Bible) which had quotes straight from him, instantly strengthening their confidence in all their abilities because they didn’t have to rely on their own strength. They walked all the way to the end, and then God asked “You still need energy?”. The Christians didn’t. They saw the end and the prize they worked so hard to get and everything they asked God to do in their life he accomplished in his way even better then they could imagine. They enjoyed the end of the path in a place of Joy, Comfort, Peace, Love, where they got to see all their loved ones again and were beyond content in a perfect place.

Back to the wider path, many people were gone that were there when they 1st started the path. After all, they didn’t know what their purpose was but they did know that the further they walked down the more they couldn’t find anything to satisfy their ache. So they could barely walk until the end, where they are very exhausted, feeling hopeless, and bruised by all the heartache the path brought. Once they get there a voice asks “Why should I let you in?”. They say “We just want a do over, this life was very regretful.” The voice says, “It’s too late. The correct answer is “because you put your hope and Jesus and believe he died on the cross for your sins. I gave you many chances to see the other path and all I had in store for you but you demanded to do it your way.” These people ended up in a place even worse then the life they regretted living in the 1st place.

Being dedicated to Jesus means to keep following the narrow path no matter how many people follow the wider path. As you can see from my so-called “parable” it didn’t matter at the end how many people followed each path. What did matter, is what path they chose. For those of you who are following the ways of the world or are considering to, just know what you are asking for. It may seem fun and like a blast but it’s all “superficial healing for a real wound”. It’s all a cover up, you can say you are happy. But one of the most important lessons in life is learning how to love others humbly and be joyful, lessons you can only learn from walking with Jesus.

Now, to my Christians are we truly dedicated to Jesus? Are we comfortable enough to put ourselves out there and say anything about God? Even for Christians, we get so mesmerized by the Jewels that we forget about Jesus. Jesus says if you deny him now, he will deny you in Heaven.

I say this with a meaningful heartfelt heart. It cost so much for Jesus to die on the cross for our sins. The amount of whips to his back, the tall nails he endured in his two hands and between his feet, the mocking, having to carry a wooden splinter-filled heavy cross, the crown of thorns, being stripped pretty much naked for everyone to see, being separated from God for the first time. When I say Jesus took on our sins, I mean that every sin that any of us have done past, present, and future he became. Every evil thing you can think of he became. And he erased the sting of death because none of us have to die for those sins (by spending an eternity in Hell) since he already killed our sins for us. The ultimate thing to this, is the fact he rose from the dead 3 days later, defeating death once and for all. For those who believe he did that, those are the ones who can enter Heaven.

And you must bear good fruits. Don’t just say you believe in God. Show it. Believe it with everything you are and Glorify God through everything you do. Physically, Mentally, Emotionally, Psychologically. You have to take up your cross every day, by honoring our Savior’s sacrifice. Constantly try to improve yourself, learn more about God, try to become the best man of God or woman of God you can possibly be, and give God everything. Guys it really is a beautiful life, Ferris Bueller is absolutely correct “if you don’t stop and look around once in a while you might miss it”.

It is very unwise to deny Jesus rather it’s for the Jewels or popularity. That means you would rather follow people that won’t last forever and material possessions that quickly lose their value. Rather than your savior who wants to be with you, love you, strengthen you, and bless you so that you can tell others about his good news and spend eternity with him in Heaven.

Lastly, Imagine Jesus is asking you this rhetorical question.

“When you dedicate your life to saving others don’t you deserve a life dedicated to you?”

Your response to this, determines which path you are taking. The Narrow path or the Wider path?

For me, I am dedicated to Jesus for Life and nothing is holding me back. I am unashamed of the gospel of Jesus Christ and I will proclaim that with everything I am!