I hope everybody is doing well this morning.
My name is Nick.
As Kyle affectionately called me a couple weeks ago,
I'm the backup preacher.
He said, quote, even our backup preacher has skills,
so hopefully I can live up to that this morning.
I did this in the first service.
I don't have an intro this morning.
I think the Lord wanted to give me one this morning
because one, I cut my finger and bled pretty good,
so that's what's going on here.
Didn't have medical tape,
so I have electrical tape around my gauze.
I'm on day eight of migraines,
and so that gives me some muscle spasms in my leg,
which makes me a little bit difficult to walk around,
so I might look like a robot.
Or as John affectionately says, you look like your T-Rex.
So just heads up.
But it also really affects my ability to read and to speak,
so we're gonna see how this goes.
I'm just gonna give you that fair warning now.
I'm gonna be preaching on Matthew 7, 12,
sorry, 13 through 23 this morning.
This is near the end of the Sermon on the Mount,
the greatest sermon as we've called it.
And Jesus has turned the corner in his sermon.
He's going to his wrap-up.
And there's an urgency in Jesus' words.
It says, he's pleading with his audience
to see his words as needing immediate response.
You can't just add them to everything else
that you've been learning.
You can't just add them to synagogue teaching.
You can't add them to everything else.
They're distinct.
And he gives some analogies that tie his words
to either choosing life or death.
I can't do that at the end of my sermon.
Jesus can, but his words, you either obey them
and you get life, or you follow your way and you get death.
And that's what we're gonna have to deal with this morning.
And a quick recap of this greatest sermon.
It's custom of Jesus' greatest hits,
starting with the Beatitudes.
Blessed are the poor in spirit.
Blessed are the humble.
Blessed are those who are persecuted
because of righteousness.
Jesus gives us the character and heart condition
of kingdom people.
They're poor in spirit, humble before the Lord,
and willing to submit to persecution for joy in Christ.
And then Jesus cranks up the heat even farther,
because that wasn't hard enough.
He starts describing the internal righteousness
that's needed in God's kingdom.
And he does this by discrediting the teaching
of the Pharisees, the cultural elite,
the people that everybody would have turned to,
and insults their righteousness.
He names them and then says their righteousness is worthless.
And they're getting that through their law keeping.
And then six times, he puts himself above their teaching
and then sets himself as over the Torah,
claiming himself to be the true interpreter.
Like this is super clear, he is fighting them,
and they have no response.
In chapter six, because that was only chapter five,
Jesus shows the difference between internal
and external righteousness,
and how it affects every part of our lives.
Our eating, our praying, our connection
with other people, our money.
And John's sermons last week covered the change heart
that is expected.
Jesus doesn't want our good deeds,
he doesn't care about the outside.
He wants our hearts.
He wants our hearts to be obedient to his will
so we can truly love others.
We don't get to interpret what love means.
I told John this last week, cramming that text,
one of the most important texts in the Bible
into 25 minutes is a masterpiece.
That is extremely difficult.
And this morning, we're looking at the two roads.
Let's read our text, the first two verses,
reading Matthew 7, 13 through 14.
Enter through the narrow gate,
for the gate is wide and the road broad
that leads to destruction,
and there are many who go through it.
How narrow is the gate and difficult the road
that leads to life and few find it.
Let's pray.
Our Father in heaven, your name be honored as holy.
I pray that this scripture would be let loose like a lion,
that my weaknesses and frailties would not distract,
and that you would be glorified.
I pray for your word to divide us,
to change us, to mold us into being like Jesus.
In Jesus' name, amen.
So like many first century rabbis,
Jesus puts two roads, two paths,
two gates in front of his people.
The audience has to either choose the wide gate
or the narrow gate, and then the gates lead to roads.
And be aware that Jesus is focusing on entering the gate.
You have to enter a gate.
You don't choose a road.
You don't just start walking down a road.
You have to go through the gate.
And you have to choose an entrance,
and then you go to the road.
And then the roads lead to a particular end,
either life or destruction.
And the wide gate is often thought
as the way of the world, right?
It's what we've grown up with.
A gate that leads down the path to sin, drugs and drinking
and everything that goes with it, like good music.
But eventually ending in destruction.
One writer described it as this.
It's a road of tolerance and permissiveness.
It has no curbs, no boundaries of either thought or conduct.
Travelers on this road follow only their inclinations.
And this is part of Jesus' meaning
about the wide road and the wide gate.
But Jesus is speaking to an audience
of first century religious zealots.
They were Torah observant Jews.
These weren't just random people.
Maybe there was some Romans in the audience,
but they would have been in the way back,
not really paying attention.
They're not the focus.
Jesus is focused on the Jews.
And in that, they knew the law.
And Jesus wanted to undermine their thinking,
their expectation.
And he actually, this makes this really clear
because he has a wordplay in this verse.
He uses the word wide, and the word Jesus is used for wide,
and that's what it means.
It was also used in chapter six, verse five,
with the hypocrites and how they pray.
They prayed in the wide place.
And so Jesus' meaning is this.
The hypocrites have entered the wide gate
and are on their way to destruction.
And so is everyone who follows them.
That's the Pharisees.
That's the religious people.
John Stott says it this way.
Superficiality, self-love, hypocrisy,
mechanical religion, false ambition,
sincerestness, which means criticalness.
These things do not have to be learned or cultivated.
No effort is required to practice them.
Jonathan Pennington says it like this.
Jesus has been describing the way,
the wide road, the whole sermon.
The broad and easy way is the way of the Pharisees
whose righteousness is easily definable
and can be gridded out solely at the external level,
not committing adultery, not murdering, and so on.
So this is the image we have of the wide road.
We have the unlikely bedfellows
of the self-righteous, legalistic hypocrites, sorry,
and self-loving, licentious hedonists
walking the same road towards the same destination
and despising each other the whole way down.
And this should sober us up a little bit.
Are we following the way of Jesus
or are we following the way of the Pharisees?
That's the question we should be asking.
So what's beyond the narrow gate?
Jesus has got two, we've got a narrow road,
sorry, a wide gate, a wide road,
and we have a narrow gate and a narrow road.
And if those who are following all the rules
aren't on the narrow road, who is?
It's those who are denying their flesh through obedience.
The Greek word for narrow includes this notion
of pressing upon, being cramped or oppressed.
So the narrow gate leads to the cramped, tight,
oppressing road.
And what do you find through the narrow gate?
Well, you find persecution, self-denial,
sacrificial obedience through following Him
and a changed heart.
You see, on the wide road,
you can bring all the sin you want,
bring all the baggage, nobody cares.
Sure, everyone hates it,
but there's no requirement to change.
Who am I to say that you should change?
You do, you, boo.
It rhymes, it's a little, right, at least, maybe?
Not so with the narrow gate.
It is a continuously hard road.
It is always pressing in more and more,
making it harder and harder to make every step,
harder to carry anything extra.
So I have this image in my head of a hiker,
and he's going down the narrow road,
he's got his little backpack on,
he's experienced, he knows what's going on.
The walls keep encroaching on him more and more and more,
and it's more difficult to just maneuver.
And then he comes to the very end of it,
but it's too tight, he can't fit in.
He can't go shoulder to shoulder, he's too broad.
And he can't go like this
because his backpack gets caught in the way,
and he's not gonna fit.
And so he's stuck.
What is he gonna do?
He can't throw his bag over, the wall is too high.
He doesn't wanna leave it, it's his necessities.
What is he gonna do?
I mean, he's experienced, guys.
Like, he didn't just bring frivolous things.
He brought what was needed.
He brought his self-reliance, a little bit of slander,
not too much, and some comfort loving.
That's what's in his bag.
And so he has to sit there and wait
for either the mountains to move so he can get through,
or he has to take off his bag.
What would you do?
Don't get ahead of yourself.
What luggage are you carrying around on the narrow road?
The narrow road will make demands of you.
It will require a change.
It will not let you go unscathed.
Cramped, pressed in on every side,
this road requires not just endurance,
it requires heart change.
You can't get by on your own strength, you need Jesus.
Because he walked it before us.
He's the way we know how to do it.
And do you know what's on the other side?
Do you know what you get
by following the narrow road all the way down?
You get him.
You get life and everything that he has to offer you.
And that is how we make it to the end, is by him.
So now that we have that analogy,
Jesus turns to highlight two problems
we will face on the narrow road.
How do you know who you should follow on the narrow road?
And how do you know someone is actually
following the narrow road?
Pretty basic things, we live in community
and we can all hide things and be wrong
and be hypocrites, two-faced.
So backing up to verse 14,
we're gonna start there and then read a little bit.
How narrow is the gate and difficult the road
that leads to life and few find it.
Be on your guard against false prophets
who come to you in sheep's clothing,
but inwardly are ravaging wolves.
You'll recognize them by their fruit.
Are grapes gathered from thorn bushes
or figs from thistles?
In the same way, every good tree produces good fruit
and a bad tree produces bad fruit.
A good tree can't produce bad fruit,
neither can a bad tree produce good fruit.
Every tree that doesn't produce good fruit
is cut down and thrown into the fire.
So you'll recognize them by their fruit.
False prophets infiltrated Jesus's crew.
They were rampant in the first decades
after the church started and they're with us today.
Their operations have altered a little bit,
but mostly they follow the same playbook.
Some reach to the level of heretic
where they have to reduce who Jesus is,
they have to change him.
Early on, they removed his humanity
and then made him like this kind of ghost thing.
It was called Gnosticism.
And then once that was stamped out, they had to change it.
They had to remove his divinity
and make him human so they made Jesus
into some kind of created being.
It was called Arianism.
And in the fourth century, it almost went out.
But the truth of the gospel is undefeated
through the blood of the saints.
And today we have our own false teachers
in our own heretics.
These wolves are often dressed
in really nice fine wool suits.
A clear example of these are prosperity preachers.
Preachers like Kenneth Copeland to name one.
They peddle a God that is all about fulfilling your desires
for comfort, removing pretty much every requirement
for obedience.
And if there is one, it's just reduced
to either some kind of donation or a trite act.
It's abhorrent.
It's a modern heretic.
They have to gloss over all of the teachings
on the importance of self denial,
the many commands of Jesus and the expectation of suffering.
They make Jesus into something that's paper thin and weak.
And the heretics have to work hard to twist scripture.
It's hard work to be wrong.
Removing parts to make up this new Jesus
that's very different from what he actually taught.
But the fix is really simple.
We read scripture.
We know scripture.
We look at all of it to define who God is
and understand him, to show us the way to him.
We don't define it ourselves.
And it works in us to correct our errors.
And we need to be careful to follow all of his teaching,
including the commands, including the hard parts.
So I'm gonna get on my soapbox for a minute here.
Do you know that Jesus was not afraid of commands
and rules to follow him?
Jesus was a Torah observant Jew.
There is 600 laws in the Torah.
It's over 600 laws.
He followed all of them perfectly.
He didn't miss a single one.
And he had the right heart condition the whole time.
And he loved following them
because they were the way he honored his father.
Jesus had rules, had expectations of following him.
And he expected everybody to follow them as well.
Sure, we don't follow the Torah now,
but Jesus loved reading it.
Do you love reading the law?
Like open it up to Leviticus, just get super jazzed,
6.30 in the morning, like this is how I'm gonna start my day.
Jesus did.
He probably memorized most of it.
That's how much he wanted to read it and to understand it.
Okay, I'm gonna get off my soapbox.
I wanted to call that out.
And it's easy to follow down that rabbit hole,
the YouTube rabbit hole, it's dark and deep down there
or get pulled into a new book
that makes you think there's an easier way
of following Jesus.
Or dare I say a fuller way of discipleship?
If you just did it like slightly differently,
like they've got this kind of equation
that works better for everybody.
And I've been there many times, guys.
I have wandered off the path
because I thought I found an easier way to eternal life.
And I was wrong.
I just was.
Don't wander off the path.
Don't follow a lesser Jesus.
The true Jesus is in the pages of scripture
and it can be found.
And I wanna just, I need to say this too, please hear.
I am not saying that only village has the truth.
That's not it at all.
I'm gonna quote three different authors in my sermon.
I've listened to so many podcasts that have been helpful.
There's good people out there
and there's a lot of truth available.
But just be careful anybody who doesn't preach,
that preaches an incomplete Jesus.
They will take you off.
They will distract you and it will be really sad.
So I've described this problem of false teachers.
Let's see how we handle it.
Jesus gives us a pretty basic rubic
to verify if a teacher is false or not.
He says, twice you will know them by their fruit.
Reading from verse 16, you'll recognize them by their fruit.
Are grapes gathered from thorn bushes or figs from thistles?
In the same way, every good tree produces good fruit,
but a bad tree produces bad fruit.
A good tree can't produce bad fruit.
Neither can a bad tree produce good fruit.
Every tree that doesn't produce good fruit
is cut down and thrown into the fire.
So you'll recognize them by their fruit.
So the fruit of the teacher will always expose them
for what they are.
And sometimes it takes a while.
And sometimes it takes a really long while, okay?
But there are three types of fruit
that we can judge people by.
One, their teaching.
This is the first point.
There is a little manuscript called the Didache.
It's a wonderful thing.
It's the oldest known manuscript that we have
that's not of part of the Bible from the early church.
And it could have actually been written
before some of the books of the Bible
in the late first century
or maybe in the early second century.
And in it, they talk about false teachers
because they had to deal with it.
Section 11 says this.
If a teacher himself turns and teaches another doctrine
to the destruction of this teaching, hear him not.
But if he teaches so as to increase righteousness
and knowledge of the Lord, receive him as the Lord.
And I love that little tag at the end.
If they're teaching righteousness
and knowledge of the Lord, receive them as the Lord.
Test all teaching.
If the fruit is bad, the output, and the output isn't biblical,
throw the teaching out.
Get rid of it.
Don't have anything to do with it.
The second test, their actions.
Again, quoting from the Didache.
But not everyone who speaks in the Spirit is a prophet,
but only if he holds the ways of the Lord.
Therefore, from their ways shall the false prophet
and the prophet be known.
From their ways, says it right there.
Sometimes the false teachers come in
with orthodoxy on their lips.
They know the Christians speak.
They know how to sing and do the dance.
They can fit in, but they lack Christ.
They may sound like they're right.
They might kind of show some good things,
but they don't know Jesus.
So while they get all of the plates spinning,
they're gonna come crashing down eventually.
And these are wolves in sheep's clothing.
Don't be missing that.
Jesus calls it for what it is.
They're gonna destroy the flock,
and they're gonna blaspheme the name of Jesus.
They should not be accepted.
And it may take time to expose them.
It doesn't happen right away.
Over the last decade, there is two,
and I could probably think of more,
really prominent national Christian figures.
I followed, I read their books.
I thought they were great.
I listened to their podcasts.
And they were exposed as being complete failures.
They did not love Jesus.
They were full of sin.
And their ministries, well, they started out good.
They hurt people in the end because of it.
They were destructive.
They did not benefit the church.
So be watchful for the wolves who try to cover their tracks.
And the last one, the last fruit, their followers.
We should judge teachers by their followers.
I had not thought of this one.
This one comes from John Stott, who says this.
We have to ask ourselves,
what effect their teaching has on their followers?
Sometimes the falsity of false teaching
is not immediately apparent
when we look at a teacher's behavior and system,
but becomes apparent only in disastrous results.
So this is like when you see a teacher
and you hear them speak and you watch their lives
and you're like, wow, that's pretty good.
They're doing the thing that I want them to be doing.
But then you look at their followers
and you're like, how are they doing?
And you see them and maybe they carry it out okay,
but maybe there's a lot of strife.
Maybe they care much more about,
less about recognizing the body and enjoying the church,
and they care about their recognition.
There's a lot of infighting.
There's a lot of pride.
That's an evidence that maybe the teacher
isn't all who they say they are.
Maybe the teacher can hold all the ideas together.
Maybe he can hold the tension and everything together,
but his followers, they just come crashing down.
My wife pointed this out to me and it's a true statement.
The sins of a teacher, whatever they are,
are often magnified in those who are following them.
So watch out, watch the followers of a teacher.
They are a fruit to be tested.
So our three tests, just to quickly review,
is the teaching sound?
Is the teacher behaving according to their teaching?
And are the followers, the disciples of the teacher,
showing fruit?
Is there growth or is there rampant sin?
And two quick counterpoints
because we're an American church
that often struggles with some things.
One, this is not for you to individually go and do.
You don't need to go and look for the false teachers.
You don't need to watch another YouTube video
about some false teacher in the world
and start adding to the comment section.
That's not where sanctification happens.
All of the New Testament books that talk about this stuff,
they're talking to local churches
that are dealing with local problems.
That's where the focus and concern is.
So let's be focused here.
Are we doing the right thing?
Are we growing?
Are we following the narrow road?
Are we teaching the fullness
of what the Bible says about Jesus?
Or do we have bad influences?
Are we off the mark somewhere?
Those are the questions we should be asking for ourselves.
And here's the second counterpoint.
The reason for this is because the community is expected
to identify the false teachers.
D.A. Carson explains it like this.
Jesus's expectation is that the community as a whole
will be able to protect itself from the wolves.
So if you get duped, if you get taken off,
let the community bring you back,
graciously, gently bring you back.
And if you think there's something wrong
with the teaching and authority,
bring it to the church, bring it to the board.
We have a structure for a reason
because if there is false teaching, we want to address it.
And real quick, if that person in small groups
has something weird, it's not heresy, okay?
It's just something weird.
You don't need to stand up and call them out on that, okay?
Just let them be.
I've been in those hallways with you.
You guys got some weird ideas, okay?
A lot of you could pump the brakes just a little bit.
But gently, graciously, we bring them back to scripture.
And very often, we ourselves needed some time
to work things out.
We ourselves needed to be reminded
of some part of God's truth.
So let's not judge others more harshly
than we wouldn't want to judge ourselves.
And now we get to the last section
and really the most enigmatic one, false confessors.
Reading from verse 21.
Not everyone who says to me, Lord, Lord,
will enter the kingdom of heaven,
but only the one who does the will of my Father in heaven.
On that day, many will say to me, Lord, Lord,
didn't we prophesy in your name,
drive out demons in your name
and do many miracles in your name?
Then I will announce to them,
I never knew you, depart from me, you lawbreakers.
So there's false roads to life,
there's false teachers on those roads,
trying to bring us to the wrong places,
and there's false confessors of Jesus as well.
And these people, again, have the right words on their lips.
They're just like some of the false teachers.
They ascribe some authority to Jesus.
Lord, Lord, they say emphatically.
And they even have miracles and signs
to show their spirituality.
But, it's a big but,
they don't have the one thing that is required.
So you may ask, how can someone have miracles
and prophecies and exorcism
and not have relationship with Jesus?
Aren't those the signs of the relationship?
Those are the gifts of the spirit, right?
Like kind of how it works hand in hand.
But apparently, no, that's not true.
And there's two simple truths to see here.
Number one, their justification for entrance
into the kingdom is their works, not Christ's work.
I'm gonna say that again.
Their justification for entering into the kingdom
is their works, not Christ's work.
Jonathan Pennington said it this way.
There is no reason to assume that these false prophets,
false confessors, were genuinely surprised
that they were rejected.
It is not surprise, but self-justification they express.
And this is consistent with Jesus' teaching
throughout the sermon.
We can't detach it from that.
And we're back to the beginning of this sermon.
Simply performing outward obedience to the law
is walking down the wide road.
So here also, miracles, spiritual events
are not true justification.
Holding fast to experience as justification
for entry to the kingdom is empty and leads to destruction.
Only Jesus provides us with true justification.
Only he can cover our sins,
and that is by grace through faith.
It is through him that we are able to walk
down the narrow road.
It is by him that we even can get to the narrow gate.
We would never choose that.
And the second point.
The way to obtain entrance into the kingdom
is through doing the Father's will.
Verse 21, not everyone who says to me,
Lord, Lord, will enter the kingdom of heaven,
but only the one who does the will of my Father in heaven.
I need you to hear this.
You cannot fill in doing the Father's will with your ideas.
Jesus doesn't let you do that.
He has a whole sermon that describes exactly
what's happening there.
Anything that you wanna interchange in that is wrong.
It'll quickly move you off the wrong path.
Jesus lays out over and over and over again
what it means to do the Father's will.
It's being the Beatitudes.
It's following Jesus's Torah interpretation
and having an inward righteousness
that comes from a Jesus transformed heart.
That's it.
That is it.
That's the only thing that we can use
for the interpretation of it.
And this is what the sermon has been about,
and this is what the sermon has been about the whole time
and what Jesus's whole ministry was about.
The Pharisees didn't know how to do it.
The false teachers didn't know how to do it,
but they thought they did.
The false confessors didn't know how to do it,
and they thought they did.
So there's a lot of people who get it wrong.
All of them are walking down the wide road,
completely blind because of their self-justification.
I'll wrap it up with this.
Why did Jesus put all these topics here?
You ever ask that about the Bible?
What do you, it just seems like a grab bag.
It's kind of real random all over the place.
So I think this is why Jesus put these things together,
why he put these points right next to each other.
Following his train of thought,
there are two gates in front of us.
We can enter the wide gate,
taking along our sin and living life
however we are comfortable.
But then there's the narrow gate.
And it requires everything.
On the wide road, there's no sacrifice required.
No, no sin imputation needed.
Bring along everything you want.
Your caravan of stuff will fit.
But that narrow gate?
The narrow gate requires all of the stuff
you brought along to go through trial after trial
after trial to be tested, to see if it should go.
And you will be changed.
The narrow road will cause change
to the most inward parts of you
and it will not be comfortable.
You will want to start dropping your sin and baggage
because it is so hard to carry.
And so many people walk the wide road
because it doesn't require heart change.
Righteousness can be external.
Self-justification can be experiences, emotions,
whatever you want it to be.
And no one can pass judgment on you.
That's the defense of our age.
You can't judge me.
And it sounds wonderful until you realize
that everyone you travel with won't be of any help.
They will also be unfulfilled.
They will also be traveling with baggage
that they don't know what to deal with.
And none of them will want to be dealing
with any of your stuff.
And this is where false teachers live.
This is where the Pharisees lived.
Those who are false confessors
and some of the most religious conservative people you know.
This is where they thrive
because they love all the glory available
to them in this world.
They relish their self-righteousness.
Don't be like them.
Two final thoughts.
How do we make it to the narrow gate
and how do we make it on the narrow road?
How do we make it to the narrow gate?
How do we make it on the narrow road?
The way to the narrow gate
is by going back along the wide road.
So you can't just make a shortcut to the narrow road.
There's no interchange available to you.
You don't just keep going a little bit farther
and then you can cut over.
You have to walk back.
You have to keep walking, saying goodbye
to all the people that you thought you wanted to be with,
all of the ideas that you thought you wanted to have.
And you have to say, no, those are death to me.
Those are disgusting.
They're the worst thing I can imagine.
And I'm gonna walk back away from it
because I have to go back to the beginning
so I can get to the narrow gate.
And this requires repentance.
This requires turning your back,
changing the way you think.
Every day, every hour of the wide road
leads you closer and closer to destruction.
And you have to choose, I want life.
You walk back toward the narrow gate.
That's how you get to the narrow gate.
Next, how do you make it on the narrow road
when it's so hard?
It's simple.
You have to treasure Jesus above all else.
You have to look at everything the world has to offer.
Praise, money, glory, women, joys, fill it in.
And you just say it's sewage, it's disgusting.
Paul in Philippians three, he describes it like this.
And he calls all his self-righteousness and good deeds
and everything sewage.
I, quoting, I also consider everything to be a loss
in view of the surpassing value
of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord.
Because of him, I have suffered the loss of all things
and consider them as dung so that I may gain Christ.
I'm gonna go do a little Greek searching,
go look at that word dung,
it's the strongest word you could imagine.
Paul's only joy was found in knowing his savior more.
That is how you make it on the narrow road.
That's how you do it.
You see Jesus dimly lit at the end
and all you want is to know him more.
Because he is the way, the truth and the life.
He is the glory of the invisible God.
He is the Messiah King born to us.
He is the one who walked the road for us and died for us
and rose again bearing our sin and shame
so that we can have newness of life in him.
And now he is seated at the right hand of the Father,
intercessing for us so that we can keep making it.
He keeps pleading with us, he keeps guiding us,
he keeps pushing us on
because he wants us to see us get to the end.
And because he is with us, we can join with the hymn writer
in trying to comprehend his amazing love.
Where the whole realm of nature mine,
that we're a present far too small.
Love so amazing, so divine,
demands my soul, my life, my all.
Let's pray.
Heavenly Father, we are eager to see you as you are.
We are eager to treasure you above all else.
Please give us a new heart.
Please help us.
Father, I pray for those who are walking the narrow road
that you would encourage them, you would strengthen them
and you would prepare them for the next trial
so that they could get rid of their baggage
and be closer to you.
That they would be formed into your image
and love you more than anything else.
And Father, I pray for those who are enjoying the wide road
that you would call them to yourself,
that you would humble them, that you would break them
so that they could see who you are
in a loving, caring Father.
That you would give them the strength to walk back,
to repent, to change their ways
so that they can be more like Jesus.
They can get to the narrow gate and get to life.
Father, we need you to do this work in us.
We cannot do it ourselves.
We need a transformed heart.
In Jesus' name, amen.