I’m on the beautiful road. If you asked me how I got here I couldn’t tell you. Well I could tell you in terms that another person would understand, but still, I’m not telling you. All I can do is describe what I know this beautiful road to be.
It’s straight if you are on it. But that is only if you are on it, because very few find it. I can’t coax you to find it. I wish I could but it’s not permitted. If I coax you to find it, then you have not found it… this narrow road. Jesus tells us about it. It is a beautiful road and it leads to a beautiful place. It’s a holy road. It’s a road that I am on, and I can tell you mechanically how I did get here, but spiritually, I don’t know why God has allowed me to be here.
But I’m here. Something in me, I don’t know what, has yielded to God.
Jesus has also said about this beautiful road, that few find it.
When I entered this road, there had to be a decision in my heart, that maybe I was aware of and maybe I wasn’t, which required me to pick up my cross and carry it on my back as well.
I haven’t chosen my crucifixion. And in the beginning, it was the crucifying of my own flesh. But it quickly turned into another kind of crucifixion…one for my brother.
I will have to say that this one is the more difficult one and the one that increases the difficulty to be crucified. Not because I would rather not be, God knows I am gladly. Instead it is the more difficult one, increasingly difficult one, because very few find the way.
On the beautiful road, you have few companions if you find it, and the gate is very narrow. And if few go through it…this also is my crucifixion.
Now, now now, I have fellowship with Christ…when I am crucified for those I love.
This isn’t an atoning crucifixion in any way of course. But the crucifixion that is mine and yours if you submit to it, is this: “Greater love has none than this: that a man would lay his life down for his friend…”
This is Christ’s agony on the cross, not that He was crucified, not that he suffered… he could bear that. In the same way my crucifixion that he said I must go through for my brothers is not my agony, but rather, it’s my joy. My agony is the same as his agony.
So if you’ll be crucified, you will find the beautiful road. The beautiful road is a holy Road.
When I look around on this beautiful road, it’s who I don’t see on it that is my agony. You and I long to see our brother on it, but we can’t do anything to put them on it.
The beautiful road is a choice of the heart, it is not a forced thing.
The beautiful thing about the beautiful road is that it is not a forced thing, but is a choice. Paul said that it was the love of Christ that constrained Him. Here is the beauty. It is the love for God that places one on the beautiful road. You don’t decide I will love God and get on that road. Not in my mind.
Rather, a believer at some point finds that his heart loves God with all that it is, and suddenly, he finds himself on a road he had no idea he was going to be on…he is just there. There is no other entry.
A believer then, conversely, has to choose to not be on this road that he knows is beautiful. This is his agony. And it is Jesus’ agony.