May 27 / Proverbs 27 / Luke 13

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Proverbs 27:6a,9-10

The slap of a friend can be trusted to help you…The sweet smell of perfume and oils is pleasant, and so is good advice from a friend. Don’t forget your friend, or your parent’s friend. Don’t always go to your family for help when trouble comes. A neighbor close by is better than a family far away.

There is something quite sweet about a close spiritual friendship (anamchara). It is through them that we can grow immensely in our being conformed to the image of Christ. If you don’t have a close spiritual partnership, I would urge you strongly to seek one now. Seek someone to walk along you in life, who will admonish you, saying the hard things that you know you can trust. Someone who will sharpen you and be strong for you on the days you are weak.

If you’ve got it all together already and need no help, and need not improve in anyway in life, then my advice is to do nothing and stay perfect. Well, do one thing. Call me and tell me how you did it.

We need not always depend on family, especially if they are distant physically or emotionally or spiritually.

We should reckon that the most pleasant spiritual conversation which is about spiritual things, and promotes the prosperity of the soul.

-Matthew Henry

Luke 13:22-30

Enter through the narrow gate.

Like the two gates we can enter spoken of here, I see two main ways of going through that narrow gate to the kingdom of life:

Suffering. Or spiritual formation/discipline.

What do these two have in common?

Focus.

Intense focus.

When in pain, whether physical or emotional, where is your focus? What is it like? Nonchalant? Um, not really. It’s pretty lasered in.

We can la la la through life until some inevitable suffering comes to test us and hone us, or we can choose “on our own” to dial in to YHWH through the liberating discipline of cultivating our relationship with Him. Then when suffering comes, we will be at the ready since we have been employing our off-the-spot training all along.

**We want to be clear here that God has already reconciled us to Himself through Jesus. There’s nothing we have to crawl through to earn a place in Him. We are talking about the partaking of Life He has offered.

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