Make My Love Real

An old story often told — sometimes attributed to Cherokee tradition, though its origins are uncertain — describes a boy walking with his grandfather along a path. The old man says, "A battle is going on inside each of us. It is a battle between two wolves. One is good; the other is evil."

The boy asks, "Which one will win?"

The old man answers, "The one you feed."

Not some of us. All of us. Every human heart carries wounds, fears, appetites, defenses, and sins we would rather not name. Many deny this. Some insist they are basically fine. Some Christians imagine that because they have been baptized, the whole struggle should already be over, as if forgiveness means there is nothing left to heal.

But reality is more honest than that.

All have sinned. All need mercy. To understand this is not despair, it is our choice to walk the narrow path. We usually see the sins of others plainly. But we are afraid to reveal our own wounds and sins. We hide the very place where Christ wants to begin His healing. His perfecting of us.

Baptism is not nothing. It is grace, cleansing, adoption, and a real sharing in the death and resurrection of Christ. In baptism we are forgiven. But forgiveness does not mean the damage never happened, nor does it mean every wound has already been healed.

When I was young, if I punched a hole in the wall — and I did that more than once — my father would forgive me. But the hole was still there. His forgiveness did not magically restore the drywall. Somebody still had to patch it. Over time, I became quite adept at repairing drywall.

That is not a perfect image, but it helps me. God forgives the sin, but He also begins the work of repairing the soul. He does not leave us staring at the hole in shame. He gives us grace, tools, truth, repentance, discipline, prayer, mercy, and time.

Jesus warns us often because religious self-deception is not rare — it is one of the ordinary dangers of the spiritual life. We can say, "Lord, Lord," and still refuse the Father's will. We can speak in His name and still not know Him. We can admire the narrow gate while our feet keep walking down the easy road. We can ask what we lack, like the rich young man, and then go away sorrowful when Jesus touches the one thing we do not want to surrender.

So the question is not merely, "Do I believe in Jesus?" or "Do I feel love for Jesus?" The sharper question is this:

Am I allowing Jesus to tell me the truth about my life, and am I actually following Him?

To know Jesus is not simply to know things about Him. It means coming under His gaze — His mercy, His correction, His friendship. It means abiding in Him, letting His words remain in us until they expose what is false, heal what is wounded, and reorder what is disordered. We do not come to know Him by mastering an idea. We come to know Him by surrendering to a Person.

And to love Jesus is not first proven by emotion, religious language, public ministry, or visible sacrifice. Jesus gives us the test Himself: "If you love me, keep my commandments." Love becomes real as obedience — not cold rule-keeping, but obedience as trust. If He is Lord, then His word has authority over our desires, our money, our sexuality, our ambition, our enemies, our resentments, our plans, and our excuses.

That is why the passages that unsettle us are gifts. They keep us from confusing admiration with discipleship.

When Jesus says the gate is narrow, He is not saying God is reluctant to save. He is saying the way of life is not wide enough to carry all our idols through it. The narrow gate strips us. We cannot enter with our self-importance, our hidden hatreds, our greed, our need to be admired, our private kingdoms, or our refusal to forgive.

The gate is narrow because it is shaped like the cross. It is wide enough for every sinner who repents, but too narrow for the false self that refuses to die.

When Jesus tells the rich young man, "Go, sell what you possess, give to the poor, and come, follow me," He reveals that eternal life is not an accessory added to an already secure life. The young man was moral, sincere, and religious. Jesus looked at him and loved him. Then Jesus named the rival love. For that man, wealth was not merely something he had. It was something that had him.

This does not mean every disciple is called to the exact same external act in the exact same way. Some are called to literal poverty. But all are called to total dispossession before God. All must ask:

That last question matters to me.

One night I woke during what I have come to call God's hour. I lay there in the dark, thinking about all the things moving through my life that I cannot really control: my wife slowly weakening from terminal cancer, money I am no longer certain will last, and the loneliness that, unless God changes the course of things, may someday come.

I had spent a great deal of time trying to convince myself that I could handle all of it. I told myself I was strong enough, practical enough, experienced enough. I had solved problems all my life. Surely I could face these too.

Then the words came quietly: Do not be afraid.

Not as an argument. Not as a dramatic voice. More like a truth I had known for years but had never really allowed to reach the place where fear was living. I knew the teaching. I had read the words. I had repeated them. But that night I realized I had not truly applied them. I was still trying to manage fear with control, when what I needed was faith.

That was the answer to so many prayers, though not the answer I expected. God did not show me the outcome. He did not tell me how long Carol would remain strong, whether the money would last, or how loneliness would feel if it came. He simply put His finger on the thing beneath all of it. Fear. And then He answered it the way Jesus so often answers it: Do not be afraid.

The outcome is still hidden from me. Faith does not remove every burden in a moment. It teaches me not to carry the burden alone.

Fear hides in private — in a dark room at three in the morning. But it also hides in plain sight, dressed up as something more respectable: usefulness, busyness, ministry.

Jesus' warnings are merciful precisely here. They do not merely condemn us. They reveal what is still ruling us.

When Jesus says some will prophesy, cast out demons, and do mighty works in His name, and yet hear, "I never knew you," He is warning us that spiritual activity is not the same as communion with Him. A person can be useful in religious work and still be estranged from love. Gifts are not the same as fruit. Power is not the same as holiness. Correct language is not the same as surrender.

This should sober anyone who teaches, ministers, leads, posts, preaches, organizes, or serves. The question is not only, "Was something accomplished?" but, "Was I known by Christ? Did I seek His glory or my own?" The most frightening possibility is not failure in ministry. It is success without intimacy, visibility without repentance.

When Jesus says, "Deny yourself, take up your cross daily, and follow me," He is not calling us to self-hatred. He is calling us to refuse the false self that tries to live apart from God. Denying yourself means you stop treating every passing mood, appetite, fear, or impulse as though it has divine authority. It means saying no to the self that must win, must be seen, must be comfortable, must be vindicated, must control the outcome. It means losing the life we keep trying to save so we may receive the life only He can give.

This is how we begin to love Jesus truly: we stop negotiating with Him as if He were one interest among many. We receive Him as Lord.

But even here we must be careful. The answer is not to become heroic in our own strength. We do not love Jesus perfectly by straining ourselves into spiritual achievement. Perfect love is not manufactured by anxiety. It is received, purified, and practiced by grace. "We love because He first loved us." The first movement is always His mercy. He seeks us before we seek Him. He tells the truth because He loves us. He commands because He wants us free.

To love Jesus perfectly, then, is to love Him with an undivided heart — not flawless performance, not never needing forgiveness, but a heart increasingly surrendered to God without reserve. A life in which nothing is knowingly kept back from Him.

Where we discover resistance, we bring it into the light. Where we fall, we repent quickly. Where we are attached, we ask to be made free. Where we are afraid, we learn to trust.

The honest disciple does not say, "I have no idols." The honest disciple says, "Lord, show me what I cannot see. Search me and know me. Lead me in the way everlasting."

We avoid fooling ourselves by submitting our idea of love to Jesus' own definition of it. Do we forgive? Do we bless our enemies? Do we tell the truth? Do we care for the poor? Do we repent when confronted? Do we obey when no one is watching? Do we love the hidden life with God more than the appearance of holiness before people?

We also avoid self-deception by staying close to the actual Jesus of the Gospels, not a version shaped to bless our preferences. The real Jesus is tender with sinners and severe with hypocrisy. He eats with the outcast and commands them to sin no more. He welcomes children and warns the powerful. He forgives His murderers and speaks of judgment. He gives rest to the weary and demands everything from those who would follow Him.

If our Jesus never contradicts us, never offends us, never asks us to relinquish anything, never sends us toward the people we avoid, never exposes our pride, never challenges our money, never interrupts our comfort — then we may not be dealing with Jesus. We may be dealing with a religious reflection of ourselves.

This is why prayer must become more than asking God to support our plans. Prayer is where we let ourselves be known. It is where we sit before Christ without performance, where we allow Scripture to read us, where we say, "Not my will, but Yours be done," and mean it a little more each day. Prayer is also where we learn to say, "Lord, do not give me money, power, influence, or praise unless I can use them for Your glory." That is not an easy prayer. But it is a freeing one.

Spend quiet moments listening, and He will reveal Himself to you. Then you can begin again: deny yourself, pick up your cross, and follow Him.

We need the word of God because it judges our intentions. We need community because we are poor judges of ourselves. We need the poor because Jesus identifies Himself with them and reveals whether our love has become concrete. We need repentance because love dies when we defend our darkness. We need worship because we become like what we adore. We need the cross because there is no union with Jesus that bypasses His way of self-giving love.

The answer, finally, is simple, though not easy: we get to know and love Jesus by following Him in truth. We come to Him as sinners loved by God. We listen to His word. We obey what we understand. We repent when we fail. We surrender what He names. We serve whom He sends. We forgive as we have been forgiven. We receive His mercy again and again, and let the Holy Spirit pour the love of God into our hearts until love becomes not only something we admire, but the shape of our life.

The narrow gate is not a puzzle to solve. It is Jesus Himself. The treasure in heaven is not an abstraction. It is Jesus Himself. The cross is not meaningless suffering. It is communion with Jesus Himself.

The warning, "I never knew you," is not meant to drive us to despair. It is meant to drive us out of pretense and into living relationship.

We do not need to pretend we love Him perfectly today. We need to stop pretending where we do not. That honesty is already grace.

From there we can pray a prayer that leads through the narrow gate: