“But woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! For you shut the kingdom of heaven in people’s faces. For you neither enter yourselves nor allow those who would enter to go in.”

Mathew 23:13

The leaders of our religious institutions are a far cry away from the truth. In particular, I’m addressing the religious leaders who nitpick on minor details while neglecting the great truths of God’s Holy Word. I would have never believed certain things until I experienced them myself.

This is my story… in a nutshell. I surrendered my life to the Lord and Saviour, Jesus Christ. Now, I actually did it twice. The first time was a partial surrender. I sacrificed my career in the military, including a retirement income to dedicate my service and time to… the church as well as Christ. I thought I was surrendering my life only to Christ, but, I was still seeking a Saviour in the church because the church, as I thought, represents Christ.

I found myself going from ministry to ministry, professed Christian to professed Christian, seeking some guide to a higher plane of Christianity… all the while, not realizing that Jesus Christ is perfectly capable of leading me. He is perfectly capable of taking care of my spiritual and physical needs.

Eventually, I found myself right back in a secular job, in school and in commerce. Not to say these things are all evil, but, I had already left that kind of life behind. Maybe God was showing me that I was still looking for support in earthly means and people and not appreciating Him as my ultimate support. So, He let me drift back into that life to allow me to see I wasn’t fully surrendered.

Then, I did it again. I left my earthly life of school, work and shopping to dedicate my life and time to the service of Jesus Christ. No earthly attachments to any particular organization or leader this time. I left a consistent income and career goals to serve Jesus without reservation. No seeking support, except by His explicit command, only so that He could show me that no one will ever be truly willing to support me the way He can and will. In actuality, He is the One that called me to make such a radical change. I can do nothing without Him.

But here’s the problem. As I started publishing my plans abroad… rather God’s plans, I found myself being beat down for choosing such a radical path of faith. However, the people who wanted to send me back into a mundane life of work, sleep, eat, repeat have no idea how incredibly evil such a course of action is. They were attempting to shut up the kingdom of heaven to me. All the while, they, themselves would not leave a comfortable life behind to give Jesus a full surrender. It’s like crabs in a bucket, when one wants to leave, the rest try to grab his leg and pull him back down.

For whoever would save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for my sake will save it.

Luke 9:24

Look, I’m trying to lose my … wait, wait… God told me to lose my life for His sake. God told me to freely give because He freemy gave me (Matt 10:8). Jesus told me not to worry about tomorrow’s finances because there’s enough evil in one day to deal with. Why deal with tomorrow when you don’t even know if you’ll be alive tomorrow (Matthew 6:31-33).

Jesus told us to deny ourself. But, in reality, that self denial leads to Him rewarding us. I’d rather have the owner of the Universe be my financier than the owner of Chase bank. I’d rather get my all my income from the Creator of all food and resources than to get my income from the richest Fortune 500 company.

Let’s face it, do we believe in God? If we do, what in the world can man provide more than God. Maybe it’s because man will give us our selfish desires faster than God will give us what we actually need. We’re so used to rushing that we forget that there is a time and a place of everything.

The point of this article is this… we have a High Priest in the heavenly church looking down on us and allowing us to go through trials to reveal our faith. Let’s not be found to be lacking trust in our Creator. It’s absolutely absurd to think that the One who created us will not provide all things to sustain us.

Even worse, if we don’t have enough faith to trust in a loving and sustaining Creator, let’s at least get out the way so those who truly want to serve God can have free access… unless you want to get trampled under the foot of men.

From the days of John the Baptist until now the kingdom of heaven has suffered violence, and the violent take it by force.

Matthew 11:12