Is He Welcome At Your Place?
Revelation 3:20 (Amplified Bible)
20Behold, I stand at the door and knock; if anyone hears and listens to and heeds My voice and opens the door, I will come in to him and will eat with him, and he [will eat] with Me.
My mother taught us when we were growing up to have an attitude of hospitality. She taught us that everyone was to be made welcome if they came to our home. She never identified a person that was unwelcome. Even people who treated her with unkindness she treated them with love and made us do the same. At any given moment we took in people that need a place to stay, or those who were in transition. We seem to always have a welcome mat out, one that never wore out and was never turned over. Our family has always had the light on…and we still do. This is how I raised my children as well, although, my son doesn’t always subscribe to this philosophy it is how they were raised, so the legacy continues.
But what if Jesus literally showed up at your door step would He be welcomed in? If God dropped by just to check on you would you have to tell Him to come back tomorrow because of the stuff that you were into or how you were living? If the Holy Spirit wanted just to hang with you for the day, could He go everywhere you went, could He be a part of your every conversation or would there be something that would preclude Him from fitting in? Would your welcome be present for anyone in the God head, or would your lifestyle, your conversation, your associates and habits preclude you from being able to welcome anyone of them, or all of three of them into your home and your day? You see this may seem like a radical thought, but really it isn’t. We forget that God is ever present and that He is all around us, we forget that when we confess the Lord with our mouth and believe in our heart the Jesus begins a process of abiding with us. We forget that the Holy Spirit comes into us. But the question becomes have we made them feel welcome. Is our house, our temple, our vessel conducive to them abiding and feeling welcome? Many of us don’t want to answer because to answer this would mean that we are required to really examine our life and how we are living, and that is something we just are in refusal or denial to do. Others of us, would say yes, but would it actual be truth, because we have allowed so much acceptance of worldly things to become a part of how we live and function. Others would truthful cry out NO and pray Psalms 51.
You Our Heavenly Father is standing at our door and He is knocking to get in, but many of us do not want to grant Him entrance because it would mean accountability. We are standing on the other side of the door listening to the knocking acting as if we don’t hear it because we don’t actually want to give up control, of our lives to anyone not even, God. Some of us have taken to plugging up our ears with spiritual headphones, so we can block out the sound of God’s voice speaking to us, and asking, “Is anyone home?” We want the blessings of God without having to do the living for God. God is only asking that we clean up and pick up all the garbage that is cluttering our lives, so that there is room for Him, Jesus and the Holy Spirit. I mean considering He paid the price for us, to submit to Him and to determine that obedience is truly better than sacrifice is the least we can do. We cannot have it both ways, we can’t want God to hang and abide when it is convenient for us, and then we turn Him away and turn over the welcome mat when it doesn’t suit us. Living in a state that God is welcome is the part of being a Christian that most of us try to ignore, but it is the whole and the sum total of the Christian experience…We need to make room for daddy and our brothers because they don’t want to just come for a visit they want to MOVE IN!!!!
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