STILL FEELING LIKE YOU’RE KNOCKING ON HEAVEN’S DOOR? Perhaps you keep praying that God will answer you, but you can’t hear his voice. Maybe you keep praying that God will help you in your situation as you’re hoping for things to get “back to normal.” I can relate to the fact that change is hard, I was a career military spouse who was forced to move often. I also can relate to situations that feel like no matter how hard we try, things just don’t seem to improve, because I watched my 30 year marriage crumble into divorce. Life is hard, and we were never promised that things would be easy just because we follow Jesus.
I see things differently now, though, and I realize that for my whole life, I was living life as a lukewarm Christian. I was never cold, certainly not that, although I was getting pretty cool in my faith from January 2021 to August 2022, but that’s a story for a different day. I was never hot, either, although my faith was definitely heating up as a teenager between the summers of 1989 and 1991. For the majority of my life, I was perfectly LUKEWARM, which was the most socially acceptable way to present myself to the world. The traditional churchgoers that I was surrounded by liked me, nonbelievers liked me, and most Air Force spouses I knew liked me. Being liked and accepted by others was very important to me, so in hindsight, it seems that was probably my main goal for my lukewarm faith journey.
Living life with lukewarm faith still is the most acceptable way to exist in society today, but that’s not making God pleased with us. With one foot in and one foot out, you can be accepted in church and among your Christian friends, with most pastors validating you by telling you that they’re thankful you showed up on any given Sunday. It’s also the easiest way to live because others who don’t go to church will also accept you, since your “Christian Life” is kept separate from your “Everyday Life,” making you fairly unoffensive to them. I feel like Satan even leaves you alone more often than not when you choose a life of lukewarm affection for God, because you’re far from being a threat to him since you quietly stay in your lane and would be too embarrassed to speak out and ruffle peoples’ feathers.
In Revelation 3:15-22, Jesus addressed the church of the Laodiceans, who were also contentedly lukewarm in their faith. He told them that he wished they were either cold or hot, but since they were lukewarm, he stated that he would vomit them out of his mouth. These “Christians” thought they were in good shape. They felt fortunate that they had everything they needed, so they didn’t really have much of a need for the Lord to provide for them. They likely felt fairly confident in themselves to buy what they wanted, set their schedule as they wished, and to choose how they wanted to live. SELF-SUFFICIENCY MASKS A GOD DEFICIENCY. The Laodicean church members were blinded by their complacency, lulled to sleep by their comfortability, and content to show up at church one day a week while doing their own thing every other day. Sound familiar?
“Behold, I stand at the door and knock. If anyone hears My voice and opens the door, I will come in to him and dine with him, and he with Me.” – Rev. 3:20
Jesus has already told us that he knocks on OUR door, so we don’t have to keep knocking on the door of heaven. All that we have to do is open the door to him, invite him in, and he will sit and have a meal with us. HE WANTS TO SPEND TIME WITH US! Jesus even tells us throughout Scripture that if we know him, then we will know the Father, and that through him we have access to the Father.
Are you still standing there knocking on heaven’s door? Or are you ready to turn up the heat in your faith to go from lukewarm to hot by opening the door to Jesus? Your relationship with him is personal to you and can develop as fast or as slow as you allow it to, but it WILL change you from the inside out. You won’t be able to continue to concern yourself with what others think of you, but from my experience, it won’t matter to you anymore that at some point you won’t be able to separate your Christian Life from your Everyday Life. (You only have one life, after all, so why not live a fiery hot Christian Life filled with bold confidence, peace and joy that will emanate from you?)
STOP STANDING THERE & KNOCKING AT THE DOOR.
TURN UP THE HEAT and OPEN THE DOOR TO JESUS.