As I write this, the New Year is approaching fast. A few days ago I was gathered with family to celebrate Christmas. I was invited and I accepted. As you can imagine there was a nice meal, conversation, special desserts and then gift giving. Did you know that Jesus invites you to attend this type of gathering. He says in John 14:2 that He is making a place for us to reside with Him, in Revelation 19:9 it says that we will partake in a great feast with Him and in Ephesians 2:8-9 and Romans 6:23 it says that He gives us a gift. You are invited to take it but will you accept?
Romans 6:23 is the scripture that we want to concentrate on. It says, “For the wages of sin is death, but the free gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord.”
Christmas is all about the gift of Jesus coming to earth to live with us. His life leading up to His death and resurrection was all about Jesus inviting us to come live with Him. In Revelation 3:20 Jesus says, “Here I am! I stand at the door and knock. If anyone hears my voice and opens the door, I will come in and eat with that person, and they with me.” It’s pretty simple...receive the Gift.
Not sure? Feel weird about it? Seem Unbelievable? Yep, that’s how I felt. But you know what? I wanted to know. Even as an atheist, I wanted to know. I didn’t want to go ask anyone because quite frankly I thought believers were weird and one sided and I also felt a little conspicuous and uncomfortable. Besides, if He really existed I wanted to hear from God Himself. I wasn’t sure about the Bible, but that’s where I decided to go. I had tried reading the book a couple of times before but when starting in the beginning, I got lost in all the genealogy and ended up thinking it was foolishness. This time, however, I thought that if Jesus was supposed to be the Savior then I would see what He had to say. For some reason, I started in the gospel of John and kept reading through Acts and into Romans until I got to Romans chapter 10 verse 9,
“If you declare with your mouth, “Jesus is Lord,” and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved.”
ARE YOU KIDDING ME? I can’t. No way can I declare that He is Lord and I don’t believe He was raised from the dead! That’s exactly what I said, out loud to myself. And then I looked down at it again and realized that if this was truth then I wasn’t saved. (Whatever that meant) I decided to circle back around to the beginning of the New Testament and started reading Matthew until I got to Chapter 7 verse 7,
‘“Ask and it will be given to you; seek and you will find; knock and the door will be opened to you.”
I gotta tell you, I just sat there looking at those words. It was in the morning and those words followed me around all day. Later that afternoon I was sitting in my car waiting for my eldest daughter to get out of school and the words just kept nagging me. Finally I decided that IF all this was true and IF God really existed then I would hold Him to His words. And so, I decided to have a talk with Him. I spoke out loud. I said that I wanted to know Him, to know if He was real, and so I was asking, I was seeking and I was knocking. What happened at that point was absolutely nothing. No flash of light, no warm feeling and no choir but I am here to tell you there was a transition in my life that has led me to confess Jesus is Lord and to believe in my heart that He was raised from the dead. Through it all, Jesus was knocking at the door and all I had to do was open it. Stay tuned to this site for more of my journey.
What about you? Give it some serious thought, send me a response and seriously consider opening the door.