You're Invited at Your Own House

 

 



 

Not so passive.  I’m noticing that Jesus is pretty aggressive in His way of calling you into a relationship with Him.  You can’t help but know that YOU are the one invited.  The truth is He’s already there with you.  He’s just waiting for you to open the door.

Revelation 3:20  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.

 He’s shown up. 

He has revealed Himself in many ways.  That's His way of knocking. He keeps revealing more. 

Here are some ways I see Him often revealing Himself:

-The person that you knew that all of a sudden is someone completely different because they let Him in.  He’s showing His power in the transformed life of your friend.

-That unsettling inside of you that twinges when you know you aren’t doing the right thing.  His Spirit convicts us. 

-That time you go to church and it seems like they are talking right to you.

He is not subtle.

When Zaccheaus wanted to sneak a glimpse of Jesus for himself and was too short to see over the crowd, he climbed a tree.  What does Jesus do?

Luke 19:5  When Jesus reached the spot, he looked up and said to him, "Zacchaeus, come down immediately.  I must stay at your house today."  

Zaccheaus had to decide to take Him up on it and let Him in his house.  Luke 19:6 So he came down at once and welcomed him gladly.

 After coming inside and having a meal together in friendship, Zaccheaus comes out of his house changed.  Zaccheaus had been a tax collector and they were known as thieves and cheats.  He not only repays what he had taken, but he pays it back times four.  He also gives half of everything he has to the poor.

People that knew Zaccheaus at first were grumping that Jesus hung out with a “sinner."

Jesus’ response to the grumbler in Luke 19:9  And Jesus said to him, "Today salvation has come to this house, because he, too, is a son of Abraham. 10 "For the Son of Man has come to seek and to save that which was lost."

They end up seeing a changed Zaccheaus and the power of grace and love that Jesus has and what He has come to do. 

He seeks us out.  He has come to “seek and to save.”  He is not passive. 

We know when He is showing us Himself.   We also know  it is Him that decides to reveal Himself.

Matthew 16:16-17   16 Simon Peter answered, “You are the Messiah, the Son of the living God.”17 Jesus replied, “Blessed are you, Simon son of Jonah, for this was not revealed to you by flesh and blood, but by my Father in heaven.

Galatians 1:12  I did not receive it from any man, nor was I taught it; rather, I received it by revelation from Jesus Christ.

If you are noticing Him ex; Seeing things you hadn’t before, pondering the perfect timing of an event, things that seem unexplainable or finding yourself uncomfortable in something that used to satisfy you that doesn’t anymore and that you know it isn’t good…  That’s Jesus knocking and He is in your midst.

Jesus shows up after His resurrection.  Luke 24:13-25 He hangs out with two disciples for a while walking along the road to Emmaus, but they don’t recognize it was Him.  He even asks why they are downcast and they respond, “You must be the only one in Jerusalem that doesn’t know what happened.”  They explain the death of the one they thought would redeem Israel. 

His response starting at verse 25 He said to them, “How foolish you are, and how slow to believe all that the prophets have spoken! ²⁶ Did not the Messiah have to suffer these things and then enter his glory?” ²⁷ And beginning with Moses and all the Prophets, he explained to them what was said in all the Scriptures concerning himself.

Jesus is saying how foolish they are for not believing after everything the prophets have spoken of and that it was exactly what the Messiah must suffer to enter glory.  Then He goes so far to explain it all to them in the Scriptures concerning Himself.  They apparently do not take offense and they enjoyed His presence so much in that walk that they insist that He comes inside the house with them and eat with them even though they still don’t realize it is Christ.

 Then suddenly He reveals Himself by breaking bread with them in the house that they had asked Him to come into.  As soon as they recognize Him by the breaking of the bread, He suddenly disappears.  I’m not sure what Jesus was doing other than emphasizing an opportunity for us today that we need to know, recognize and to pay attention to what He says and how He opens the Scriptures to us  and in them is His presence and truth and that it is Him, the One that fulfilled it all.

Luke 24:32 They asked each other, “Were not our hearts burning within us while he talked with us on the road and opened the Scriptures to us?”  They knew Him in the breaking of the bread, but before that there was a burning in their hearts.

Think about the verse in Revelation again,   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.

He came into the house and when He was there he broke bread with them and at that moment they knew Him.  This is a place of knowing Him, upon opening the door to Him.  He promises to exchange with us in the relation both ways; eating with Him and Him with you.  This is also where Zacchaeaus knew Him and was changed.  It was when Jesus came into his house and ate with him.  Having a meal with someone is relational and it is a corresponding time of taking in Life-giving elements.  It matters and it is often pleasurable.

There have been times where I have been concerned that I may have missed God’s timing in something; that I may not have acted and therefore lost out. 

I felt a nudge to contact a woman I had met briefly at a golf tournament that my husband was in.  We had connected in a way that was equally felt in our spirit that God was part of that meeting.  Her business is that she starts and helps people begin their ministries.  We have stayed in contact ever-so briefly over the last couple of years.  I last talked with her three months ago. Thursday I thought of her and thought it may be time for me to connect with her on this now.  I didn’t do it because I didn’t want to burden her and I wasn’t able to pay for that kind of help yet.

 On Sunday, just three days after I had thought of her, I got a message from her.  She asked if she can get me up and running and said that she has a few others she’s starting out with on Monday and doing some pro-bono work for them.  She wanted to include me as part of her production and she also asked me for prayer for herself and for the ones that she is helping.

Here was the LORD offering what He wanted me to do as a next step.  I declined with the nudge on Thursday, but come Sunday, He straight out opened it up to me and invited me through her.  If He was knocking on Thursday, He was knocking loudly on Sunday. 

God revealed Himself to Moses through a burning bush.  He couldn’t ignore that.  He knocked Paul right off his high horse with the flash of a bright light that blinded him for three days.  He was present in a cloud by day and a pillar of fire by night.  He came fulfilling all the prophecies of Old and performed miracles then died and rose again.

To think of the LORD as passive is not a true picture.  He is actively pursuing and revealing Himself every day through His Word, through other people, through events and through all of creation. 

John 17:3 And this is eternal life, that they know you the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom you have sent.