An Invitation

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.

Revelation 3:20

Today, my prayer was simple, “Where are you God?” I was and have been spending time each morning doing “spiritual activities”, like they are part of my work schedule. And yet, I cried out to God that I was doing my very best to get to Him, to find Him, to make him want to come and spend time with me. In all of my doing, I felt like it wasn’t paying off.

I love it when God is more obvious than not, and this time I think a much-needed reminder came in the middle of this crying out to Him - a daily verse on my phone. “I stand at the door and knock.” Where do I go to find the Lord? Well apparently not far. Because as much as I want to set out with clues and a map, a problem to solve, I think that I’ve made this overly complicated. I’ve allowed my Martha self (the goal/task/chore oriented individual) to build in some additional layers of activities, when God is ever-present. Not only is God ever present, he desires us before we even know He’s there. He is “knocking” at our heart, extending an invitation to be with us. How precious is it to know that my activities, my best efforts are not what attracted God’s attention to me.

“If anyone hears my voice” - maybe sometimes I cannot hear because there is a lot of other noise, whether it’s a busy schedule, distractions, the news, the messages of culture. Rather, it’s only when ceasing the activity and the efforts, that maybe we can actually hear Him and his desire to come be with us. It’s in the quiet places that we fully understand his intentions towards us. The only “work” that is required of me is to respond to this invitation. The Lord only asks us to open the door, so that He can enter. He does the rest.

“I will come in to him and dine with him” - The heart of the Father is revealed towards us in that he desires to come into our lives and our day to dine with us. I don’t know about you but when I think of dining, it’s the act of siting at a table over dinner, is about fellowship, enjoying company, and being fed. The Lord has not said, let me come in so that we can get to work or so that I can give you my earthly to-do lists or tell you what needs to change in your life. While maybe God can disclose those things to us later, we simply know that God’s first invitation to us is to simply fellowship. Because we are seated at a table and dining, it means I won’t leave hungry. God longs to feed us with life and His word.

My prayer today is that we fully know that we don’t have to go far to find God, that He desired us first, before we even know He’s there, that in silencing all other distractions we can hear Him, and we can delight in our relationship with our Lord.

Reflection Questions:

· Have you felt like you’ve been looking unsuccessfully to find God?

· What are the distractions in your life, or the “noise” that make it more difficult to hear His knocking in your life?

· What are the conversations and topics you discuss with friends over dinner? Can you envision enjoying God’s company at your table like you would with friends?

Prayer:

Lord, we thank you that you are ever with us.

We praise you that are a God of relationships.

Your heart towards us shows us your love and desire to be with us,

Silence those distractions so that we might hear you,

Lead us into a place of fellowship with you,

That you might feed us with your Spirit,

We delight in you alone.