All or Nothing

I know your deeds, that you are neither cold nor hot. I wish you were either one or the other! So, because you are lukewarm--neither hot nor cold--I am about to spit you out of my mouth. You say, 'I am rich; I have acquired wealth and do not need a thing.' But you do not realize that you are wretched, pitiful, poor, blind and naked. --Revelation 3:15-17

In Tuesday's election, despite the fact that many young people registered to vote, only a small percentage of them appeared at their polling places. Many claim there simply wasn't a good candidate, or that they hadn't made a decision on some of the issues. Ongoing experiences with my peers have continually shown me that young people are notorious for waiting until the last minute to make a decision, only to back out of that decision at the last minute. Granted, there are times when an emergency keeps us from honoring a prior commitment, but what about the times when we just "don't' feel like" doing something we said we would?

How many of us do this type of thing in our commitment (or lack thereof) to God? We promise him our hearts, but then rarely follow through in living out a committed relationship with him. We remain indecisive about whether we truly want to live for God, or whether we desire to continue in our humanity.

God is not amused by our indecisiveness. In fact, it makes him sick. Those who offer only lip-service and a facade of a Christian lifestyle are lukewarm. They are neither fully in submission to Christ, nor fully in submission to the world. They are on the fence, thinking they still have time to just wait around and see if they "feel like" being a Christian or if they "feel like" God's word is true.

God's character is one of absolutes. To God there is no gray area. A relationship with God is all or nothing. You are either completely his, or completely the world's. God requires a decision to commit to living his way, and that is a decision we make ourselves. God cannot force us to love him. Because of the nature of his absolute sovereignty, he cannot tolerate only a partial commitment. If we are lukewarm, he wants nothing to do with us. In fact, he says that he will spew us out of his mouth, thus being separated from him forever.

God, in his love for us, has a lot he wants to share with us and things he wants to teach us, but we will never make ourselves fully available to those things unless we make a decision to belong to him. God loves us completely, but we wants us to be completely his. There are no partial blessings for those who commit to him only when it is convenient or easy. There is no gray in God's black and white world. Our hearts must beat wholly for him, and our lives must distinctively display a reflection of him.

Opening Up

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 him, and he with me. --Revelation 3:20

If our individual experiences have not prepared us to recognize Jesus, then how are we to respond to him when he knocks on the doors of our hearts? Is there some sort of spiritual peep-hole that we can look through to discern if it really is him standing there, knocking and calling to us?

I believe that God prepares us to be able to respond when he knocks at our hearts. He introduces himself to us in a variety of ways so that when he shows up on our doorstep, we recognize him as a friend and need not fear who he is or why he is there. Sometimes a person is not immediately ready to open the door when he knocks. Past hurts may make it difficult to trust him. Opening the door to our hearts means we make ourselves vulnerable. That vulnerability can make us afraid of showing our heart's contents to anyone, let alone God.

When I was young and first became a Christian, it was easy for me to open my heart to God. My heart was not harboring any painful secrets or past hurts. A couple years ago I was hurt beyond belief. The evil things of this world got a hold of me and knocked me down hard. I mistakenly blamed God, thinking that he had caused my pain. I decided to slam the door to my heart. I told God to leave me alone. For a number of months I not only kept the door to my heart very tightly closed, but I dead-bolted it, put a moat around it, and erected a sturdy barbed-wire fence.

But God still loved me and still desired a relationship with me. He wanted me to open that door to him once again. Some of my Christian family and friends set to work, deftly cutting down that barbed wire fence. Eventually, the moat dried up. Every day, God was able to get closer to the door of my heart. Finally, he knocked. Although I was hesitant, I turned the deadbolt and opened the door--at first just a crack, and then completely. Standing there was God, just as he had always been; arms open with love and comfort. God had shown me that although he may allow evil things to happen in this world, he is not the one who causes them.

I have realized that opening the door of my heart to God is not quite the same as opening my heart to anything of this world. When we open our hearts to things of this world, we sometimes unwittingly make ourselves vulnerable to hurt. God can never hurt us and never will. To open our hearts to him is to open ourselves to his eternal, unconditional love. I am glad that I opened the door when he knocked, and I only regret that I didn't do so sooner. I am thankful that even when I thought I wanted him to leave me alone, he continued to pursue me in love. He used my friends and family to show me that he is a God of love. Had it not been for them, I may have not been able to recognize his voice when he stood at the door of my heart, persistently knocking and calling my name.