The other night, someone was banging on our door and screaming. I slept through it, but my wife didn’t. The only way I found out about the whole thing was that our next-door neighbor sent out a community text wondering if anyone had gotten startled awake a bit past midnight or if it had been just her. Everyone in the neighborhood started texting back that they hadn’t heard any noise, knocking, or screaming, and offhandedly, I asked my wife when I got home if she had, to which she answered yes.
She thought it was just her imagination since, after a couple
of rounds of knocking, it stopped, but since the next-door neighbor had the
same experience, all evidence points to the fact that someone was, in fact,
knocking on our doors in the middle of the night. The neighbor had even called
the police; they walked her property, but nothing came of it.
Other than highlighting that I’m a very sound sleeper, there
is another purpose in my sharing this story. If the door is sturdy enough, you
can knock until you’re blue in the face, and if someone doesn’t let you in, the
best you’ll manage is to bruise your knuckles. It is incumbent on the
individual behind the locked door to let you in, and they choose who they let
in and who they turn away. Do they know you? Do you know them? Or did you just
pick a random house in a random neighborhood and start banging on the door?
That many today do not know Jesus and are not known by Him
yet fully expect to be let in when they show up and knock transcends hubris. If
there is a word that comes close to what it is, it is perhaps delusion.
Matthew 7:21-23, “Not everyone who says to Me, Lord, Lord,’
shall enter the kingdom of heaven, but he who does the will of My Father in
heaven. Many will say to Me in that day, ‘Lord, Lord, have we not prophesied in
Your name, cast out demons in Your name, and done many wonders in Your name?’
And then I will declare to them, ‘I never knew you; depart from Me, you who
practice lawlessness!’”
If those who prophesied, cast out demons and did wonders in
His name will be turned away, what of those whose claim to fame is fleecing the
sheep and bilking widows out of their pensions for filthy lucre? What of those
who walked according to their lusts and caused divisions within the Body so
they might gain some advantage? What of those whose singular defense for the
life they live is ‘I know that’s what the Bible says, but I feel…’
Do they not know? Do they not believe? Or do they not care
that it is a fearful thing to fall into the hands of the living God? They’re acting
like spoiled rich kids who don’t believe the old man will cut them off no
matter how much shame they bring to the family or how much trouble they get
themselves into until one day he does.
Acts 17:30-31, “Truly, these times of ignorance God overlooked,
but now commands all men everywhere to repent, because He has appointed a day
on which He will judge the world in righteousness by the Man whom He has ordained.
He has given assurance of this to all by raising Him from the dead.”
There’s a difference between repenting and receiving. I know,
a stickler for definitions this one, but words mean things, and if God is
strict about jots and tittles, surely He is strict about whole words. God commands
all men everywhere to repent, not receive. Once they’ve repented, they will receive,
but you can’t receive without repenting.
Every time you sit down for a meal, you have to decide
between something that tastes good and something that is good for you. Yes,
there are those odd ducks out there, my wife being one of them who thinks kale
tastes good, but for the most part, what tastes good is rarely good for you.
The same can be said for our spiritual nourishment because the arbiter between
what tastes good and what’s good for you isn’t always your spiritual man.
If your spiritual man has matured, his palate is trained to
consume what’s good for him and deem it as tasting good. If your spiritual man
is in his infancy, then the memories of empty calories and deep-fried Oreos
still linger, and he associates good taste with those things rather than the
meat of God’s word.
You will never grow your spiritual man by feeding him
spiritual junk. Just as this shell of ours requires protein to grow strong, the
spiritual man requires the Word of God to grow strong. Your flesh will always
gravitate toward what keeps the spiritual man weak and deprived, hence the
reason we are commanded to crucify the flesh.
There will always be people mouthing great swelling words,
trying to flatter you in some way, but what is incumbent upon you as an
individual is to determine whether their words, flattering as they may be, feed
your spiritual man. Are they spiritually nutritive? Is what you hear making
your flesh balloon with pride, or is it humbling it? Are the words spoken to
you pointing the way to Christ and the cross, or are they keeping your focus on
the things of this earth?
If they had their way, all my girls would ever eat is lollipops
and Pringles. Either they’d go into a sugar coma or be so nutrient deprived
they’d look like a mummy baking in the sun if not for their mother and I
insisting they have a piece of chicken and some broccoli once in a while.
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