Stand At The Door And Knock

I have been reminded this week of a story already on my website from several years ago that I thought would be worth reposting. It ties into the next chapter in a bible study this week titled "Joy".

2012

Behold, I stand at the door, and knock: if any man hear my voice, and open the door, I will come in to him, and will sup with him, and he with me. (Revelations 3:20).

Walk In The Spirit

What an amazing spirit-filled week we just had as a family. God preparing the way for our whole family to come together and study His Word, and then to be reminded of a humble prayer, and a door that we also heard about on Sunday. It reminded me of this prayer in the sermon about the statistics of what happens when a man is the first to turn to God in his household, I thought I would share a story from our lives.

Struggling Faith

Shortly after asking God to forgive me of my sins, there were several struggles that challenged my faith. God was healing things in my life even though I couldn’t see it at the time. I had started to think about where is the joy that God promises, and all kinds of thoughts came to me on why I was having these struggles. It seemed as my thoughts grew, my faith decreased, and that is when I started hearing Rev 3:20. I started quoting this verse to a fellow believer several times. Then one Sunday, he came down to our church, and just by coincidence the sermon preached went into Rev 3:20.

I had been saying, our church never really preaches in Revelation. This had me wondering where is this verse coming from. I had purposefully stayed away from Revelation myself. I just wanted to focus on my Christian walk; learning to follow God. Prophecies I felt would side-track me with the many voices in the world today. I couldn't quite figure out why I kept hearing this verse though.

What Did Early Christians Look Like?

I was struggling in faith, wondering why was everything going wrong after being saved. I started thinking about what did early Christians look like, were they all happy and smiling all the time, or were they more sober, with the difficulties they had? We started going into VBS that week, and each day these thoughts just kept growing. I had reached a point , where every thought was about getting this joy, and why didn’t I have it? Did I not do something right, was God judging me? Like Gideon, I needed the sign of dew on the fleece; right now in this spot. We had just sent one of our children off on the church’s mission trip that weekend. The following day after church we started doing our convert class study in our living room. We had been studying for a couple hours, when I got up to take a break and was heading back to my recliner in the living room. I started quoting out loud Rev 3:20. "Behold I stand at the door and knock...". The very moment I was done quoting it and sat down in my recliner I noticed a smudge on our patio door. A very distinct smudge that wasn't there before; I would have noticed it as it was in my direct line of sight where I had been sitting. I started thinking maybe I was just seeing things. I asked everyone what they saw; they all saw the same thing.

A Humble Prayer

The kids were beginning to get a little scared at what they saw. I started thinking about Rev 3:20 again and went up to the patio door and stared at the smudge. I then opened the door and said a humble prayer to God, to come into my house and save my whole family. After a while, I thought I should take a picture of this smudge. I tried a couple of times with the camera, but the battery died every time, so I thought I hadn’t got the picture. This was before we had cell phones. Hard to imagine back when we had cameras only. Anyway, about a week went by, and one of our kids had just returned from the mission trip. We started to share what we had seen the week before. Not much more was being said when a minister called and said something happened on the mission trip and encouraged us to talk about it. At that time we started talking about seeing something on the mission trip. It was similar to what we had seen. So a thought came, maybe the picture we had tried to take, was saved on the camera somehow. We had charged it through the week and set it aside until now. This time when we checked the camera we found it actually did save the picture of the "smudge" we seen on our patio door. When you would look at the smudge up close the right side of it would fill in just like the left for a whole image of what to us looked like a face. Tried to reason, it's just fingerprints on the glass, light reflection, etc. No one grabs the door handle that high. It was at the height of a man. I leave it up to the reader to think what it is. I am not saying one way or another, it just seems very coincidental to me. Only I knew, how much I had been thinking about what did Christians look like. We had also just driven out to Indiana to pick up a puppy for the kids. A couple hour drive to a remote farm, and back. The whole time I had been meditating on where this "Joy" is, and what early Christians would have gone through. I was stuck on what their expressions would have been like on their faces. I began to wonder if I was just seeing what I wanted to; a sober face. However, everyone else saw the same thing. This picture doesn't really do justice to the clarity of it in person, but I thought I would share it with you.

He Is Mighty to Save

To wrap up the story, 2 years later two of our other kids were on another mission trip to Jamaica. I got this call from one of them saying she got saved. I started praising God that night, and was reminded of a prayer above that I had 2 years ago; almost to the same day when I asked God to save my whole family. What an amazing coincidence. I thought about the Joy back then, and the Joy now. What God has done in our lives, and was just so thankful. Then the next day, the other daughter calls and says she got saved. We were just overwhelmed.

Thank you, God, for all the blessings in my life. Thank you for reminding me of the JOY, it can be fleeting, but it always returns.