He's knockin'
On Friday night when I went for my church cell group meeting, during the singing, one of the members spoke out that well-known Revelation 3:20 verse that goes, "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."
I was just listening to her, not really thinking much of it, when our leader asked, "Does this apply to anybody? Have any one of you been feeling like God is knocking at the door, asking you to let Him in?"
Uhhh... yup, that would be me. So I put my hand up, and the others prayed for me.
In church week before last, the pastor had been talking about being a disciple of God and made reference to Paul's analogy of a disciple being an athlete-in-training. When he mentioned that, all of a sudden it flashed into my head how athletes have to make lots of sacrifices but they don't think of those things as a loss because they know this is what they have to do in order to succeed. You make a choice to give up certain things coz you know they'd just get in the way.
But when it comes to me, I am not willing to make sacrifices. I don't even want to have a regimented (organised?) life like what athletes put themselves through, training day in & day out. Just the idea of doing everything by the clock is enough to make me shudder! So I'm afraid I will never have the sort of discipline required -- I can't even manage to read my Bible and spend time praying every day! (Confession: actually, I haven't done that for months...)
I feel like if I really loved God, I wouldn't care what I would have to give up, it wouldn't be a loss to me... but I'm like, I want my comfortable life! I don't want to having to keep pushing myself all the time to do the right thing and make the right choices. I don't want to have to give up stuff that I want. I want to make my own decisions. My will and not God's will.
Right now I'm wrestling with two different issues in my life. One threatens to take me out of my comfort zone and move me into an area I know nothing about & have no experience in. The other requires me to give up something that is hindering my relationship with God and distracting me from focusing fully on the things I know I need to do. That second one sure sounds like a no-brainer... but God and I have been having a stand-off over it for quite a long time now. The showdown is coming, I can feel it. He's been knocking on my door all the while, but He's knocking even harder now.
I feel like God and I, we're standing at opposite corners of the room and eyeing each other warily (or at least, I'M eyeing HIM warily). I'm not talking to Him much and He's not talking to me much (or maybe I just don't want to hear, so I'm not hearing it). Every once in a while I have this struggle to surrender and I let myself be pushed to the brink before giving in to God... I'm not exactly sure what I'm afraid of but I think one of it is that He might ask too much of me. Despite all I know about God, somehow I still fear that He will actually deprive me and say 'no' to everything I want/like/enjoy and take it away if I let Him. Isn't this dumb?