Dear People Who Keep Company With God,
Henry Blackaby wrote a great book on knowing and doing the will of God, titled Experiencing God. One of the main premises in the book is that God is always at work around us. Jesus never asked the Father what His will was rather, He always looked for what the Father was doing and joined Him (John 5:19-20). This year let’s seek to recognize and understand what the Father is doing and join Him. Right now I see Him standing in three open doorways.
The first doorway is the door of intimacy. Song of Solomon 5:2 speaks of this door: “I sleep, but my heart is awake; it is the voice of my beloved! He knocks, saying, ‘Open for me, my sister, my love, my dove, my perfect one.’”
This reveals the differing levels of intimacy the Lord desires to have with us – as a sister, lover, dove and a perfect one. Intimacy means ‘in-to-me-see,’ it’s a blending of our heart with another’s, so we can “see into” who they really are, and they can “see into” us (Gal. 4:9). As we open the door of our hearts to Him we will discover the door of His heart is already open to us.
The second doorway is the door of hope. Hosea 2:14-15 speaks of this door: “Behold I will allure her, I will bring her into the wilderness, and speak comfort to her. I will give her vineyards from there, the Valley of Achor as a door of hope; she shall sing there, as in the days of her youth, as in the day when she came up from the land of Egypt.”
We have witnessed this firsthand in Angel Stewart’s life. About two weeks after her husband Matt was tragically killed, Angel read Romans 15:4 in the Amplified Bible.
“For whatever was thus written in former days was written for our instruction, that by [our steadfast and patient] endurance and the encouragement [drawn] from the scriptures we might hold fast to and cherish hope.”
Here is Angel’s account of what happened when she read this.
“All I know is that the Lord lit my lamp that day when I read those words. I was in complete darkness. But when the Lord lit my lamp, the darkness was illuminated. And I knew he was in that place with me. Hope became a living flame, and He being the God of Hope, keeps filling me with confident expectation of His goodness towards us, of His wonderful promises that we can rest on as the anchor of the soul.
I will cherish hope – I will hope until the end, I will trust confidently, I will make Him my refuge, my anchor. I will look to Him as my highest good. I will look to Him for all things present and future. He will be my stay.”
“May the God of your hope (it is personal), so fill you with all joy and peace in believing (through the experience of your faith) that by the power of the Holy Spirit you may abound and be overflowing (bubbling over) with hope.” Romans 15:13.
We all have personal accounts of “our hope”, it is our precious treasure.”
If anyone has gone through the door of hope it is Angel. She is an encouragement and example for all of us to follow.
The third doorway is the door of heaven. John speaks of this door in Revelation 4:1: “After these things I looked, and behold, a door standing open in heaven.”
No doubt the Lord opened heaven when Christ died on the cross for all men for all eternity. We have access to the living presence of God, His world and His perspective all the time (John 1:51). We can and should enjoy these benefits He has given us everyday (Psalm 68:19). It is our heritage to go on to dreams, visions and revelations of the Lord (2 Cor. 12:1). The Father desires that we would not only access this door for ourselves, but help others discover the open heaven and experience the Father’s loving presence and voice.
Let’s make it our aim to go through these open doors this year.
Many Blessings, BW