Psalm 24:7-8 "Lift up your heads, O gates! And be lifted up, O ancient doors! That the King of glory may come in. Who is the King of Glory? The Lord, strong and mighty, the Lord, mighty in battle!” Today's episode invites us to invite the Lord into our lives. It shows us that the Lord is calling us to invite Him in. It shows us that we don't have to change before we invite Him in. He is not expecting us to change into Saints instantly. He is gentle and will meet us right where we are. Music:"Adding the Sun" Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com) Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 4.0 License http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
Invite God Into Your Heart
Psalm 24:7-8 "Lift up your heads, O gates! And be lifted up, O ancient doors! That the King of glory may come in. Who is the King of Glory? The Lord, strong and mighty, the Lord, mighty in battle!”
Psalm 24 was given at Prayer Group last night. Then, afterward, someone gets a word or prophecy that goes along with it. The word of prophecy is, “The Lord was just saying, yes, He is the King of Glory, and He deserves all the praise, all the honor, adoration, all the worship, all the fanfare that we would give in worship. But that He desires something even a little more than that. And what He desires is that He wants each of us to invite Him to be the King that sits on the throne of our hearts.” Psalm 24 came at the beginning of the meeting, and this Word came a bit later. I honestly didn’t put the two together.
One of our other members confirmed this Word and said she didn't quite get those exact words, but she had a real feeling about that individual invitation to the Lord into our hearts. If the Lord takes the time to tell us the same message through three different people, we should probably pay attention to that message. The message the Lord wants us to hear is that we need to open the doors of our hearts and invite Him in. The Lord is a gentleman who will not come unless you invite him.
In my Encounter Ministries Class, we looked at this method of evangelization called Jesus at the Door. There is a picture of Jesus at the door, and yet there is only a door knob on the inside of the door. Jesus can not come through the door unless you open it. There is a heart around the picture. When we show it to people, we tell them that Jesus is knocking on the door to their hearts. We ask if they want to invite Jesus in. That image is really powerful, and it is also very anointed. Many people have accepted Jesus into their lives just by looking at this picture and answering the few other questions that are asked with the picture.
One thing we ask them to do after they see the picture is to imagine they have a backpack on their back. Now we tell them to imagine the backpack is filled with their sins. Would it be heavy? Most of us can say yes to that question. Then we asked them to imagine they owed the bank $100,000. What would happen if we gave them a check for $100,000 and they took it to the bank and deposited it? Their debt would be gone, right? This is what Jesus did with our backpack full of sins. He paid the price. He wrote a check out for our sins and signed it with His blood. Our sins have been forgiven, and we are no longer in debt.
Isn’t that an incredible way to explain how our sins are forgiven? Jesus paid our debt for us. He took our sins to the cross with Him. So, why are we so afraid to come to Jesus and invite Him into our hearts? We were talking about this yesterday at prayer group, and we said that sometimes we don’t want to invite Jesus into our hearts because we know that Jesus will call us to live our lives differently, and we may not be ready to do so.
If this is you, or if you know someone who might be struggling with this, you can take heart and remember St. Augustine of Hippa. He was an amazing Saint. He was also infamously known for saying, “Lord, give me chastity and continence, but not yet!” This infamous prayer of the young Augustine of Hippo (354-430) reflects the inner conflict of any soul who recognizes the virtuous thing to do yet fears the demanding struggle against human urges and passions.
The first step is to invite the Lord into our hearts. He will take care of the rest. God is gentle with us, and He will not instantly expect a 180-degree change from you. Or, if He does, He will give you the grace and the power to do it. Look at Saul from the Bible. One day he was headed to a town to round up any Christians and put them in jail. Then he encounters Jesus, is blind for a few days, and completely transforms. He is a completely different person. His name was even changed. I don’t think this is the way that it works for most of us, though.
Most of us struggle with the temptations of this world. We know what we should do, yet we don’t. God understands this. He knows that we get caught up in the wrong things and make the wrong choice more than the right one. He understands this, yet He calls us to invite Him into this struggle. He is calling us to invite Him into our hearts.
Last week for mentoring, I was studying what scripture says regarding coming to the Lord as we are and not feeling that we need to change before we can come to God. This is what I talked about yesterday in the devotional as well. One scripture verse I found goes well with this idea that we want to follow Jesus, but we don’t want to stop doing everything we want. Jeremiah 13:23 says, “Can the Ethiopian change his skin or the leopard his spots? Then also you can do good who are accustomed to do evil.” What the Lord revealed to me when I heard this verse is, why would we think we could change without Him? In other words, we think we will wait until we want to give up our current lifestyle until we invite God in, and God is saying, you will need my help to give up that lifestyle. You will need my help to stop drinking. You will need my help to stop sleeping around. You will need my help to be a better mom or dad. Whatever it is you think you need to change before you invite God in, He is saying, it will go quicker if you invite me in first. You don’t need to change on your own. I can help you. I can give you the strength you need. I can be there for you.
The verse above says, "Lift up your heads, O gates! And be lifted up, O ancient doors! That the King of glory may come in. Who is the King of Glory? The Lord, strong and mighty, the Lord, mighty in battle!” The Lord is calling us to open the gates, the ancient doors we have closed in our hearts, and invite the King of Glory in. Who is this king of glory? He is the Lord. He is strong and mighty. He is mighty in Battle. God can help you fight your battles. He is not expecting you to invite Him into your life, and you instantly become a Saint who never does anything wrong. God knows us. He knows us better than we know ourselves. He isn’t expecting more from us than we can give Him. We are the ones who put crazy expectations on ourselves, not God. He wants us to come as we are and invite Him into the mess that is our life. Can we invite Him in today?
Dear Heavenly Father, I ask you to bless each one of us listening to this today. Lord, I know so many people who are afraid to invite you in. So many who know you and yet haven’t invited you into their hearts and lives. Lord, please help them trust you. Please give them an encounter with you that changes their lives as you did for Saul. Lord, so many of us think we have invited you in; we walk with you every day, and yet we still have secret places that we haven’t invited you into. Help us to invite you in Lord. Help us to see those places and those situations that we haven’t invited you into, and then give us the courage to invite you into them. We love you, Lord, and we ask all of this in accordance with your will and in Jesus’s holy name; amen!
Thank you so much for joining me on this journey to walk boldly with Jesus. If this podcast has blessed your life in some way, would you consider making a donation? There is a link below in the show notes, or you can also go to my website, Walkboldlywithjesus.com. I appreciate you and your faithfulness in listening to this podcast. I look forward to seeing you tomorrow. Remember, Jesus loves you just as you are, and so do I! Have a blessed day!
Today’s Word from the Lord was received in January 2024 by a member of my Catholic Charismatic Prayer Group. If you have any questions about the prayer group or about these words please email CatholicCharismaticPrayerGroup@gmail.com. Today’s Word from the Lord is “I ask you, bring them (your roots of brokenness) to me, so that my faith in you will grow, and people will see, not only hear, but see. You have more to do for me, but I want you whole. Come, ask, and we will grow closer and closer. I need my only strong part of my army. You are the captains that will show up. Give me more of you, and allow me to heal more of you.”