Thursday, July 5, 2012

Answer Your Door


Today, I was listening to my Christian music playlist on Spotify when this song came on. I've heard it many times before and was familiar enough to sing along. Maybe a little too loudly. (Let's just say I don't foresee any singing careers in my future...) As I was mindlessly crashing through the chorus, I actually tuned in to the words coming out of my mouth. There was a piece that, as I sang it, stood out to me like never before: "He's never giving up; it's love." I had listened to this song so many times, but I had never really noticed that line before, and I began to think about how true that really is.

There is that saying that God is always knocking at your door, but it is up to you to answer it. Well, this phrase came to mind and I started to actually think about it. A lot of times when I hear phrases, I receive them somewhat passively. I hear them and I understand them, but only to an extent. I understand the basic concept, but rarely do I actually dig beneath the surface and analyze what it actually means. This is sort of what was always the case with this phrase about God knocking... that is, until today when I actually stopped to think about it.

If you were raised Christian like myself, maybe you remember growing up and learning about God. It was fun and exciting. You got to read stories about a guy bringing lots and lots of animals onto a big boat that he built. You watched fun little animated movies with a good moral and lots of goofy jokes like Veggie Tales. Every once in a while you would pop a tape in the cassette player (remember when those actually existed?!) and dance around to songs about God and how much he loves you "little ones." I loved when my mom and my dad would sing me songs about Jesus and Noah. When I was little, faith was so easy! Of COURSE God created the world, because who else could have done it? God is everywhere, because He just IS. Noah definitely had room for both the elephants and the giraffes... they both are still here! This was God knocking at the door the first time. And with the child-like enthusiasm and readiness to love and accept, the door can be opened wide and God so easily ushered in.

Then life got a little more complicated. Maybe it started with singing in church. Maybe when all of your peers decided it was "uncool" to sing those dumb songs, you found yourself self-concious to sing, or maybe stopped singing altogether. Maybe as you start to grow up a little bit, you realize that not every household is like your own. Your non-Christian friends don't act like you, and you want to fit in, so you compromise a bit. You had let God into your house, but maybe you started to doubt that you wanted Him there. Maybe you were slowly edging Him out.

It only gets more difficult as you get older. Peer pressure, desire for money and material possessions, being surrounded by the mixed messages of society and the media, the feeling of heartbreak, conflict with a doctrine of the Church, pain and loss, carnal desires, schoolwork, jobs, friends, you name it. So many things enter your life to complicate and confuse your thoughts, and it becomes impossible to have the faith you once had as a little child. The more you encounter, the more you doubt whether or not you really want God in your life. If you don't want Him there, He's not going to force Himself upon you. You can push Him out, and ignore his calls, but there's one thing you can't make Him do: give up.

Just like Francesca Battistelli says, He's never giving up. Why? It's love. It's as simple as that. No matter how many times you push Him out, He's always going to keep knocking at your door, waiting for you to let Him back in. He loves you that much. No matter how much you think you've messed up, no matter how much you sin or reject Him, He's never giving up. Maybe you have never encountered God. Maybe you weren't raised Christian and have never been Christian. Don't worry, this still applies to you. God is staked out 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, not even resting on Sundays, just knocking away at your door. If you think you've never heard it, maybe it is because the noisiness of life is droning it out. Maybe it's because you don't want to hear it and you're blocking it out. Maybe you just don't know what to listen for. It's okay. It's not too late. He's never giving up. He's been at your door since the day you were born, and He's going to be there until the day you die. No matter how many times you tell Him to go away, He won't listen. He will still be there. If that's not love, I don't know what is.



2 comments:

  1. you are right about it getting harder as you get older...but can you really make God leave? and if you dont want Him there, wont he always be there anyways?

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  2. Thank you for bringing this up, I went back and re-read it and realized that it was worded rather poorly. There is no way to make God leave your life, because God is in every single person you meet. You made a really good point, He is literally always there, it's just a matter of our acceptance and perception.

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