Knock, Knock!

"Knock, knock!"
"Who's there?"
"Jesus."
"Jesus who?"
"Jesus who wants to enter your heart and give you the gift of Himself, the gift that overflows with everlasting life."

Ok, you think the girl has lost it, don't you?  What in the world...??
Well, Revelation 3:20 records these words of Jesus,

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 that person, and they with me.

Notice that Jesus does not beat down the door.  He does not come crashing into our lives uninvited.  This is true at Advent, as well as at other times in our lives.  He knocks, asks, invites, but it is up to each person to open the door.

You are an author, because He is The Author. Because He is what Max Lucado calls "the truest Judge"1, He gives you choices, even though He knows what you will ultimately choose.

Love is not manipulation or coercion.  Love must involve the choice to love, or it is not love.

Now, consider this.  Before you were conceived in your mother's womb, your story began.   Is not that amazing?!

“Before I formed you in the womb I knew you, and before you were born I consecrated you; I appointed you a prophet to the nations.”

Jeremiah 1:5 (ESV)

Wait a minute though....where was Jeremiah's choice in that scenario - - to become a prophet?  Sounds contradictory, doesn't it?  Yet, it's not.  It's just part of The Story.

Can you imagine knowing what will happen, before it happens?  Unless God gives us a prophecy, we can't know a future apart from what is described in the Bible.  I think it would be a terrible burden, to foreknow.

There's this ancestry DNA test/kit you can order.  If you spit into a tube, you can send your spit off and have it analyzed, in order to find out if you have genetic markers for dreadful diseases.  Who wants to know that?!  I am old; so, the end is relatively near for me anyway.  How about the 20 year-old, though, who finds out she has the gene for Alzheimer's?  She "knows" she will get the disease at some point, just not sure when.  Frankly, I don't want to know.

God, however, knows it all.  He wrote it all before He created Time.  As bad as it would be to find out as a 30-year old you will eventually die from Huntington's Disease, can you imagine the burden He felt knowing He would choose to pour Himself into flesh and write the Jesus story, live Jesus' life ... die Jesus' horrific death?

Yet, God knew....and He wrote it anyway.

Like other humans, even the God-Man, Jesus, had choices.  Witness His agony in the Garden of Gethsemane, just before He entered the excruciating events at the end of Passion Week.  

"Father, if it be Thy will, let this cup pass from me....."

And then He chose:

"Yet, not My Will, but Thy will be done."

Every Advent we are confronted by an invitation - - to worship the One who chose to give Himself for us, or to go on our "merry way" through this season, focusing our attentions on lesser matters.

"Knock, knock"!  Jesus wants to speak to us during this season leading up to the commemoration of His birth.  Will we make room?  Will we open the door?  Will we let Him in?