Beyond Locked Doors

I just spent a few days teaching at Youth With a Mission Charlotte. If you ever need to get your batteries recharged, I highly recommend spending some time with YWAMers. How amazing to share in worship and intercession with a bunch of fired up teens and twenty somethings. There is something so anointed about the combination of the energy of youth and the wisdom of age. (It is a bit daunting to have people hanging on your every word though.) So thanks, YWAM Charlotte for showing me Jesus and letting me hang with you!

On our first morning together we looked at John 20. Jesus appears behind a locked door. I am so painfully aware of the things in me that are on lock-down because of fear or lethargy or …(fill in the blank). I am grateful that locked doors do not keep Jesus from coming to us and speaking to us our own particular “Peace be with you.”

“’As the Father has sent me, so I am sending you’. And with that he breathed on them and said. ‘Receive the Holy Spirit.’” With this great commission Jesus exits. Here’s the thing though, the door is still locked from the inside.

So, yes, I am very grateful that Jesus comes behind my locked doors of fear and pain and pride. I am grateful for the peace that always follows in His wake. But His commission and His provision still remain, and I must partner with the Holy Spirit freshly breathed over me and open the door from the inside. I am sent and so are you. According to Paul, I have been given everything I need “pertaining to life and godliness” and so have you.

To borrow a phrase from an old song, “Open up the doors and let the music play; let the streets resound with singing.” Come on, sent one. Receive the Holy Spirit freshly breathed for today’s joys and challenges and unlock that door. My mom said, “Get outside in God’s green sunshine.” (She had her sunglasses on at the time.) So here I go off to sunny Africa! (My mom would be freaking out if she weren’t a part of the great cloud of witnesses in heaven cheering us on.)

PEACE BE WITH YOU!