My dog is funny. She reminds me of most Christians. She will not come in the house, but she will stand at the doorstep and bark. Even if I prop the screen door open and leave the main door ajar, she will not come in, even if I stand there and call her. Yet she wants me to feed her, love her, and be with her. All of those things I do, as long as I go outside to her.
We Christians can be a funny lot. We say we want God. We say we want to live godly lives and serve the Lord. Yet the very thing that makes us most effective as servants of Christ, spending time in His presence, we rarely do. I do not mean simply going to church, but that most blessed intimate time when it is simply you and the Lord. We need to enter into His presence and sit at His feet and learn about Christ. But what do we do? We stand at the threshold and bark.
We ask God to provide for us, yet our concern is mainly for our well being and prosperity here on this Earth. Matthew 6:33 says that we are to seek FIRST the kingdom of God AND His righteousness, not our prosperity here on Earth.
We ask God to love and forgive us, yet do not turn from the sin and turn to Him. This is repentance. We turn from the sin and turn to God. His love for us is eternal and extends to those who reject Him, but His forgiveness only extends to those who turn from their sin and begin to seek His will rather than their own.
We ask God to be with us, yet when He invites us to come to Him we do not come into His presence. We stay at the doorstep. We do not wish to fully commit to Him. We do not wish to come into His realm and be with Him. We want Him to come into ours and be like us. He has done that already in Christ. Now He invites us to come into His throne room. He invites us to come sit at His table and dine with Him. He asks us to come fellowship with Him. What do we do? We stand at the door and bark.
