Another Ninety-Five

T H E S I S # 14

Faithfulness to Christ is faithfulness to the Bible. Disobedience to the Bible is disobedience to Christ.

To get from unfaithfulness to faithfulness is easy; we simply walk through the Repentance Door.

Doors are a marvelous invention. Doors get us from here to there, and when we tire of there the same door gets us back to here. Doors take us to the outside sunshine, and when the weather turns ugly we can return through the same door to our safe and comfy home.

There ought to be a Door Appreciation Day. Most of us just take doors for granted, and that ain’t right. A Door Appreciation Day would remind us how doors add value to our lives. When locked, we feel safe. When open, we get a fresh breeze. Doors keep the cold out and the warm in. A Door Appreciation Day would remind us to appreciate this simple but worthy device.

Consider, what good is a garage without a garage door? And consider, what’s the use of a safe without a safe door? And consider, how could a fridge keep the butter from melting if not for the fridge door? And consider how expensive the electricity bill would be if there was no oven door on the oven. And consider the lack of privacy in your bathroom if your bathroom were minus a bathroom door.

How safe would you feel in a hotel room if there was no door between you and the hallway? How safe would you feel in a door-less car? Or a door-less elevator? Or a door-less airplane?

Got an untidy room? No problem. Just throw everything in the closet and close that beloved closet door. Neighbors having a noisy party? There’s a simple solution – close all the windows and all the doors. Flies getting in? Try closing the screen door.

Yes, someone ought to collect signatures petitioning a national holiday, celebrating Door Appreciation Day. The entire world could celebrate doors together because doors are all over the planet – closing, opening, closing, opening, closing, opening, closing, opening – letting people in, letting people out, letting people in, letting people out, letting people in, letting people out.

Now we don’t all have the same taste when it comes to doors. Some like white doors, and some like gray doors, and some like yellow doors, and some like green doors, and some like blue doors, and some like black doors, and some like pink doors, and some like purple doors, and some like pastel doors. But let’s celebrate diversity – doors of all color – to symbolize our tolerance toward those having different inclinations.

And we can’t forget gates. Gates are doors. Farmers and ranchers like gates a lot. Gates keep the public off their land. Gates are handy for letting the horse out of the corral. A gate gives access to the chicken coop and its fresh eggs.

And our yards all need a gate, just like our houses need doors.

Whenever you open or close a door – a bedroom door or car door or closet door or fridge door or oven door or garage door or outside door or screen door or grocery-store door or bank door or church door – think of the Repentance Door, the door that takes us from unfaithfulness to Christ to faithfulness to Christ.

It must be said the Repentance Door is sometimes a hard door to walk through. Walking through that door calls for humility, not a smidge of pride permitted. Admitting we were disloyal to our Lord Jesus Christ, “who Himself bore our sins in His own body on the tree”, is hard. And repentance brings unknowns into our predictable lives.

And yet the Repentance Door must be walked through if we are to get from here to there, there being a better life.

The percentage of evangelicals (etcetera) who would not benefit from repentance is zero. Only One was entirely faithful. The rest of us are, at best, wannabes.

Some time after passing through a Repentance Door we will be confronted with another Repentance Door. And eventually another and another. You see, the gentle and doting Holy Spirit is leading us from “glory to glory”. To bring us closer to where the Lord Jesus wants us to be necessitates occasional repentance, a turning from life as is to one of deeper commitment and fuller trust.

Repentance is the answer to most problems. Repentance takes us “from glory to glory”. A willingness to repent always results in an improved life. And a wealthier eternity.