Outside the Gate
Have you seen that person standing outside the fence, looking in, and wondering how to gain access to the other side?
Sometimes, just the fact that they cannot gain entry is enough to make them desire it more than anything else in the world. They may not even know what awaits them on the other side, but they lose rationale just seeking to get that which they don’t possess.
When I was a child there were factors outside my control that hindered me from my own quest to get in. Satan sold me a lie, and I was too young to know the difference. Once you buy the lie, it can be challenging to trade it for truth, because it becomes your truth. You start to believe you are unworthy, unloveable, unforgivable, and that God is angry, unloving, unjust, unforgiving and intolerant of your failure.
We all want to belong, don’t we? When I was younger, I recall my father saying, “No man is an island.”
In Eccliastes Solomon speaks of the tears of the oppressed… how they had no one to comfort them.
In chapter 4 he says 2 are better than one… they keep each other warm, they protect each other, and if one falls, the other picks him up.
We all need a friend to partner with us in life. Someone who lifts us up when we are feeling down… someone to laugh with, and someone to cry with.
Is there someone in your life looking at the fence, waiting for an invitation to join? Open the gate… let them in. Lift them up, and offer protection. Tell them about the one who will never leave them or forsake them, the one who died so that they could have life. Tell them about what a loving God you serve… how he is just waiting for them to invite Him in; that the fence was conquered by Jesus, so we could come into relationship with him and a merciful God who desires a relationship with us. And after you have done that, love them.
