Point of Entry

Have you ever traveled past a large gated property?  Long before you see the dwelling, you can begin to tell the property’s condition by looking at the gate. The gate serves as the point of entry in the boundary that has been laid around the property.   Some gates are shiny and new; others are worn and faded but still functioning.  If the gate is intact, chances are the property is intact.  It’s not an absolute guarantee; however, when a property’s gate is latched and functioning, generally the dwelling and property are in working order as well.  The gate is the first thing you encounter before coming to someone’s home.  It is serves as a measure of protection but also a form of welcome.  It can be a warm welcome or a cold one.  The gate is the place you start any relationship you are going to have with this property.

In Nehemiah 3, we come to the devastated city of Jerusalem.  Jerusalem was the center of the Israelites’ spiritual lives.  Its heartbeat was in the Temple where God met with his people.   The wall around Jerusalem had been destroyed by war and neglect.  The gates no longer functioned to protect or welcome anyone to the city.  They were in disrepair.   As the Israelites began to rebuild the wall, they first had to repair and install the gates.

The gates are important to the city for a number of reasons.  First, they are a point of entry.  They prepare you for what you will encounter as you enter.  Will you find strength and health as you enter the city?  Or will there be apathy and disrepair?  The gate is also the gathering place for community.  The judges sat at the city gate to hear cases and decide on critical issues for the people.  The gates provide safety.  When the gates are intact and shut; no unwanted outsiders can enter the city.  The inhabitants enjoy security and peace.

Most of us do not own large gated properties.  We do however inhabit large spiritual properties.  These are guarded by the boundaries we set in our minds.  Our mind serves as a gate to protect our spirit and body.  What we allow in our thinking directly affects our spiritual and physical lives.  Many of us have walls and gates in disrepair.  Our boundaries are not in working order due to trauma, abuse, neglect, or poor choices.  We’ve been battered by the enemy in some shape or form and we’ve not returned to repair our boundaries.  The enemy seeks entrance to disrupt and harass us.  We no longer have judges sitting at our gates discerning and making wise decisions on our behalf.   We no longer welcome others into our lives.  We live in fear and insecurity.  Who can feel secure when the enemy roams around wreaking havoc in our lives?

We must rebuild the gates.  We must yield our minds to the Spirit of Christ and allow him to come and repair the damage.  Yielding to Christ is a choice we make.  It can start as simply as praying, “Christ, I yield my spirit to you.  Please heal my mind and restore my spirit and body to you.”  He always answers this prayer.  You can be assured of that.  It is his desire that the gates to our spiritual lives are in working order to welcome Him and to protect us from the enemy.  Once we are yielded to His presence, we maintain the working order of our gates by choosing carefully what we allow in.  “We destroy arguments and every lofty opinion raised against the knowledge of God and take every thought captive to obey Christ…” (2 Corinthians 10:5). Heading to church once a week to refuel is a great start but in reality; maintaining a strong, healthy mind and spirit takes daily, hourly, sometimes minute by minute maintenance. It requires regular renewal through the scriptures.  We open our gates to his presence and his Spirit but we must learn to carefully discern and shut everything else out.  While the work is done by his Spirit; we must make the choices throughout the day to welcome his love and to shut out all the doubts, irritations, lies, and confusion that the enemy wants to sneak in.  We rebuild and maintain the gates to our spiritual property each day by submitting to God’s loving presence and yielding our hearts completely to Him.

Mind Games

As I woke up this morning; my mind went immediately to several concerns that I have been struggling with lately.  Instinctively, I went right back to the memo pad in the corner of my brain and began rehearsing the pro’s and cons of one of several decisions with which we are wrestling.  I was barely awake and a knot in my stomach began to grow.  As I shook off the sleep and sat with Chris to read and pray, I recognized the old pathway in my subconscious in stark contrast to the new roads God has been plowing in my consciousness.  I stopped my thinking and offered it all to Him.

All three of our readings today address these new roads that God is building both in our minds and in our lives.  Its a new infrastructure; a new civilization that lives by a different set of rules than the one we’ve been physically born into.  Titus 3: 4-7 tells us:

⁴ But then the kindness and love of God our Savior was made known. ⁵ He saved us because of his mercy, not because of any good things we did. He saved us through the washing that made us new people. He saved us by making us new through the Holy Spirit. ⁶ God poured out to us that Holy Spirit fully through Jesus Christ our Savior. ⁷ We were made right with God by his grace. God saved us so that we could be his children and look forward to receiving life that never ends.

There is an enemy that loves to play games in our mind.  The truth is that, because of what God has accomplished, the games are over and we win.  We inherit the Kingdom of God.  Yet we choose almost instinctively to return to the game board and participate in these mind games.  We play by the world’s rules instead of God’s.  We forget who we really are.

Isaiah teaches  us in chapter 2 that God wins.  God’s turn is coming.  In fact, He’s already begun our restoration when Christ conquered death.  He gave us His Spirit to equip and enable us to walk in his ways until His Kingdom is fully restored.  We are in process.  Yet the world beckons.  Even in my slumber, my unyielded thoughts run the track the world has built.  The opposition cheers me to keep running on this narrow, tiny, indoor track instead of out in the fields and the wide open mercy and grace of the Kingdom.   I can choose to run in circles or I can run along the mountain tops overlooking the vastness of the sea of God’s love for me.

The world beckons us from the ways of God.  We pick up little idols that we see as prizes.  These are ways of thinking, ideas that form that gradually lead us down a path completely outside of God’s kingdom.  I heard yesterday how cows do this.  They begin nibbling on the edge of the fence and gradually work their way down to a broken place in the fence where they leave the safety of their owner’s field.  I pick up ideas of success and begin nibbling at how the world teaches me to accomplish this.  I test out comforts that steer me away from the presence of God.  I allow myself to walk under offense and build a wall of judgement around my heart to protect it.  Before I know it, I’ve collected quite a few idols along the way.  They are no more than ideas and ways of living  that I think I need and may honestly believe I can hold onto in the living presence of the King of Kings.  Isaiah warns us clearly to turn away from the way man thinks.  Everything that is of this world will ultimately disappear.  If we’ve bathed and clothed ourselves in the world’s ways we will be  naked and stink when one day we face God.

Ezra calls us to follow God at all costs.  Man will step in the way; even authorities will seek to stop us.  This is par for the course for living in this world.  Whatever God calls you to do, man will try to thwart you.

When “we were made right with God by his grace,” (Titus 3:7), we received the mind of Christ.  We don’t have to play games anymore.  God wins.