Revelation 3:20 “Behold, I stand at the door, and knock: if any man hear my voice, and open the door, I will come in to him, and will sup with him, and he with me.”

Hello readers, thank you for reading my blog. I appreciate every single reader whoever and wherever you are, and it is my sincere hope that what I write will be a blessing to you, or at least add to your life and hopefully your walk with God in some way.

Today I want to consider Jesus Christ’s letter to the Laodicean church in the book of Revelation, and particularly the verse quoted above which is taken from it.

Through the years I’ve heard people say that “we’re in the Laodicean church age”, but I don’t personally think the letters to the seven churches represent different “ages”. I just believe there are different churches, and it’s up to the Christians what type of church they are and want to be.

I believe there are Laodicean churches and Philadelphia churches and Smyrna churches in my country for instance. We just have to figure out what kind of church we are, and what Jesus is telling us. We’ve all got strengths, weaknesses and areas of our life where Jesus is working on us. Every church has issues, but do we have an ear to hear what the Spirit saith unto the churches?

With that said… it does seem that the description and case of the Laodicean church in Revelation does fit the modern church, particularly in the western world, very well.

The Laodicean church is very present in countries, societies, communities and lives of those who have it pretty good. It’s one of those paradoxes of life… because the easier we have it, and the better we are doing materialistically and financially speaking… generally the poorer shape we are in spiritually.

What kind of shape are you in spiritually?

I actually think the Laodicean church describes my Christianity in some ways, and maybe more ways than I would like to see, admit or be willing to confront. I’ve been realizing in recent times that my Christianity isn’t where it should be, needs to be, or I want it to be.

I think we as Christians can be really fooled about what we’ve got. This letter mentions “gold”, but often what we have is something of far inferior value… and in fact worthless. And Christ doesn’t want us to have a worthless faith and build a worthless life… or even church.

The fact is, we all can just be so deceived about our Christianity and walk with God. We can think we are going so well, doing so well, ticking all boxes, got life by the tail… and yet not see our spiritually impoverished state for what it truly is.

One of the key markers of the Laodicean church is that they have “need of nothing” but I think in my country, the Christians here in needing nothing actually have the greatest need maybe even in the world. We may have even greater needs than people in “third world” countries, yet who though they have very little… are very rich in Christ Jesus.

Who do we need? Jesus Christ. See, the Laodicean church has everything, but they’re missing Jesus Christ! If you’re missing him, you’ve actually got nothing! And Jesus is not in their church, he’s not in their lives, and in fact he’s outside… they’re so full they don’t need him and they don’t have him. And we can have such a life, so busy, so many pleasures, so many interests, so much worldliness, so much religion even… that we don’t have room for Jesus, and he’s not in it.

I don’t want to live a Christless life in the name of Christ… which is what they were doing here.

In my part of the world, the church here is so lukewarm just as was described here in Revelation. By lukewarm, it means that many people are not vehemently opposed to Christianity, and there are many Christians in name… and yet the vast majority are living empty truly Christless lives.

I live near enough the main city of my state of South Australia, and the capital city here is known as “the city of churches”. But what kind of churches? Well… lukewarm churches. They have need of nothing, but they don’t know the wretched, miserable, poor, blind, and naked religion they have.

And I include myself in that. So this isn’t me doing an assessment of everyone else like I’m better. I’m not better. But what we have here are churches here hanging rainbow flags, with women ministers, churches long sold out the King James Bible, churches that don’t read, preach, believe or obey the Bible, churches where people are not getting saved nor growing in Christ.

So lots of churches… but so much emptiness. Without Christ, everything is empty. And although we may want Christ to be in and accommodate our lukewarm religion, you’re not going to make him. And we should never want anything in our life that is apart from Christ, or that comes at a cost to our relationship to Christ.

But what about me? Well, I look at my own faith… do I have “gold tried in the fire”? But when I go through a little bit of fire, I turn on God, I stop reading my Bible, prayer ceases… so what kind of Christianity do I really have? See, a bit of fire can tell us a great deal about the quality and substance of what we think we have, and best now than later at judgment, when many Christians will suffer great loss.

But as I read about Jesus being outside, and at the door knocking, I thought of Song of Solomon chapter 5, where beloved is knocking at the door, but his love is too warm in bed, sleepy and doesn’t want to get her feet dirty going to the door to let him in. And when she finally does answer the door… he’s gone.

Let’s not let that be us. It may be a little inconvenient, but let’s answer Christ’s knocking on the door of our hearts. And before fixing everyone else’s problems, how about lets look at our own lives. What will truly help us isn’t finding fault elsewhere, it’s looking at ourselves in the light of scripture, and opening our lives to him and his truth.

And have you ever wondered just how Christ got outside in Laodicea? How did it get to be that? Why would that be? Well, I think there’s a clue in this letter where Jesus says “As many as I love, I rebuke and chasten: be zealous therefore, and repent.” Hmm. Most of us don’t like repenting do we? Most of us don’t like rebuke do we? Maybe we should look at and honestly confront the reasons why we are not letting him into our lives.

There’s a real burst of Christianity these days for a type of love that is devoid of godly rebuke, chastening and repentance. There’s also very little zeal for God too. Like… lukewarm and zeal don’t really go together! The fact is though, the truth and light of Jesus Christ is just not welcome in many of today’s churches, and they put him out and have their religion without him… but it’s vain, dead, empty and worthless.

You know, when the king does come in, that’s when things will change in our lives. Yes he’s king, so he will command authority in our lives, and his authority is probably why he’s outside at the moment in our lives. But if you do want supper with the king, all you need to do is hear and open to his call on your life. I hope we all can do that today, and I hope the king does come in in your life.

Psalm 24:7 “Lift up your heads, O ye gates; and be ye lift up, ye everlasting doors; and the King of glory shall come in.”

Psalm 24:8 “Who is this King of glory? The Lord strong and mighty, the Lord mighty in battle.”

Psalm 24:9 “Lift up your heads, O ye gates; even lift them up, ye everlasting doors; and the King of glory shall come in.”

Psalm 24:10 “Who is this King of glory? The Lord of hosts, he is the King of glory. Selah.”

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