"Knock and it shall be opened unto you.”
The text above is a promise that Jesus gave about prayer. If we will persist in prayer , the Lord will open up to us. I had a thought this morning that the word “open” is an important word in the Christian faith. The Lord wants to open up things for us and He wants us to open up to Him and to His word. It is about the latter that I want to write today. As the Lord opens up to us, we need to be open to what He wants in our lives. Following are my thoughts on this subject: We need to open our hearts to the Lord and to His word. Jesus speaks to our hearts through the Holy Spirit. This is one of the reasons that I am writing on this subject today, because the thought about being open caught my imagination and I knew that I had to write about it. I’m as sure about that as I am about anything in my life. There is a hymn that says: “Speak to my heart, O speak to my heart, Speak to my heart Lord Jesus…” We need to open our hearts to what the Lord wants of us. Open up your heart today, for the Lord wants to speak to your heart. We need to open our ears to hear what people are saying to us. Jesus saved us to be His ambassadors on this earth, and that includes hearing what people say to us. Some of our greatest opportunities to minister to people come from what they say to us. We need to make our ears sensitive to cries for help. Unfortunately, there have been times when I have walked away from a conversation, and realized that my ears had not been open to an opportunity for ministry. We need to open our eyes to see the needs of people around us. Of course, we need to keep our eyes open to opportunities to tell others about Jesus. I believe that the Lord prepares people’s hearts for us to talk to them about the Savior, and we need to be aware of the opportunity. Here is Jesus' advice to His disciples: “Lift up your eyes and look on the fields, for they are white already to harvest.” (John 4:35b) Jesus gave this command after His encounter with the sinful woman at the well of Siloam. Perhaps, Jesus was pointing to that encounter as an example for His disciples. Our own fields are “white already to harvest.” The county in which I live is 80% unreached for Christ. And this is in the middle of the so-called “Bible Belt.” We need to open our eyes to the opportunities all around us for witness and ministry. We need to open our lips and speak a word for the Lord whenever we have an opportunity. In David’s prayer of repentance in Psalm 51:15, he saw the need for opening his lips: “O Lord, open thou my lips; and my mouth shall show thy praise.” We need to be careful when we talk, that what we say is “showing forth God’s praise.” We need to talk to people about the Lord, and we also need to be careful what we say when we talk to people under any circumstances. We need to pray daily that God will open our lips that we may “share gladly His warm news everywhere….” We need to open our hands in order to serve the Lord. We need to open our hands to give to the work of the Lord through our churches. We need to open our hands to serve other people who need a helping hand of some sort from us. Jesus set the example for His disciples in John 13 when He washed His disciple’s feet. There are many other areas of our lives that we need to open up the Lord, but opening up to these that I have shared should keep us busy “opening up” for a while. Open up your life to the Lord and to the people around you. Bro. Joe
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AuthorDr. Joe Beauchamp is the author of this blog and website. Categories
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September 2021
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