Right with God
“Here I am! I stand at the door and knock. If anyone hears my voice and opens the door, I will come in and eat with that person, and they with me.” Revelation 3:20
My wife and I had the opportunity to visit my grandfather in the hospital the day before he died. My grandfather placed his faith in Christ early in his life and started out strong in his walk with the Lord. After he married my grandmother, they moved from New York to California with plans to open a Christian bookstore.
That venture failed as did a number of other things my grandfather tried. Unfortunately, his response to these failures was to become angry at God and drink alcohol to relieve the pain and disappointment of things not working out as he’d hoped or planned. By the time I was born and got to know him, my grandfather had become a bitter, mean alcoholic who didn’t want to hear anything about trusting God through difficulty and disappointment.
Which brings me back to visiting him in the hospital. While we were there a young pastor from the mega-church my grandmother attended stopped by. He didn’t know my grandfather and asked a question I was sure would receive a profanity-laced response. He asked, “Ed, do you want to get right with God?” To my amazement my grandfather, on his deathbed, said, “Yes” and the pastor led him in a prayer of reconciliation with the Lord.
That’s what the verse above is all about: getting right with God. It was written to believers who had fallen out of fellowship with the Lord and indicates God’s desire and willingness to restore them to faith and fellowship.
If you have a Christian family member or friend who has fallen away from following the Lord, please pray for them and ask God for an opportunity to ask them if they’d like to get right with God. You never know, they might just say, “Yes.”
Has God put anyone on your heart in response to this devotion?
Having begun as a guest speaker in 2005, Dan was appointed Interim Pastor in 2008 and has been serving Maple Root Baptist ever since. As a small group leader and Chaplin for the Connecticut Tigers, Dan has a heart for the lost and the God that saves them.