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
We are going through a phase. Whenever our grandchildren come over, they ring the doorbell and then hide around the corner. We answer the door and (gasp!) no one is there! After about five seconds—for they can bear the suspense no longer—they jump out and yell, “Surprise!” This brief moment sets the tone for several hours to follow, a time of stories and questions and laughter and play. For when we open the door and these two little ones come in, they fill the place.
When Jesus knocks on our soul’s door, we receive Him through faith, by believing in His name.1 He comes in and makes His home in our hearts as we trust in Him,2 and when He does, He fills the place. Then who is this One who comes to live within, and how does He fill us? In Colossians 1:15-20, Paul magnificently describes Jesus: “The Son is the image of the invisible God,”3 the One in whom “all things were created.”4 “He is before all things, and in him all things hold together.”5 Paul summarizes, saying, “For God was pleased to have all his fullness dwell in him.”6 The entire fullness of God lives in Jesus the Son, and it is He who comes into us and fills the place.
This is breathtaking, yet Paul was not finished. “In Christ all the fullness of the Deity lives in bodily form,” he continued, “and in Christ you have been brought to fullness.”7 Stop for a moment and soak this in. It is true in itself; and when we entrust ourselves to Jesus the Son, it becomes true of us, both as a body and as individuals. This Son of God in whom abides the fullness of God lives in us as “our hope of glory,”8 and He brings us to this same fullness. Then we go forward not by our strength, but in His power; not by our understanding, but in His wisdom; not according to our ways, but in His will. For He has come in and filled the place.
In faith, open the door to fullness. He is there, and He will come in.
I pray that out of his glorious riches he may strengthen you with power through his Spirit in your inner being, so that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith. And I pray that you, being rooted and established in love, may have power, together with all the Lord’s holy people, to grasp how wide and long and high and deep is the love of Christ, and to know this love that surpasses knowledge—that you may be filled to the measure of all the fullness of God. —Ephesians 3:16-19.
1 John 1:12
2 Ephesians 3:17
3 Colossians 1:15
4 Colossians 1:16
5 Colossians 1:17
6 Colossians 1:19
7 Colossians 2:9-10
8 Colossians 1:27
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Paul Nordman—Author 