Metaphors and Doggedness (UPDATED)

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If you haven't done so already, read this first so you'll know what I'm talking about.

People tell me that I’m smart, but, often, I feel like a blithering idiot especially when it comes to the things of God. The good thing, however, is that, with some topics, I have the intellectual habits of a dog with a bone; I’ll chew that bone down to the marrow.

Sometimes, I try to talk with others when I’m dissecting a topic, but with most, I can sense their impatience. This isn't a criticism, but an acknowledgement of how implacable I can be when I’m trying to figure something out. Some say I like to argue, and that’s true. How else are we able to figure things out, especially when we discern that some links in a given chain are missing?

Then there’s God who always listens and who will, more often than not, reward us with yummy marrow, especially with things He wants us to see.

Very often, during prayer, I envision things that God wants me to see as a physical door that I have closed and that needs opening. Sometimes when I open that door, it’s an issue that I’ve hidden from myself -- usually a character trait I thought was harmless or natural, but one that He finds unpleasing and, therefore, cannot use. Using a separate metaphor, He points to weed in my soul that I’ve been watering or ignoring. When I see it, I pull it up out of the soil in which it was planted, examine its origin, and then discard the weed and its origin. And salt the dirt.

Other times, it’s when I’m afraid, sad or angry and He will remind of something that dispels the fear, comforts my sadness, or extinguishes the anger. This door/weed stuff was part of my prayer life well before I remembered God’s early rescue operation.

And very, very rarely, He can get me to view things from a new perspective.

Only last night did I realize that His rescue operation was a two-pronged vision! The vision was of one of the places He is supposed inhabit in all our lives here on earth and one of Heaven!

It’s like this.

This world is a dark, small, lonely place and seems inescapable, like my toddler-view of the apartment. The Enemy will tell us that this world is all there is and to stay there. But if we lift the blinds – if we remove the barriers to spiritual sight -- we can see God.

And He will show up – often unexpectedly. And one of those times, it will be to take us home. All we have to do is open the door.

It was no accident that I didn’t remember it.

UPDATE: Confirmation.

I am the door: by me if any man enter in, he shall be saved, and shall go in and out, and find pasture.

-- John 10:9 (KJV)

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