Opening the Unlocked Door

Thoughts on a letter from Jesus, the redemptive use of technology, and the parable of the pizza delivery.

The Light of the World by William Holman Hunt (1827–1910)

If you know what an altar call is, there's a good possibility you spent some time in an evangelical church. As for myself, I grew up the son of an evangelist¹ who later became a pastor. So, I’ve seen and heard lots and lots of altar calls.

If you’ve never heard of an altar call, here’s how they work.

1. Once the minister finishes preaching the sermon, they ask everyone present to bow their heads and close their eyes.

2. “With every head bowed and every eye closed,” they often begin. Then they begin to make their case to those listening as to why they should surrender their lives to God. People prepared to make this decision were often encouraged to raise their hands so that the minister could see them from the pulpit.

3. The minister will often have live music playing in the background. 50 years ago, it may have been organ music. When I was a boy, it was often my own mom’s excellent piano playing and singing. The style of the songs varied widely, but the lyrics often communicated that the person in the audience was running out of time, that they needed to hurry up and make their decision.

4. The minister would then invite, urge, or even beg people to respond to the invitation by walking down the isles toward the front of the church, where church members were prepared to pray the “Sinner’s Prayer²” with that person.

5. After praying, the minister would then assure the person of their salvation, the forgiveness of all of their sins, and their home with God in the afterlife.³

My conservative estimate is that I've experienced no fewer than 3,000 altar calls like the ones I’m describing. And during quite a few of them, I remember one specific Bible verse being quoted by ministers, over and over, the words of Jesus in his letter to the church in Laodicea.

Listen! I am standing at the door and knocking! If anyone hears my voice and opens the door I will come into his home and share a meal with him, and he with me.

Revelation 3:20 (NET)

“Jesus is knocking on the door of your heart today,” the minister would say. “Won’t you let him in?”

But Jesus isn’t talking to those who don’t know Him, who have not been given the gift of salvation. In this passage, He is talking to the church. Let’s read the entire letter together so we can have some context for this vivid image.

This is the solemn pronouncement of the Amen, the faithful and true witness, the originator of God’s creation: ‘I know your deeds, that you are neither cold nor hot. I wish you were either cold or hot! So because you are lukewarm, and neither hot nor cold, I am going to vomit you out of my mouth! Because you say, “I am rich and have acquired great wealth, and need nothing,” but do not realize that you are wretched, pitiful, poor, blind, and naked, take my advice and buy gold from me refined by fire so you can become rich! Buy from me white clothing so you can be clothed and your shameful nakedness will not be exposed, and buy eye salve to put on your eyes so you can see! All those I love, I rebuke and discipline. So be earnest and repent! Listen! I am standing at the door and knocking! If anyone hears my voice and opens the door I will come into his home and share a meal with him, and he with me. I will grant the one who conquers permission to sit with me on my throne, just as I too conquered and sat down with my Father on his throne. The one who has an ear had better hear what the Spirit says to the churches.

Revelation 3:14–22 (NET)

I was listening to the Wild at Heart Podcast⁴ recently, and I heard Stasi Eldridge talk about something poignant: The grace and love of God is unconditional, but intimacy with God is not. Let me say that again: intimacy with God is not unconditional.

As I've already mentioned, this letter to Laodicea is a letter to Christians, people who have already become the recipient of God’s love and grace, have already been forgiven of their sins, have already been added to the church. Their salvation is secure. This passage is not about salvation. It is about intimacy.

This “standing at the door and knocking” metaphor is one of many, many statements in the Bible where God presents his people with a choice, and because he is God, because he is faithful, because he is the only one able to keep his promises, all of these statements are absolutely true and trustworthy. You could even go so far as to say they are formulaic.

you hear his voice + you open the door → he comes into your home + you and he share a meal together

Jesus is saying that if we meet both of these two conditions–if we have heard his voice and we have opened the door–the result will be that he will come into our home and share a meal with us. This is quite the loaded equation, and my mind is flooded with questions about what each of these components might mean.⁵

What does the knocking sound like? How will we know it when we hear it? What about the door, though? What does it mean to open the door? What even is the door? And how does one open it? Let's elaborate on this metaphor a bit because I think it will help us personalize it a little more.

Imagine you're at home, sitting on the couch, watching an action movie or a sporting event. You've got the volume on your surround system cranked up, your friends or buddies are sitting around enjoying the moment with you. Everyone has their phones out so they can scroll through Facebook or Instagram or TikTok on commercial breaks, or when there is a lull in the action. You also have one friend–you know the one I'm talking about–who seems content to talk, almost nonstop, no matter what is happening on the screen. You're crunching on popcorn or pretzels and gulping your beverage of choice. You're waiting for the pizza delivery driver to arrive, but it looks like she's running late. She should've been here almost an hour ago. Then your cell phone rings. It's the pizza parlor. They say your driver stopped by twice on her route, attempting to deliver the pizzas you ordered, and she knocked and knocked, and even yelled through the door, but no one ever answered. You want to respond, “Why didn't she ring the doorbell?” But you can't, because you know very well that you don't have a doorbell. You never have. You couldn't hear the knocking because there were too many other things going on.

At this point, it would be really easy for me to preach to you and tell you what you need to do differently with your life so you could hear Jesus knocking and speaking to you through your door. I'm not going to do that, but I will tell you what I had to do.

1. I deleted all of my social media accounts. Years worth of Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter posts permanently deleted, and with a promise to myself and the people closest to me that I would not go back to those platforms again.⁶ (I know, I said I wasn't going to preach, but do you really need to be told yet again how harmful and damaging it is to you and the world around you that social media even exists?⁷ So why would you voluntarily expose yourself to it? Okay, sermon concluded.)

2. I removed email from my phone because, like the nerd that I am, I love checking email. Now, if I want to check email, I have to sit down with my laptop and read it there, and when I'm done, I close my computer and walk away, and I won't be able to access my email again until I come back to my computer. (You know, like in the olden days.)

3. I deleted all apps from my phone that had a “feed” or any other way to infinitely scroll through content. This means no YouTube, Reddit, or even the Substack app. I know myself well enough to know that, if the content is endless, I will keep scrolling and scrolling for fear that I am missing out on something cool. And like with my email, if I want to consume content from one of these publishers, I have to get out my computer and look at it there or look at a video through a streaming app on our TV. I can't tell you the science behind why this works, but I read and watch a lot less when it's not on my phone.

4. I sold my gaming console, and I used the money to buy a new Bible, a really nice one.⁸ I still play my daughter’s console sometimes, but it’s not a regular pasttime, and when I do play, it’s usually just to have some fun with her.

5. I deleted all games and streaming video from my phone. Actually, I've done this multiple times, as I keep falling into the trap of redownloading one of the half a dozen or so time-killers that I've used for years, just so I can have something to do while I'm sitting down in the bathroom or waiting in line at the drug store drive-thru. Except, what if God wants to say something to me while I'm sitting down in the bathroom? He does it often enough when I'm in the shower, so why not the toilet? I'll tell you why, because I’ve usually opened up a game on Apple Arcade before I've even lifted the lid. So, at the time of this article, all games and streaming video are missing from my phone. Lord Jesus Christ, have mercy on me.

6. I stopped watching, listening to, and reading the news. I know what some of you are saying, “But if you don’t watch the news, how can you stay informed about what’s going on in the world?” I can’t, and I think that was the point when the Holy Spirit told me to stop consuming the news. He knew what it was doing to me, that it was forcing me to spend my empathy on people I would never meet or cross paths with, people I could not directly influence or help, and that it was leaving, in its wake, high levels of stress, anxiety, despair, and feelings of helplessness. I’m sure there are some people out there who, because of the nature of the work they do, need to keep up with national and international events. I'm not one of those people, however, and you probably aren't either. If you are, I'm sorry, and I hope for the sake of your soul that it is a temporary and short-lived assignment.

7. I stopped binge watching TV shows. Our family watches less than an hour of TV most days (some days we watch nothing at all), and we almost always watch shows together. Baseball games are the main exception–I usually watch one or two games a week. The other exception, however, would be when the Olympics roll around every couple of years, especially the winter Olympics. I love me some curling!

8. I set my phone to automatically turn on Do Not Disturb 1-2 hours before bedtime, and I do my best to leave it in another room while I enjoy the end of my day. So, if you text me at 8 PM, and I don't respond, it's not because I don't like you. It's because I won't see your text until the next day. My phone won't let me see it, because I’ve told my phone not to show it to me until the next morning.

9. I started consuming the word of God in the morning before I open my phone for the first time.⁹ Reading or listening to scripture each day before anything else gives me the trajectory and momentum I need to meditate on God’s word throughout my day. It becomes the fuel my heart runs on. Like C.S. Lewis said, “God made us: invented us as a man invents an engine. A car is made to run on petrol, and it would not run properly on anything else. Now God designed the human machine to run on Himself. He Himself is the fuel our spirits were designed to burn, or the food our spirits were designed to feed on. There is no other.”¹⁰

These are all examples of changes I made in my life, through the grace and power of the Holy Spirit, so that I could hear Jesus knocking, hear his voice on the other side of the door. But what then? Let's go back to our pizza delivery metaphor for a minute.

After you hang up your call with the pizza parlor, you look around and notice for the first time how loud the TV is, how distracting the other voices in the room are, how no one's paying any real attention to anything; they're just all consuming as much stimuli as they can until it's time to leave and move on to the next “thing.” You explain what happened about the pizza to the people around you. They seem irritated with you, but they don't really care that they were part of the reason for the mishap. You realize that this whole thing isn't working out, so you send them packing. Now you're by yourself in your home. The TV is turned off. The room is quiet. You set your phone on the table next to you, and you wait for the driver to return with your delicious pizza. Only a few minutes later, you hear a knock at the door and a woman's voice on the other side calling out, “Pizza delivery!”

“It’s unlocked! Come on in!” you say loudly from the couch. But nothing happens. The door doesn’t open. “It’s unlocked!” you repeat, even louder this time. Still nothing. You heave a big sigh, get up from the couch, walk down the hallway, and open the door, a frustrated look on your face. “Can’t you hear me yelling?” you ask. “The door was unlocked. Why didn’t you just open it?”

“I might have,” the driver replies, with a surprising amount of patience in her voice, “but there’s no handle on the outside of the door.” Her arms are stacked with pizza boxes, and bags of cold drinks are hanging from each hand. “Can I come in and set this down?”

God created you with an imagination. So, I suspect you know where I’m heading with this. The reason it’s necessary for Jesus to knock at the door is because you are the only one who is able to open it. He will not let himself in. He will not break down the door. You are the only one who can let him in.

Again, no preaching here, but I do want to share some examples of what it’s looked like for me to open the door to Christ.

1. As soon as I wake up, I invite God into my day. Lately, I’ve been praying a prayer I leaned from Morgan Snyder: “God, you are my Father, and I am your son. Father me today.” That's it. I'm not throwing off the covers as soon as the alarm goes off, sliding to the floor on my knees, and going through the daily office (if you do that each morning, more power to you, really). It’s an invitation to relationship, which is the end goal of the birth, life, death, burial, resurrection, and ascension of Jesus. He came to redeem us back to himself so he could love us, uninhibited by our sin. This prayer of invitation reminds me of the one on whom I depend, and it reminds my Father that I want him in my life.

2. I go for multiple walks each day, not necessarily to get “exercise” (though that happens, of course), but so that I can breathe fresh air, enjoy creation, and find new things to talk about with God. I adore being outside (one of my dreams is to have a covered, open-air office in the woods), and it’s really, really good for me to soak in the world God made for me.

3. My family and I sit down together at the dinner table to share one or two meals each day. I need to be face-to-face and up close and personal with other bearers of God's image, especially the ones that I love. I need to be reminded that they are treasures, and I need to hear their voices as God speaks through them to me, the same way I hope he speaks through me to them. But it's not just my family. I make it a point to go out to lunch with guys I know or for us to invite people into our home so that we can feed them and show Christ’s love to them. Sharing a meal together isn’t just a logical time and place for this to happen, it’s biblical.

4. I go to bed early, even if my mind isn’t ready to sleep. I used to stay up until I was too tired to stay awake, then collapse into bed. Now, when it's time for bed, I get under the covers, and if I can't sleep right away, which is rare at this point, I read for a few minutes, or do a short, guided meditation. Either one of those things will put me on the fast train to Sleepytown.

5. I attend services and small groups at our church, especially on days when I would rather not. On any given Sunday or Wednesday, with three of us in the house, there's a pretty high likelihood that one of us would rather stay home or go do something else. But we've talked about it lots of times, and we remind each other when we need to that it's not all about us, that the people there need us, even if we aren't sure in the moment if we want or need them. So, when someone brings up not going to church, we ask the question, “Do you have a real reason not to go?” That usually elicits an eye roll or a sigh, and then we do what we should do. The great thing is, by the time we come home, we're almost always glad we went.

6. I sabbath once a week. In the gospels, Jesus told us that the sabbath was created for us. It's a gift from God, in whatever form it takes. So, why would I not want to enjoy that gift?

7. I have conversations with God when it’s just the two of us, with faith and full expectation that he is listening and responding to me, that it is a dialogue, and not just petition. It can be about anything: a bird song I particularly enjoy hearing while on a walk, my frustration over being mistreated by someone during my workday, my questions about what we should do for summer vacation next year, my gratitude and love for the family he's given me, even how particularly delicious a specific glass of iced tea is. Truly anything.

8. I go out of my way to enjoy silence and solitude. I either wait until no one else is around, or I leave the house in search of a quiet place where I can be alone. In those moments, whether they are a few minutes or a few hours, I don't talk, even in prayer. I don't listen to anything like music or podcasts. I don't read, either the Bible or books. I do my best not to do anything, but just to be, to breathe, to surrender, to give everyone and everything to God, for however long I have to myself. If I notice something interesting or distracting, whether in the environment around me or in my own thoughts, I recognize it for what it is, knowing it will be there when I'm done, and I let it go.

9. I do in-depth study of the scriptures. When I was a kid, we sang a song in Sunday school that said, “Read your Bible, pray every day, and you’ll grow, grow, grow.” But when we read Jesus’s parable of the sower (e.g., Matthew 13:1-23), we find that simple exposure to the message of the gospel is not enough to ensure that it grows in us. We must become good soil, and the only way to do that is to dig deep, pull out the rocks and thorns, and aerate the dirt, all through the power of God’s grace as the Spirit works in us. I use Logos Bible Software, but there are lots of digital and print resources out there that are worth your time and money. It’s an investment into your soul. What could be more important?

10. I do meditative reading and listening to the scriptures. If studying is the deep work, then this is like the saturating that needs to take place in order for the deeply planted seeds to germinate, sprout, and produce a harvest. The Dwell Bible app is a wonderful example of how your mobile device can be used for redemptive purposes, and David Suchet’s reading of the NIV is like butter.

11. I see a spiritual director. My director’s name is Les, and he and I meet once a month. We talk about my relationship with God, sort through what the Spirit has been speaking to me about my life, and listen together to what God is saying in the moment to both of us. He helps me see my walk with God from a different perspective, and encourages me to slow down so that I am not trying to move faster than Jesus walking beside me.¹¹

12. I find a few trustworthy voices, and I listen to them often. I could start another newsletter just to talk about this subject, but I’ll talk about a single example to illustrate. I’ve already mentioned the Wild at Heart Podcast, which is part of the ministry that goes by the same name. One of the ministry’s founders is John Eldredge, and John is one of those trustworthy voices I’m talking about. I’ve read most of his books–many of them multiple times. I use the One Minute Pause app, which was developed by his team and takes listeners through guided prayers and meditations to help listeners give everyone and everything to God. It’s a wonderful tool that is completely free. I subscribe to John’s weekly video update, which is shot on his cell phone, is unedited, and lasts about five minutes. During these videos, he shares whatever has been on his heart the last several days beforehand, and it seems to always be something I need to hear. I’ve also taken part in three retreats in partnership with Wild at Heart, during the most recent of which I was one of the leaders, and each time God uses the men and message of their ministry to speak life and restoration into my soul. Why would I go to the trouble of following someone so closely? Because I believe he hears from God, that the Holy Spirit gives him much-needed, fresh revelation and wisdom regarding the times we are living in, and because I have shared dozens of meals with men who were the fruits of his ministry. Is he the 13th apostle? No. But I believe that the parts of his life I am privy to are worth imitating, as he imitates Christ.

13. I enjoy baseball games on TV and sometimes in person. This may seem like a weird one to you, but baseball was a joy of my boyhood. I collected cards and watched games on TV. I played catch in the backyard and pickup games on the local Little League field. I walked away from baseball right around the time my childlikeness started to evaporate. A few years ago, baseball came back into my life, just as God the Father began to restore my boyhood. Sometimes, when I'm watching a game, there is a boyish giddiness that wells up inside of me, something that I can only imagine is a gift from my Father in heaven, who is right there, watching the game with me.

Is it hard to keep up with all of these things? Sometimes it is. Sometimes it seems impossible. Is all of this worth it? Absolutely. I am convinced that disciplines such as the ones I’ve written about are akin to the disciplines St. Paul would have taken upon himself while on his journey to the place where he could finally say, “I have learned to be content in any circumstance.” Php 4:11 (NET)

That's what I want. I want my spirit to grow to the point where it displaces my mind’s need to distract itself, my emotions’ compulsion to numb out, and my body’s urgings to make trauma center stage. I want to believe what Julian of Norwich heard Christ speak to her: “All shall be well, and all shall be well, and all manner of thing shall be well.” I want to hold onto this truth, performing God’s work in myself and others along the way, trusting in his grace and resting in his promises until all is finally, completely well.

Until then, I will listen for the knocking and for the voice of Christ. I will open the door that only I can open and invite him in. I will feast upon the meal that he carries with him, and I shall not want.

What about you? What do you do in your everyday to lessen the noise, to allow yourself to hear him asking to come in? And how do you open the door to him? Or, how do you plan to do these things going forward? I’d love to hear from you in the comments.

1. “Evangelist” is the term many church traditions use for an itinerant minister who travels from town to town and church to church, preaching a few services or a few weeks at a time, before moving to the next location and doing it again.

2. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sinner%27s_prayer

3. For more on this interesting part of evangelical church culture, see “A Brief History of the Altar Call.”

4. It was the third episode in a four-part series called “Deeper.” You can listen to it here.

5. It would be an understatement to say that a person could write a book about this topic, or maybe it’s better to say “these topics.” I've read quite a few of them myself. Here are a couple of books, one about hearing his voice and one sharing a meal with him.

Walking with God: How to Hear His Voice is a book by John Eldridge that is part Christian living book and part spiritual autobiography. It follows John over the course of a year of his life as he navigates some difficult emotional and relational terrain, even having to deal with some physical trauma along the way. It is intimate and raw and lets you see what it looks like for a person to surrender themselves to learning to discern and obey God’s voice. I’ve recently finished listening to the audio book for the second time (John’s audiobooks are always enjoyable–he was an actor in his youth), and I hope you'll consider adding this to your TBR (to be read) list.

You might imagine that no one’s written any books about sitting down to share a meal with Jesus. I would have thought the same thing, too, but then I read Louie Giglio’s book Don't Give the Enemy a Seat at Your Table. (Actually, I watched this sermon first.) While this book is partly about overcoming the adversary’s tactics of distraction and deception, it also paints a beautiful picture of what it looks like to sit with Jesus at the table he prepares before us in the presence of our enemies (Psalm 23:5).

6. I was an addict, in the worst ways, and I abused this technology to feed other addictions, so I had more than one reason to walk away from it all.

7. I’ve read hundreds of articles and watched/listened to scores of video interviews and podcast episodes, but I neither have the time nor the inclination to give you a long list of those sources here. The most damning presentation I've seen was in the form of a film called The Social Dilemma. Please watch it if you haven't yet. Seriously, you need to see it.

8. This Bible, but without the “full yapp.”

9. I made this a rule for my life after I read The Common Rule: Habits of Purpose for an Age of Distraction, by Justin Whitmel Earley, and which one of his four suggested daily rules is “Scripture Before Phone.”

10. From Mere Christianity, one of the best and most important works ever published on living a life for God.

11. There’s a lot more to spiritual direction than I have space for in this article (I am, in fact, training to become a spiritual director myself). You can learn more by visiting Grafted Life, the website of the Evangelical Spiritual Directors Association, or ESDA.