Thoughts from Mark "Hat" Rackley

Those whom I love I rebuke and discipline. So be earnest and repent. 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 3:19-20

The night before my wife passed to the Lord, we watched Gaither Homecoming Hour together.  It featured the video of the second album recorded by Fortune – Walker – Rogers – Isaacs, Brothers of the Heart.  It was a wonderful hour.  The music blended Country/Western with Rock ‘n Roll, Pop, and some Christian music including Just As I Am.

I did not know that my wife would not be there when she told me to go home after the show, but we sang along with the quartet.  She asked who the interviewer was and I explained that it was Don Reid of the Statler brothers.  The group even sang one of the songs that he wrote, I’ll Go to my Grave Loving You.  That song in particular has been a blessing for me.  While singing along that night with the quartet, I was singing it to my wife.

But another song was something more like what she would enjoy.  It was written by Paul McCartney, and was first performed by his group, Wings, Let ‘em In.  The group in the Gaither video joked about the newer generations being shocked that McCartney had been in another group prior to Wings.  Then again, the Beatles were dissolved as an entity in 1970.

While the song speaks of family and friends, it could easily be a reminder that we should accept Jesus.  My favorite verse is Revelation 3:20.  I heard Jesus knocking, but the previous verse kept getting in the way of my answering the door.  I wanted the Joy that Jesus provides, but did I really have to be earnest and repent?

With the feeling of self-preservation, there are some who I would not let into my home.  But as Christians, on the whole, we should be hospitable.  Yet, the decision to open the door and let Jesus inside your life is an individual one.  We cannot decide for another, no matter how hard that hurts.

As a church, we should be welcoming, but if those that we welcome are not earnest and repent, it can cause division within a church.

I watched a recent 700 Club episode.  They had this person who survived the massacre at the Pulse nightclub in Orlando, Florida.  He had tried to give up his same-sex attraction, but he kept failing.  He felt God would not accept him until he had cleaned that up.  And then he realized that God accepts us and loves us as we are.  God wants the relationship with us.  Then once we have that relationship, God gives us the knowledge of the sin in our lives and the strength to repent.

But regardless of what church we may attend, or even if we do not attend for one reason or another, Jesus stands at the door and knocks.  It is our decision whether we open the door.

My wife opened the door about twenty-three years ago.  I had opened the door over fifty years ago.  I still find things for which I should repent.  Just as I am learning that grief is a process, I have known that sanctification and repentance is a process also.  We will not be perfect until we pass to the Lord.  But with God inside us to rebuke and correct us, we must be earnest in our attempts to repent.

Soli Deo Gloria.  Only to God be the Glory.