MaryEllen Montville

“I am the door. If anyone enters by Me, he will be saved, and will go in and out and find pasture. The thief does not come except to steal, and to kill, and to destroy. I have come that they may have life, and that they may have it more abundantly.” –John 10:9-10.

I sat on the grass in my dad’s backyard and cried out to my heavenly Father. I was distraught and brokenhearted. Truth be told, I was desperate—I just had to get inside my dad’s house one last time.

I had been trying to break into the house for an hour or more by climbing through the den window. But the sill of that window was just too high, and the height of the bulkhead I was standing on was too low.

You see, my stepmother had died the year prior, and since then, my dad’s house had been closed-up. And try as I might to jump up high enough for my hips to clear the windowsill so my torso could slide inside; it just wasn’t happening. Even after stacking bricks and anything else, I could get my hands on anything remotely safe to stand on. Repeatedly, I tried, but I couldn’t clear that sill. Sobbing and frustrated, I remember crying out, “Abba, please! I’m desperate! I have to get inside! I have to walk through my dad’s house one last time. Please, Lord! Please, help me!”

I honestly couldn’t say how much time had passed. I know it wasn’t long before I heard a car door close.

Moving now from the back of the house, I started walking toward the front, and that’s when I saw them. The realtor and some couple following close behind her. I was both excited and anxious all at the same time. So, again, I began to pray. “Abba, I believe you sent this woman. That she is the answer to my prayer, please, give me favor with her. I don’t want her to think I’m some random person who doesn’t belong here.” I gave them a few minutes to get inside before I walked up the steps and knocked on the front door. She answered the door, and I explained who I was and why I was there.

“This was my dad’s house, and I’ve recently relocated from Hawaii and heard of my stepmother’s passing. I want to walk through the house one last time before it’s sold if that’s okay?”

Between her furrowed brow and what felt like a forever hesitation, finally, she said, “What can you tell me about the person who owned this house? I gave her everything I could think of shy of my dad’s shoe size and eye color, and it must have satisfied her because she said, “the buyers are upstairs at the moment, you can walk through the main floor.”

“Perfect,” I thought. Thank you, Lord! That’s all I had wanted.

It wasn’t until I left the house and got back into my car that I heard the Holy Spirit whisper, “Children don’t have to break into their Father’s house. They walk in through the front door.”  

I can’t even describe what washed over me at that moment. Joy? Freedom? Peace? All of these, all at once? I know that the tears began to fall and that God healed some deep, festering wound I wasn’t even aware existed until I heard His Words and felt His healing within—warm and comforting.

That was roughly four years ago now, but it still feels like yesterday.

And if I close my eyes, I can still see the front door of my dad’s house, see him standing there waiting as I arrived and waving as I left. And I can still hear what the Holy Spirit whispered to me as clearly today as I did then.

Beloved of God, I felt led to share this with you today because some of you may be struggling with your identity in Christ Jesus—not knowing who you are as a child of God. I know there was a time I did.

Perhaps you feel you aren’t worthy to, as God’s Word promises, “… [with privilege] approach the throne of grace [that is, the throne of God’s gracious favor] with confidence and without fear, so that we may receive mercy [for our failures] and find [His amazing] grace to help in time of need [an appropriate blessing, coming just at the right moment].” –Hebrews 4:16.

Maybe you, too, have felt or are feeling unworthy—doubting you have the right or privilege to walk right through the front door of our Father’s house. You’re not alone, Beloved of God. Many of God’s children are still working through an identity crisis, still carrying the baggage they were set free from the very moment Jesus made His Home in their hearts. “he saved us, not because of the righteous things we had done, but because of his mercy. He washed away our sins, giving us a new birth and new life through the Holy Spirit.” –Titus 3:5. So unworthiness, insecurity, shame, and doubt are no longer our portion.

Keep in mind that your sanctification is ongoing. Remembering this: You have been changed, whether you feel it or not. You’ve been set free from the kingdom of darkness and live now in the Kingdom of Light—the Kingdom of our God. And remember also: “Therefore, there is now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus. For in Christ Jesus the law of the Spirit of life set you free from the law of sin and death.….” –Romans 8:1-2.

No. You will never be 100% free of the worldly residue that clings to even the most saintly of men until you are face to face with Jesus, still, Christ does not condemn you for this, so please, stop condemning yourself! Hold fast instead to God’s Truth.

That the very moment you genuinely believed you are who God says you are and that He is who He says He is to you—in you, everything about you, who you have been right up to that very instant, whether you’ve been walking with Him ten minutes or twenty years, changed in an instant. “Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, the new creation has come: The old has gone, the new is here!” –2 Corinthians 5:17. Read that again.

How? Because your relationship with God becomes personal and intimate in that glorious instant. And, as with every relationship, as you invest in it, through reading God’s Word, prayer and time spent with the Lord, your relationship with Him deepens. It becomes full and sustaining. Love grows, and trust is built and sustained.

No longer are you an outsider feeling like you must push your way into a place you’ve not been invited to. Instead, as God’s disciple—His son or daughter, you know your heavenly Father has set a place at His table just for you. “You are those who have stood by me in my trials. And I confer on you a kingdom, just as my Father conferred one on me, so that you may eat and drink at my table in my kingdom and sit on thrones….” –Luke 22:28-30.

You are Christ’s. His child—His heir. As such, if you remain in Him, faithful to Him, are entitled, have been promised, to receive all God has set aside for you from the foundation of the world. Why? How is this possible?

Your Father has always loved you.

Jesus has always wanted you to know how precious, loved, and cared-for you are. So much so that He agreed—no, willingly came forth in the fullness of time declaring to the Father that He’d die in your place that you might have Life in the Father, now and forevermore. “While we were still helpless [powerless to provide for our salvation], at the right time Christ died [as a substitute] for the ungodly” –Romans 5:6.

As God’s child, please, receive, no, cling to the promise of the Holy Spirit for dear life. Like a drowning man to a life ring. “But Christ is faithful as the Son over God’s house. And we are His house, if we hold firmly to our confidence and the hope of which we boast.” –Hebrews 4:16.

Yes, cling! Press to your chest that Rhema Word of Surety and Truth Holy Spirit shared with me as I cried out to Him in desperation and great need: “Children don’t have to break into their Father’s house. They walk in through the front door.”

And if you have yet to meet this Jesus—this Loving Father I’ve spoken of today, you can. See, that’s the thing with our God. So long as there is breath in your lungs, there is always hope. Still, remember, no man is promised tomorrow. And no one, not even the vilest of sinners, will ever be rejected by God if they come to Him sincerely repentant and with a heart desperate to hear from Him. “So that we may boldly say, The Lord is my helper, and I will not fear what man shall do unto me.” –Hebrews 13:6.