Jesus Knocking at the Door by Theodore Ledyard Cuyler

Pacific Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Oakland, California · May 15, 1879

Jesus Knocking at the Door.

By Theodore Ledyard Cuyler

ONE of the most wonderful passages in the Bible is this: "Behold, I stand at the door and knock."-Rev. 3 : 20.

To open the heart to Jesus implies activity on your part, and a free, prompt act likewise. He will not burst down the door by violence. He respects the free agency with which your Creator has endowed you. His offer is: "If thou wilt open the door, I will come in and sup with thee, and thou with me." Your will must yield to his will. Your old wicked practice of having your own way must be given up, and Christ be allowed to have his way. If he come in at all it must be to rule you; not as an intruding tyrant, but by the omnipotence of his love.

Be sure of this, too, that if you let Christ come into your soul, he will require a thorough cleaning out of those abominable things that have been too long harbored there. Perhaps there are some snarling spites and ugly grudges that are lying there like surly mastiffs; they must go out. If any dishonest gains have been hidden away in the drawers they must be restored to their lawful owners. When my friend A. was converted, the first symptom of the change was that he went to his neighbor with whom he had an inveterate quarrel, and asked his forgiveness. As Christ came in, that disgraceful quarrel went out. My neighbor B. found that Jesus would not dwell in the same habitation with a brandy bottle. Wherefore he rose in the prayer-meeting, and confessed his sin, and asked us to pray for him that he might have strength to expel the demon drink. He was just in the condition of the rough creature who—in Jerry McAuley's meeting—prayed this most expressive prayer: "O, God! if you really want to help a fellow I have just got round to where I want to have you do it."

That illiterate man hit the point exactly. You will never open your heart to Jesus and let him have control of your will, your affections, your purse and your all, until you have "got round to where you want" him to come in and save you. Turning the favorite sins out is not enough. Conversion is not a mere emptying process. It is not a negative but a positive process. It is the admission of Christ, who will fill your soul with new thoughts, new purposes, new plans, new joys. What you need is the expulsive power of a new affection, and a new faith. The idlest folly in the world is to exhort a covetous man to stop worshiping gold, and give him nothing better to worship—or to urge a tippler to stop the use of his deadly stimulants, with nothing else to fill the void. No heart can be empty. "Nature abhors a vacuum." The love of the world, and the appetites of sensual enjoyments, can only be expelled by the incoming of a higher and purer love which is stronger than they. None but the Lord Jesus Christ is equal to this supernatural work of cleansing a human heart, and keeping it clean forever more.

I beg you, my friend, do not keep the divine visitor waiting one hour longer. Jesus sometimes gives last knocks. He has lingered before your door a great while already. He has waited for you through more than one revival season. Even now, for the last time he may be calling from without: "If thou wilt hear my voice and open this door, I will come in and dwell with thee." Do not, I entreat you, lose a moment. If he depart and leave you to utter hardness of heart, you will by and by hear another footstep approaching! It will be the swift step of death. Then you may rise up affrighted and call for your Saviour with a loud and bitter cry. But it will be too late! He took you at your word. He gave his last knock, and left your house to you desolate.—Dr. T. L. Cuyler.