Love Knocks

It was a beautiful Saturday afternoon when we rolled into the worst part of our city…the part of town with the worst reputation and the highest risk of EVERYTHING…you know…the part of town your mama told you to never go to.

We unloaded bags from the trunk, bags that were bursting at the seam with goodies, snacks, scarves and fun girly items…along with a card…meant to put into the hands of some of the roughest women of our city.

These women are society’s rejects, women who have had a financial value placed on their lives and an invisible scarlet letter permanently on their chest.  These women, in this motel…a motel that stands for only one reason…that they would be sold.

It seemed odd that we were walking up on such a beautiful day.  The weather definitely was a stark contrast to the reality that lied right beyond the gates of that 50 room motel.

We walked onto the property and began to go door to door.  Knocking, greeting, smiling WAY to big and trying our best to wedge our way into their world.

The sights and smells are almost too much to take.  Poverty, a haze of drug use, sadness and empty eyes.  A revolving door of cars and men…staring at our beaming faces and wondering if we knew exactly where we were.

Knock after knock, you could feel the hard shell of that place cracking as the love of God began to pierce through.

A knock on door 17 found a room of women, waiting on their next client, dressed head to toe ready to work.

The group was silent when the door opened and one volunteer began to speak up, “We wanted to bring you this bag and tell you God loves you.”  She hesitated, as anyone does at these doors…it’s awkward at best when total darkness is met with the brightest light. “And there’s a card with a number on it if you need anything…you can call it.”  She hesitated again… “even if you need groceries… or anything else.”  The woman perked up….she was hungry….food sounded good.

The door closed and the group walked away.

We met in the middle of the motel complex to prepare to leave.  I heard the group talking about the woman in room 17.  I didn’t know her…hadn’t heard her name…when the Lord so strongly said to me:

“Get to her door…and get there now.  Hurry…go and knock.”

I took off running towards her door.  It felt really weird to break into a sprint, and as the leader of the bright eyed (terrified) volunteers I am sure that it caused a tad bit of panic.  (She’s running, should we???)

I knocked and the other woman answered the door.  I could see behind her the woman for which I had sprinted fall to her knees and begin to weep.

I asked her to come to the door and she did, shaking and crying…that deep desperate sort of cry…when you have given in and have nothing left to do.

She began to talk.  Her words were quick and overwhelmed.  She couldn’t quite communicate what she needed to say.

“This morning…this morning I thought…I can’t do this no more….I’m dying… I’m living in hell.  This is hell. (she pointed to the perimeter of the motel)  I know that there is heaven and a kingdom of heaven…and I know that there is a hell because I live in it…this is the kingdom of hell…these brick walls…I’m trapped…I can’t do this anymore mam…and just this mornin’ I thought I wasn’t gonna make it … and then look what God did…someone knocked on my door…and I went back inside and thought..it’s not enough…and look someone came back and knocked again….and now I think maybe I can make it….oh my God you love me…” and she began to talk, it seemed, to her Father, “Thank you Lord…thank you God for loving me…you sent these angels not just once…but twice.”

I asked if we could pray for her and she, weeping, shook her head yes.

As I prayed I felt her trembling body shake more intensely, as words were declared over her life her hand found her way to the edge of my sweater…and she began clawing and pulling and stretching my sweater….like an animal fighting against what was happening…she was clinging to the edge of my sweater. (made me think of another woman who was just as desperate for the hem of Jesus’ clothing…clawing and desperate)

We said Amen and the widest grin spread across her dirty tear stained face.  She was more alive.  She had hope.

Love had knocked on her door that day.  Not me.  Love.  His love.  And that love changed everything.

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“We love because he first loved us.”  1 John 4:19

You are loved.  If you know the Father, He has knocked on your door.

His love has intersected your life.

And His love…it’s not like the love our world gives us.  His love is a love with no strings attached.  His love isn’t cheap.  His love isn’t only there if we give something in return.  His is a RISKY LOVE.

A love that loves the unlovely.  A love that loves those who can’t give anything in return.  A love that loves even enemies.

A risky love that doesn’t depend on the receiver…but only on the giver and His desire to give it.

We are called to this kind of love.  We are called to be the bearers of this type of love to the dark and broken world around us.

And do you know WHY we can do this?  What gives us the ability to love like Him?

Because that’s the kind of love that knocked on our door.

No matter where He found you, you were RISKY to love.

You were unlovely, living in sin.

When He knocked on your door, offering the fullness of His love…there was nothing you could ever give in return.

You were an enemy of God…back turned on Him.

You were risky.

Yet He loved you.  He knocked and knocked until the door opened and He found you, on your knees crying…that deep desperate sort of cry…when you have given in and have nothing left to do.  And He called life out in you.  He breathed life into your dry bones and you stood up, wide eyed and grinning from ear to ear.  From hopeless to full of hope.  From finished to just beginning.  From hungry to satisfied.

“And as for your birth, on the day you were born your cord was not cut, nor were you washed with water to cleanse you, nor rubbed with salt, nor wrapped in swaddling cloths. No eye pitied you, to do any of these things to you out of compassion for you, but you were cast out on the open field, for you were abhorred, on the day that you were born.

And when I passed by you and saw you wallowing in your blood, I said to you in your blood, ‘Live!’ I said to you in your blood, ‘Live!’ I made you flourish like a plant of the field. And you grew up and became tall and arrived at full adornment. Your breasts were formed, and your hair had grown; yet you were naked and bare.

When I passed by you again and saw you, behold, you were at the age for love, and I spread the corner of my garment over you and covered your nakedness; I made my vow to you and entered into a covenant with you, declares the Lord GOD, and you became mine.”  Ezekiel 16:4-8

He came for you.  He pursued you.  You did not look like the type when He chose to set His affection on you.

You have been loved….with a risky sort of love.

Now… get out there and knock on some doors.  Offer risky love to the people around you.  Seek them out…pursue them and find them at their worst.

And this love that you are called to be, to give away,  it’s for the unloveable, the ones who can give you nothing in return, your enemies. (that’s the tough stuff)

You have the ability to do it, to pour that sort of love out, because you have experienced it yourself.

You can love because you have been loved.