The Gate

No, I don't have a habit of fasting and praying. Often, I fall asleep because the hunger and the tiredness from the night before just overwhelms me. But in order to usher in God's presence and favor for revival in the Agape Youth, I decided to fast and pray. It wasn't long, and my determination to extend it was clearly lacking. Moreover, I won't want the teachers in the staff room to think I was trying to take a short nap.

As I opened the Bible, the book of Micah just came to mind. 7 chapters is pretty long for only half an hour dedicated to this fasting and prayer session, so I decided to skip all those chapters on destruction and wrath, and just skim over those that had slightly happier stuff written on them. But nothing really caught my eye, until I reached Micah 4:2. Here's what was written:

Many nations will come and say, "Come, let us go up to the mountain of the LORD, to the house of the God of Jacob. He will teach us his ways, so that we may walk in his paths." The law will go out from Zion, the word of the LORD from Jerusalem.

I can't say again how spot on this verse was, given that the agenda for prayer was on God's guidance. Amazing how God speaks some times. Again, something in my heart twitched, and I was directed to the Book of Revelations, specifically to what Jesus said to the churches. I don't really like Revelations because of all the confusions and misinterpretations by others of the book itself, and so I must confess I don't read it often. But a force drew me to search out which church St. Matthew's must be emulating, so as to find out what Jesus could possibly be wanting to say to us. And His words to the church of Sardis just popped out of the blue.

To the angel of the church in Sardis write: These are the words of him who holds the seven spirits of God and the seven stars. I know your deeds; you have a reputation of being alive, but you are dead. Wake up! Strengthen what remains and is about to die, for I have not found your deeds complete in the sight of my God. Remember, therefore, what you have received and heard; obey it, and repent. But if you do not wake up, I will come like a thief, and you will not know at what time I will come to you. Yet you have a few people in Sardis who have not soiled their clothes. They will walk with me, dressed in white, for they are worthy. He who overcomes will, like them, be dressed in white. I will never blot out his name from the book of life, but will acknowledge his name before my Father and his angels. He who has an ear, let him hear what the Spirit says to the churches.

I'll leave it to you what God is trying to say to our church through these verses. But a shiver just went down my spine as I read it.

And so, these analogies and verses came to me during the prayer and fasting. Half an hour, but it all came in the first ten minutes. What did I do for the next twenty minutes? Pray... and doze off. Of course, I can sleep absolutely anywhere. And boy can I dream too. A vision of a gate. That's it. But clear as it was, a gate. I didn't think much of it. I mean... People dream of the weirdest things all the time, and a vision of a gate would probably fall under the "meaningless" or "weird" category.

So I went back to reading my book "Hearing God".

"Victor."

"Huh?"

"What did you see?"

"A gate, nothing much."

"Recall it again, and be specific."

"Well, it was in the settings of a small forest, a nice cloudy day..."

"The gate, Victor. What did it look like."

"Well, it was made of wood, and..."

"Go on."
"Oh my goodness. It was open."

I went to my favorite website, Biblegateway.com, and searched for the word "gate". Nothing came up. I thought my memory was fooling me, and I searched for every version there was. Nothing. I didn't believe that it was possible, I'm sure I saw the word "gate" in the Bible before. Googled it. Bingo. John 10:7-9.

Therefore Jesus said again, "I tell you the truth, I am the gate for the sheep. All who ever came before me were thieves and robbers, but the sheep did not listen to them. I am the gate; whoever enters through me will be saved. He will come in and go out, and find pasture.

Then it became very clear to me. Commonsensical as it may seem to the average Christian, Jesus is the only way to be saved. For revival to take place, this might just have to be re-emphasized all over again, and the sole authority of God's Son upon salvation reaffirmed and proclaimed to the world.

The still, small voice of God is best suited to the purposes of God precisely because it most fully engages the faculties of free, intelligent beings who are socially interacting with agape love in the work of God as His colaborers and friends. -Dallas Willard, Hearing God

He who has ears, let him hear. -Jesus (Matthew 11:15)