Your Heart...and the Door

...The Lord our God, the Lord is one.

Love the Lord your God will all your heart and with all

your soul and with all your strength.

These commandments that I give you today are to 

be upon your hearts.

Impress them upon your children. ...

Write them on the doorframes of your houses...

Deuteronomy 6:4-9

Doors are significant and symbolize the entrance to a more intimate place.  When you put a welcome sign on your door, you are giving people permission to engage with your family, with your lives.  Jesus referenced himself as the door for his followers, (John 10:7).  Relationship with Christ is invitational and intimate.  He welcomes those who believe into the inner places of his person that we may abide there with him.  

It is not surprising then that we have a foreshadowing of Jesus as the door.  God commanded the Israelites, his people of the Old Testament, to write the commands he gave them upon their hearts and upon the doorposts....the area surrounding the door...the entryway.  To enter into relationship with God in the OT, faith was tied to keeping the law, God's commandments.  Perhaps that's why symbolically, the commandments were to be written near the entry point to their personal spaces.  It was a tangible reminder that to be in close relationship to God, there were to obey God's commands out of love and devotion to him. 

God always wants more than outward appearances of our devotion to him.  So His commands were to also be written on their hearts, loved, treasured, remembered.  

For believers today, our relationship to the Father comes by way of the Son, the Door for his sheep.  We know that we are free from the Law...not that we don't obey God and all his precepts, but our obedience is not what establishes relationship.  Our relationship comes through our believe and faith in Christ.  We will obey because we love him and want to please him.  But our obedience is not enough to gain access into the inner parts of the Kingdom.  Praise God, Jesus opens the way for us!

I love the symbolism of this particular door image to illustrate this passage.  Because everything in the OT is a foreshadowing of the New, what could be more appropriate for the door Christ represents than a red door?  Our entrance to an abiding relationship with our Savior comes through his shed blood, and through that gift we are given everlasting life...thus the evergreen wreath.  May we still tie his word, his truth to our hearts!

-----

Design Details:  I used the new Christmas Joy Printable for this page printing the door on clear sticker paper and adhering to the page.  I sponged more color to get the yellow glow of light and some Distress Inks for the antiquing looks.  I used a script stencil for the smudge "commandments." 

Christmas Joy Printable

5-pages including 4 sheets of colored images

scripture prompts

interactive devotional

and JPEG/PNG digital images to create you own custom printed images