Who's Got the Keys? By Mick Smith

Imagine for a moment that you have just bought a home in which to live. It's exactly what you are looking for. It's the one you have wanted to move into for quite a long time and then, suddenly, it became available and so you agreed the price without hesitation, signed the contract and moved in. You are the new owner. It's yours and now the work begins. You can see the potential that's there and now you can start to put your own mark; your own stamp on it.  A new life has begun. But first you have to collect the keys so you can enter.
This particular house has many rooms and the intriguing thing is that several of those rooms have locks on the doors. A locked door indicates something hidden, kept out of sight except by invitation. So, here you are, you now have the keys to the house and off you go to get to work.
What's the first thing to do? You choose the most important rooms to tidy up, clean, dust, decorate and furnish with your furniture. There's a process involved in getting the house ready according to your own taste. It can be dirty, it can be trying and it is often quite involved even lengthy.
During that process just one problem arises as the work progresses in this house that you are (hopefully) still imagining. Now you are ready to begin work in the rooms that have locks on the doors but you suddenly realise that actually you have never seen the keys. You have the keys to the house but not the keys to the rooms that are locked.
What do you do? You ring the estate agent and tell him you can't find the keys and his reply comes, "That's because the previous owner told me not to give them to you. He felt there were some rooms that should stay locked." How annoying, how frustrating is that?" "Would you still have bought the house if you had realised that you could get in to the house but not get round every room?"

That set me thinking. "Was Jesus caught out by the fact that He only had the keys to the door of our lives and not the keys to some rooms in our lives which we keep locked to keep the hidden thing hidden and anyone else out from discovering what is hidden?" Certainly not! He knew exactly what He was buying. He knew everything that we wanted to hide but it did not stop Him paying the price.

He saw beyond what we may have tried to hide from so many people for so long a time. He knew exactly what was hidden behind those locked doors and, though it may have been a problem to us, it was not a problem to Him. He knew what needed cleaning. He knew what needed scourging and He was not put off because He wanted to make us His dwelling place where He could be totally at home.

I've got another question, " Can I truly say that I have handed over all the keys to every room (every hidden secret)?" Most of us, I think, would have to say that we still hold the keys to some of the rooms that now belong to Jesus. It's true that He will continue to live in the house. It's true that He will continue to work in those areas where we have granted Him free access to work in, maintain and develop them. But He will go no further until we hand over the keys to those parts of our lives that we, for whatever reason, keep closed.

Hang on, here's another question, "Why do we do that?" Sometimes it may be that we genuinely do not realise that we still have they keys. It may be that we thought (mistakenly) that if we gave Him the key to getting in to His new home that He would force the locks on the other doors. He doesn't do that. It may be that, because we know what's hidden behind locked doors, we are scared of what Jesus might think if He sees what's in there. The truth is that He knows already. The wonder of it is that He paid the price knowing full well what was hidden away. He has always been able to see beyond all of those things.

I've got an idea. Lets not hinder Jesus by quenching the Spirit as we  withhold the keys that belong to Him. His desire is to fill us totally to the glory of God. Why not just take a moment to hand Him the keys you are holding on to? Now there's a thought.
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Do you not know that your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit within you, which you have from God? You are not your own; you were bought with a price. So glorify God in your body (1 Corinthians 6:19-20)

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