In Revelation 3:20 we see that the Lord is standing outside the door of the degraded recovered church, knocking at the door to come in and dine with those who open; we need to be saved from any lukewarmness and spiritual pride, and we need to personally open the door of our heart for the Lord to come in so we can dine with Him.
Lord Jesus, we love You! We open to You the door of our heart. Come in, Lord, and dine with us. Come in and feast with us. We do not want to imprison You in our spirit; come into our mind, emotion, and will. Spread in us. Make Your home in us. We want to eat You as the tree of life, the hidden manna, and the feast that’s ever new! Amen, Lord, make us Your overcoming saints today! Amen!
As we live at the end of this age, seeing that the Lord wants to return soon, we want to be the Lord’s overcomers; He wants to gain those who have an ear to hear what the Spirit is speaking to the churches. This means that our ears are very important. Our heart is crucial.
If we don’t hear the Lord’s speaking, we cannot be produced as His overcomers. But if we have an ear to hear what He is speaking, we realise that Christ has the key of David. He has the key to the kingdom of God and to the riches in the treasury of God.
All the treasures hidden in God can be unlocked and dispensed into us to be our enjoyment and experience when we know and enjoy Christ as the One who has the key of David.
Such a Christ has the key to control the door of God’s treasury, in which are the riches of God in Christ for our enjoyment.
In our Christian experience, we can testify that Christ can either open or shut these riches to us; when our heart is turned away from the Lord, when we do not behold the Lord face to face, we do not enjoy His riches.
But whenever our heart turns to the Lord, we behold Him face to face with no veil, and we are infused with His riches to be inwardly transformed into His image until we’re conformed to Him and are built together into the house of God.
May we be those who are pure in heart and poor in spirit, remaining in contact with the Lord according to the sense of life, so that we may enjoy the riches of Christ as the treasure.
May we learn to exercise to deny the self, lose our soul-life, and take up the cross to follow the Lord so that we may partake of His riches in spirit today.
Seeing the Condition of our Being under the Lord’s Light, we Open the Door of our Heart to the Lord
In the degraded recovered church, Christ is seen as the One who will dine with the overcomers and give the overcomers to sit with Him on His throne, as He overcame and sat with His Father on His throne (Rev. 3:20-21).
Laodicea is the degraded Philadelphia, and there is a need for overcomers in Laodicea.
In verse 20 of Revelation 3 the Lord says, Behold, I stand at the door and knock; if anyone hears My voice and opens the door, then I will come in to him and dine with Him and he with Me.
This shows that, even though the church in Laodicea is a genuine church and has so much knowledge, the Lord is outside the church; He is at the door, knocking.
This door is not the door of the hearts of individuals but the door of the church; the Lord as the Head of the church, is standing outside the degraded church, knocking at the door. Oh Lord!
This church does not have the Lord’s presence; He is outside the church, outside the door, knocking on the door, seeking for someone to open the door.
The door is the door of the church, but the door is opened by individual believers; when we as individual believers, open the door of our heart to the Lord, He will come in.
The church in Laodicea has knowledge but does not have the Lord’s presence. Oh Lord!
The acceptance of the Lord’s dealing, His coming in, is a personal matter; the Lord is at the door of the church, but each believer needs to open to the Lord individually (John 14:23).
May the Lord have mercy on us and show us the real condition of our being; may He shine on us and not leave us in darkness concerning where we are.
We may think we are OK, for we may not sin that much, we may love the Lord, we may read the Bible, and we may regularly meet with the saints, but the Lord may still be outside the door of our heart. Oh Lord Jesus!
In the case of the church in Laodicea, in the Lord’s eyes, she was a degraded recovered church.
This church was considered by the Lord as being wretched because she is proud of being rich in the vain knowledge of doctrine but in reality she is sorely poor in the experience of the riches of Christ.
The Lord considered that the church in Laodicea was miserable because she is naked, blind, and full of shame and darkness, not living out Christ.
She was poor because she was poor in the experience of Christ and in the spiritual reality of God’s economy. She was blind, for she lacked true spiritual insight in the genuine spiritual things.
She was naked because she did not live by Christ or live Christ as her subjective righteousness as her second garment in her daily walk (see Rev. 3:15-17; Psa. 45:1, 9-14).
May we come to the Lord and allow Him to shine on the condition of our being. May we let Him shine on our lukewarmness, our spiritual pride, and our lack of experience of Christ.
The Lord is speaking to the whole church and He’s dealing with the whole church, but the acceptance of the Lord’s dealing must be a personal and subjective matter.
We need to personally open the door of our heart to the Lord.
When we’re under the Lord’s light and see the condition of our being, we realise that we often shut the door to Him; He is imprisoned in our spirit, trying to get into our heart with the mind, emotion, and will.
In so many ways and so many times, the Lord wants to spread and saturate the inner chambers of our being, but we do not allow Him. Oh Lord!
He wants to come in and bring us into the enjoyment of Himself, but our heart is turned away from Him.
May we personally and subjectively open to the Lord in our time with Him. May we open the door of our heart for Him to come in and make His home in us, so that He may dine with us and we may dine with Him.
Lord Jesus, we love You and we open to You. We open the door of our heart to You. Come in, dear Lord. Our heart welcomes You. Make Your home in our heart. Spread from our spirit into our mind, emotion, and will. Oh Lord Jesus, shine on us and expose the real condition of our inner being. May we see where we are and what the situation is in our being. May we learn to open to You a little more. May we personally and subjectively open the door of our heart to You. Have a way to enter into the inner chambers of our being. We turn our heart to You. We want to deal with anything that stands between us and You. Save us from being proud of being rich in the vain knowledge of doctrine but actually being poor in the experience of the riches of Christ. Save us from being miserable due to being naked, blind, and full of shame and darkness. Oh Lord Jesus, we just open to You. We need You. We allow You to come into our mind, emotion, and will. May You dine with us and may we dine with You today!
Open the Door to the Lord for Him to Come In and have Mutual Enjoyment with Christ
We believers in Christ need to learn to open the door of our heart to the Lord. Many times the Lord is knocking at the door of our heart, and He is even knocking at the door of the church; we need to accept the Lord’s dealing personally and individually, open the door of our heart to Him.
We need to come Him personally again and again; so many things in this world, so many situations, and so many experiences and feelings cause us to close toward the Lord, so we need to turn our heart to Him (2 Cor. 3:16-18).
The Lord wants to come in and dine with us. As seen in Revelation 3:20, He is standing outside the door of our heart, knocking patiently and waiting for us to open the door so He can come in and dine with us. He wants us to eat with Him and have mutual enjoyment with Christ.
This phrase “dine with him” refers to the main meal of the day, not to just grabbing a bite; the Lord wants to sit down with us and have a rich feast with us.
This matter of eating is what the Lord is very concerned about; ever since the creation of man, He wants man to eat Him.
He placed the man He created before the tree of life so that man would partake of this tree; He also told man not to eat of the tree of knowledge of good and evil.
Later, He wanted His people Israel to enjoy the rich produce of the good land of Canaan (Josh. 5:10-12; Deut. 16:16), and have yearly feasts with God, where God would feast with them and them with God. They offered things to God, God was eating with them, and they were eating with God.
Similarly, today, the Lord wants us to feast with Him. The dining with the Lord mentioned in Revelation 3:20 does not refer only to the future, when the Lord comes and will give us to eat of the tree of life, the hidden manna, and the feast, but it also refers to today, for today we can feast with the Lord to have mutual enjoyment with Christ.
In chapters 2 and 3 of Revelation, we see how the Lord exalts the eating of Himself, even promising more enjoyment and eating of Christ as a reward to the overcomers.
He wants us to take Him in as our life supply so that we may grow in the divine life, be transformed, and be made the same as He is.
He promises the overcomers in the seven churches to give them to eat Him as the tree of life, the hidden manna, and the feast.
Both in the Old and in the New Testament, God wants His people to feast with Him; He wants us to have a mutual enjoyment of Christ.
When we open to the Lord the door of our heart, when we let the Lord come into our decisions, emotions, and thoughts, He comes in to dine with us and us with Him.
He gives Himself to us as the tree of life, the hidden manna, and the feast. To dine with the Lord is not merely to eat one item of food but to partake of the riches of a meal, a feast! Amen!
We as God’s people are destined to eat the tree of life! We are given to eat Christ as the open manna and also as the hidden manna!
And we are meant to feast with the Lord and on the Lord, for He is our feast, the reality of all the riches of the good land for our enjoyment.
Just as the children of Israel ate the manna in the wilderness, partook of the riches of the good land when they entered into Canaan, and got together to have yearly feasts before God, so we today need to overcome to eat the Lord.
We need to focus not on doctrines, behaviour improvement, or doing things for God; we need to just open the door of our heart to Him.
Our destiny is to feast with the Lord and enjoy Him as our life and life supply for eternity.
Today so many Christians focus on many things, including good and spiritual things, but they neglect eating the Lord, dining with Him, and having mutual enjoyment with Christ.
May we learn to open to the Lord, open the door of our heart to Him in all our daily situations, and just let Him come in.
May we come to enjoy Him in His word. It is through our enjoyment of Christ as the tree of life, the hidden manna, and the feast, that we are mingled with the Lord in our constitution to be one entity in order to express Him as the New Jerusalem (Rev. 2:7, 17; 3:20).
The way we can be one with the Lord, even be part of His corporate expression on earth, is by opening the door of our heart to Him for Him to come in and dine with us.
As we feast with the Lord, having mutual enjoyment with Christ, we are constituted with Him, we are mingled with Him, and we become one with Him.
In this way, He can be expressed through us, and we are becoming part of His corporate expression, consummating in the New Jerusalem.
Lord Jesus, we open the door of our heart to You: come in and dine with us. We turn our heart to You from all other things. We repent for our sins; we confess our lack of living Christ. Oh Lord, we put all other things aside, and we focus only on You. We give You the first place in our heart. We love You. We come to You to feast with You. We want to eat Christ as the tree of life, the hidden manna, and the feast. Amen, Lord, You are our feast. Keep us eating You in Your word. May we eat You and digest You so that we may be constituted with You. Amen, Lord, You are our rich feast. May we feast with You day by day, having mutual enjoyment with Christ, so that we may be mingled with You! Lord Jesus, mingle Yourself with us a little more today. Mingle Yourself with our mind, emotion, and will. Constitute us with Yourself. Make us one with You. Make us Your corporate expression today. Oh Lord Jesus, may we remain in the mutual enjoyment with Christ so that we may be constituted with Christ and express Him as the New Jerusalem! Amen!
References and Hymns on this Topic
- Inspiration for this article/sharing comes from the Word of God, the enjoyment in the ministry, a sharing by brother Ray Mulligan on this topic, and portions from, The Conclusion of the New Testament, msg. 413, by Witness Lee, as quoted in the Holy Word for Morning Revival on, Experiencing, Enjoying, and Expressing Christ (4) (2025 December Training), week 43 (msg. 7), The Spirit Speaking to the Churches, the One Who Has the Key of David, and the One Who Will Dine with the Overcomers – day 5.
- Hymns on this topic:
– Teachings ne’er transform the soul, / Teachings never reach God’s goal, / Eating Christ will do it all— / Overcome! / We must overcome to eat, / By ourselves and when we meet, / Eat Him as the feast complete— / Overcome! (Hymns #1273 stanza 3)
– We eat this feast and take God in, / And as we eat we live by Him, / For all the elements within / This feast are God Himself. / Yes, Jesus is our feast! / Yes, Jesus is our feast! / We eat this feast and live by Him, / For Jesus is our feast! (Hymns #1145 stanza 2)
– How may we express such oneness, / be divine and shining too? / Hallelujah, eating Jesus is the way! / He’s the tree of life, the manna, / and the feast that’s ever new— / Hallelujah, we may eat Him every day! / We are one by eating Jesus! / We’re divine by eating Jesus! / How we shine by eating Jesus! / Hallelujah, eating Jesus is the way! (Hymns #1226 stanza 4 and chorus)
