Don’t Lock Yourself Out
Though the doors were locked, Jesus came and stood among them…
John 20:26 (NIV)

The disciples are gathered together behind locked doors, convinced that confinement is protection. Fear, grief, uncertainty, and danger have convinced them that locking themselves in is the safest option.

But the danger is not what they think it is. The problem is that in locking themselves in, they locked themselves out. Locked out of mission. Locked out of witness. Locked out of courage. Locked out of sharing faith with a world that desperately needed the resurrected Christ.

This pattern of behavior is not limited to a room in Jerusalem. We can lock ourselves into our anger, our disappointment, our despondency, our fear, our grief. Locking in becomes emotional. It becomes spiritual. And over time, locking in becomes a prison.

Here’s the warning we can glean from this text: Don’t let life make you lock yourself in until you lock yourself out. You cannot stay locked into one emotion until it imprisons you and robs you of what God intends to do on the other side of healing and growth.

And here is the hope of the passage: When you’ve locked yourself in, Jesus appears anyway. He steps into locked spaces because you can lock yourself in, but you can’t ever lock Him out.

Locked in is not a spiritually productive option. It feeds fear instead of mission. It protects doubt instead of faith. And it contradicts everything the resurrected Christ empowers His people to become.

The doors did not stop Jesus. But staying behind them could have stopped the disciples.