A Call to Go Higher

"After this I looked, and, behold, a door was opened in heaven: and the first voice which I heard was as it were of a trumpet talking with me; which said, Come up hither...." —Revelation 4:1

The apostle John was a prisoner in exile on the bleak island of Patmos when Christ appeared to him one Lord's Day in a vision. John's record of what he saw and heard in that vision has given to us the book of Revelation.

In this vision John hears the voice of Christ calling him to come up to heaven. There is a spiritual application to this invitation that every Christian needs to make. For while we are not being called to actually enter heaven (at least at this point in our lives), Christ IS calling His people to "come up" to heaven in another sense.

Many Christians have swallowed the lie lie of Satan that they cannot go any higher in their experience of closeness to Christ, in victory over sin in their lives, in their usefulness to God and in all those things that give Christians a little taste of "heaven on earth".

Rather, they live so often in the valley of frustration and defeat, feeling that they are confined to a subpar Christian life. This call from Christ is the remedy for such thinking. He still says to every Christian...no matter where they are in their walk with God..."come up hither"!