September 01, 2006
Door of Opportunity
I’m getting pretty good at recognizing God’s closed doors, it’s those open doors that give me fits. I struggle when I have a choice between door # 1, door # 2 or door #3. At the first sign of an obstacle and road block after I’ve made a selection, I’m second guessing my choice. When Paul arrived in Troas the Lord had opened a door for him to preach the gospel. Interestingly he decided to pass up the open door and to go on to Macedonia because he lacked peace of mind without Titus being with him. (2 Cor 2:12-13) Reaching his destination Paul says, “For when we came into Macedonia, this body of ours had no rest, but we were harassed at every turn—conflicts on the outside, fears within. But God, who comforts the downcast, comforted us by the coming of Titus…” 2 Cor 7:5-6 NIV. Apparently Paul didn’t regret passing up Troas. Not me, I’d be wallowing in hindsight saying, ‘Why didn’t I stay in Troas.’ I need to be reminded that the Lord is on the other side of every open door, and the number on the door doesn’t matter.
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Gail;
----Thank you! People have so much to say about so many things, and an over-abundance of that chatter is about open and closed doors. At one time the guilt trip inside me had risen to the level of a roiling caldron. But nothing about that guilt was reasonable. Rather, it all came from abundant chatter, chatter, chatter.
----Finally, when I started giving my primary attention to the Word of God, and secondary attention to the chatter, things became much clearer, and the caldron cooled off. I began to realize that life is full of opportunities, each one a door. Each door could lead to good or evil, and more or less of either.
----I began to understand that God gives faith to each of us according to the measure He has chosen us to have(Rom 12:3). To Paul, God gave a great measure of faith, then threw Him into a situation that carried tremendous responsibility. Paul was building the very foundation that the church would rest upon for the next two thousand years. So, when God needed Paul in Macedonia, He could not rely on the possibility that Paul would choose the door of least resistance. Knowing Paul, that would be considered the cowardly choice. God actually tapped Paul on the shoulder in a dream and told Him which door to go through (Acts 16:9). It was that important.
----Sometimes I get into situations that are very important as well. In those situations, a particular door of choice actually does become more important than the other doors. And although I would feel more comfortable with the Lord tapping me on the shoulder like He did Paul, Abraham, Moses, etc., etc., etc., Rom 12:3 bids me to not think of myself more highly than I ought to. Maybe the situation I find myself in is important, but was it as important as the situation Paul was in that night at Troas? Ha-Ha-Ha I don't think so! I'm a bitty potatoe compared to that.
----So I actually take comfort in not thinking that the door of my choosing is going to drastically alter the universe. I once lived in a strange little house that helped me keep all these doors in perspective. This house was an old house, and had once been a two story house. The ground floor of those old two story houses usually had the living and moving about rooms, and so access to the various rooms was plentiful. That meant lots of doors. So this house's moving about rooms became the entire residence, since the top story had burnt off. Both bedrooms had two doors each, the bathroom had two doors, one of which entered one of the bedrooms, the other entered the hallway into which both doors of the other bedroom entered and the other door of the one bedroom also entered. You could make all kinds of choices of which door to go through next in that house! But often you found yourself where you had been before. So all those doors impressed upon me that when the potatoes are small and the doors are many, we usually can get a couple chances or more to get things right if we just try to discern the good doors from the evil doors. If the potatoe is really big, I pray God will help.
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