When Lucy
entered the wardrobe, she was looking for a place to hide, what she discovered
was the magical land of Narnia.
Sometimes
God opens doors for us that lead us to people & places we would not have
expected to go to. This is exactly what happened to Paul & his companions
in Acts, but not before two other doors had closed to them.
Paul was on his second missionary journey 49-52 AD, travelling with Silas & joined by
Timothy in Lystra & later on Luke – who wrote the Gospel & the book of
Acts.
In Acts 16:6-7 we
read ‘Paul and his companions travelled throughout the region
of Phrygia and Galatia, having been kept by the Holy Spirit from preaching
the word in the province of Asia. When they came to the border of Mysia, they tried to
enter Bithynia, but the Spirit of Jesus would not allow them to.’
Sometimes
God opens doors, and sometimes he closes them.
Vicar visiting parishioner –
leaves note with Rev 3:20 written on it ‘Here
I am! I stand at the door and knock. If anyone hears my voice and opens the
door, I will come in and eat with that person, and they with me.’ Later that
day same card pushed through Vicarage door with Genesis 3:10 written on it
"I heard you in the garden, and I was afraid because I was naked; so I
hid."
Luke doesn’t
tell us how the Holy Spirit stopped Paul & his companions from entering
both the province of Asia & Bithynia, or how they felt about it. Maybe they sensed that it wasn’t the right
place to go to, or maybe there was something that prevented them from going like
illness or opposition, or maybe they received a word of knowledge or prophecy.
When God closes a door, it can be hard, we can be left feeling dejected
and disappointed, especially if it was something we had our heart set upon,
something we felt called to, and something we’d been praying about.
Applying for
jobs – Ambleside
But a closed door can be as much an answer to prayer as an open door. It
might be God’s way of saying:
This is not the right way for you.
OR
It’s not the right door to pass through right now, but maybe later. OR
There are things I want to deal with in your life first, before I allow
this door to open. OR
Sometimes a closed door can be a real blessing, it can be God’s way of
saying “I have something different, something better in stall for you.”
Ruth Graham (late wife of Billy
Graham) once told an audience once, “God has not always answered my prayers. If
He had, I would have married the wrong man—several times.”
When God close a door, it’s often to enable another door to open. This is what happened to David Livingstone, the Scottish missionary
and explorer who first tried to go to China, but prevented by outbreak of First
Opium War in 1839, & was led instead to Africa. He is known as "Africa's greatest
missionary, & became an anti-slavery crusade & through his influence
the East African slave trade was brought to an end. He wrote a letter to the
editor of the New York Herald “if my disclosures
regarding the terrible… slavery should lead to the suppression of the East
Coast slave trade, I shall regard that as a greater matter by far than the
discovery of all the Nile sources together.”
It’s also what happened to Paul & his companions. ‘During the night Paul had a
vision of a man of Macedonia standing and begging him, “Come
over to Macedonia and help us.” After Paul had seen the vision,
we got ready at once to leave for
Macedonia, concluding that God had called us to preach the gospel to them’.
Paul was clearly open to the prompting of the Holy Spirit. How do we discern the will of God for our
own lives?
1) Walk with God.
If you want to
know God’s plan for your life, then you must learn to walk with God, to develop
a relationship with Him. Christianity is all about relationship rather than
just religion.
And so you
must cultivate your relationship with God. You must seek to know
Him and not just seek to know about Him. Jesus said: My sheep listen to my voice; I
know them, and they follow me. John 10:27
Spend time in His Word - many people want to know what God’s plan
is for their lives, but they overlook the fact that God has already shown us
what His will is, on so many issues through Scripture.
Take time for prayer. When you pray – give space for God to speak
to you in the silence. Write down the question(s) you want to ask God, and
listen to God’s spirit to see what comes. Write it down, and compare what
you’ve written to what Scripture teaches us about God.
Seek wise Christian counsellors. Share it with other Christians who know you
well, and who know & love the Lord & ask them what they think of it.
Proverbs 11:14: Where there is no counsel, the people fall; but in
the multitude of counsellors there is safety.
Get involved in
church and join a small group, go on retreat, take every opportunity you can
find to nurture your relationship with God & get to know his voice.
Proverbs 3:5-6: Trust in the Lord with all your heart, and lean not
on your own understanding; In all your ways acknowledge Him, and He shall
direct your paths.
2) Surrender your
will to God’s.
Many times when we
say we are seeking God’s will, what we are really wanting to say to God is
this: “OK, God, here’s what I’m planning to do. Now I need you to rubber stamp
this, all right?”
If you want to
know what God’s will is for your life, you must be committed to doing whatever
it is that He desires for you to do.
Romans 12:1-2: Therefore, I urge you, brothers and sisters,
in view of God’s mercy, to offer your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and pleasing to
God—this is your true and proper worship. Do not conform to the pattern of
this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind. Then you will be able
to test and approve what God’s will is—his good, pleasing and perfect will.
When we surrender
to Him, that is when He really begins to direct our steps.
3) Listen to your
heart.
Psalms 37:4-5
Delight yourself also in the LORD, and He shall
give you the desires of your heart. Commit your way to the LORD, trust also in
Him, and He shall bring it to pass. (NKJV)
When we are close
to God, He begins to shape our desires so that you desire the things that He
has already called you to do.
4) Take a look at
your circumstances.
Look out for
God-incidences – appointment to Carlisle.
The closing of the
door to Asia & Bithynia & the vision Paul received, were God
incidences. God often uses closed doors to show us clearly what He does NOT
want us to do. And He also uses open doors at times to show us what He DOES
want us to do.
Sometimes the only
way to know if a door is one God wants us to pass through, is to test it.
We never know what will happen when we go
through a door God opens.
In the case of
Paul & his companions, it resulted in the Gospel being taken to Europe for
the very first time.
It resulted in the
encounter with Lydia in the city of Philippi. Lydia was clearly an important
& influential person in the city, a seller of purple cloth, she was also a worshipper
of God, in other words a Jew. But on
hearing Paul speak, she gave her life to Jesus, and she and her household were
baptised, and they became the first Christian converts in Europe.
It marked a
turning point in the spread of the Gospel, spreading for the first time ever
into Europe.
This would not
have happened, if God hadn’t closed certain doors to Paul, and opened
another.
Open doors are not
always the easiest doors to pass through. If God opens a door, it doesn’t
necessary mean it will be the easy path to take, but if God has opened it, it
would foolish not to walk through it.
Think about your life at the moment. Is God closing some doors, and
opening others? What might he want to
say to you about this? If you are
sitting there thinking, I have no idea if God is opening or closing doors in my
life, then pray about it. Ask him to show you how he might wish to use you, and
the people He is leading you to, just as He led Paul to Lydia. Amen.
- Can you think of a time when God opened or closed a door in your life?
- Is there a door you would like to see opened, but it’s not? What might God be saying to you through this?
- Is God opening a door for your now? How can you test whether it is from God or not?
- We are all called to be God’s witnesses, who might God be wanting you to share your faith with?
To Do:
- Pray this week that God may open a new door to you - what could it be?
- Pray that God may lay on your heart one person He’d like you to share your faith with this coming week – who might this be?
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