God’s Open Doors

My blind friend and house-mate, Marilyn, went to the utility room to let her Guide dog out and came staggering back in holding her head. I’d left the back door open and she’d walked straight into it, banging her head. It was a shock to her and I felt bad that I’d left it open.

I found my thoughts turning towards doors and how they are used in the Bible to explore the theme of God’s guidance - Revelation 2:8 says, ‘I have set before you an open door that no one can shut.’ Jesus also called himself a door or a gate. Apart from the door to salvation, the open door idea seems to refer to God’s opportunities that he is calling us to step through in faith.

The physical door I’d left open, hurt Marilyn, but God’s open doors are not literal doors that we can walk into as well as go through. Rather they are indications of things he may be setting before us to do for him and ways he wants us to have vision and expectation in our lives.

What do those doors look like?

I long to hear God’s voice in my life and follow the right paths, but sometimes it seems hard to discern what he is saying.

Marilyn and I are thinking of moving.

Several years ago we had a sense (one of the ways God guides) that we should be moving to Eastbourne from Kent where we’ve lived for 30 years. We put our house on the market and started searching for a new home. We were sure we had heard him but couldn’t find anywhere suitable and no one came to view ours! After 2 years of searching, hoping and waiting we took ours off the market again as we’d only had two people come to view in all that time. Had we got it wrong? With my deafness I get things wrong all the time when I try to physically hear people. It’s frustrating in normal life and equally it can be frustrating to feel we’ve got it wrong in our spiritual lives when we long to be following Jesus. But I am realising that as well as being in the right place (house and town) God also wants us to grow in our trust and faith. He knows our hearts and the longing we all have to be close to him and do his works.

His timing is perfect but it’s never the same as our timing. His agenda is different as he is constantly seeking for us to go deeper in his love and experience of him. Sometimes that means waiting on him and recognising ways he is speaking to us or revealing his plans to us and, in parallel, growing in our courage to step out too.

But God has promised to set open doors before us all who seek him and he always keeps his promises.

A month ago, a friend casually asked if we still wanted to sell as his son may be interested in our house. We were shocked as we’d laid the idea of moving, down before the Lord. But in a matter of days, the son and his wife came to visit, fell in love with our house and made an offer! We started searching again and may possibly have found a house in Eastbourne. There are lots of uncertainties and challenges including needing to see if it is viable to make it more accessible inside, but God has given many signs including the offer coming privately as that has been a pattern with Marilyn before. We discovered that a lady in the Open Ears family lives literally around the corner from the possible new house and invited us there for a cuppa when we went to explore the area! Another part of God’s jigsaw?

God sets open doors of opportunity before us all. Will we go through and find the fullness of life and growth he has for us? It feels safer sometimes to stay where we are, either literally or in our faith journeys. For Marilyn and me, it will be a huge thing to leave Kent. We have dear friends here and our ministry is based here. It will be mammoth for Marilyn to learn not just a new house but an entire new town. But what does God want to bring about that humanly we can’t see yet?

He says in Jeremiah 29:11 ‘I know the plans I have for you, plans to prosper and not to harm you. Plans to give you hope and a future.’

He is good in all his ways and will never open a door that will hurt us like the door Marilyn hit herself upon. But his doors certainly challenge us and make us step out into the unknown. But as we do that, he is there waiting, ready to show us amazing new things and bring beautiful new fruit from our lives.

Prayer

Thank you for your open doors Lord. Thank you that you always promise to guide me. I don’t want to miss any open door you’ve set before me. Please give me the courage to hear your voice, recognise what you are showing me and go through into all you have for me. Amen.