Doorways

I’ve made up my mind that the only truth that exists is God’s truth.  I am determined to believe God and that he has a plan for my life.  He promised me so in Jeremiah 29:11 – For I know the plans I have for you,” declares the LORD, “plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future.  Who am I to dispute what God says in his Word?

Believing God’s promises means that I have to build a door in my wall and then go out it.  Fear would have me believe that the door will bring bad stuff my way, but hope and faith in God says that he does all things for my good, so out the door I must go, no matter what it looks like when I open it.  Appearances can be deceiving and it may look like a dismal choice (most people would say opening that door to cancer certainly is).  But I have to make a choice – either give in to fear or walk in the power of the peace of God.  I choose God.

Fear’s greatest purpose, I’ve learned, is to make me lose my faith.  Losing my faith would be absolutely debilitating.  It robs me of all forward movement, keeping me in the same place, doing the same old things, going nowhere at all.  Next thing I know there’ll be a really deep hole where I’m standing and it will be filling in with swamp water.  Now, it’s not the swamp water I have to worry about – it’s the alligators waiting to devour me that have me shaking in my boots.

There are lots of things that steal our peace – stupid little things that aggravate and annoy us, tiny little actions by others we think are unnecessary or rude, and all that road rage on the way to work.  We let them come in and rob us of our God-given peace.  Oh, doesn’t the enemy know how to sneak in and try to lead us off-course!

Funny things is, Pastor G says, is that God wants to move us into a places that require his peace.  I know what he means; cancer is that kind of place.  Stepping out in faith and trusting God for my healing is difficult by the world’s standard, easy when God’s leading the way.  It’s a daily leading because I’m only human, but God is faithful in always bringing me a song or a word of Scripture to keep me walking in faith.

Pastor G also said that where there is fear there is also unbelief.  How did he know to say that?  Because the Holy Spirit was guiding his words – that I firmly believe.  We choose not to believe because we fear God won’t do what he says he will do.  I think that part of the problem is that we expect him to do it our way, forgetting that God’s way is not ours and cannot be judged in human terms.

Let not your heart be troubled, neither let it be afraid, God says.  The most important battle we face is what we allow to destroy our peace, our faith in God.  I know exactly what that means – I can’t count the number of times I’ve allowed someone cracking their gum to get on my nerves, or the sound of someone clearing their throat to nearly make me physically ill.  Stupid little things that don’t matter at all, yet I let them destroy my peace.  Like Pastor G says, I go to pieces instead of going to peace.  Point taken.

Christ is my deliverance from fear.  He heals, delivers, sets free, and forgets.  I don’t know any human being who can do all those things and do them so effortlessly. And when God opens a door, there’s not a soul, including the enemy, who can close it.  Oh, they may try, but they will not succeed.  God (as Pastor G says) will blow right past them and open the door anyway.  He’s that kind of God – the one and only true God.  He is our doorkeeper.

Since God is our doorkeeper, not only can he open doors but he can also close them.  Sometimes he moves them so that those things which once had access no longer do.  God can say ACCESS DENIED to all those things not of his making and that may harm us.  There’s not a hacker in the world who can get past God’s security software.  I suppose they will try but they’ve never met a firewall like God!

One analogy that I loved from Pastor G’s sermon was that Satan cannot cross the bloodline on our doorway.  Once we are Christ’s he cannot cross and God closes the door on things that once tied us up into intricate knots.  I remember in the Old Testament when the Israelites put blood on the doors to send the spirit of death away; it could not cross. Pharaoh, on the other hand, wasn’t covered by the blood, and so he lost his first-born son.  Pharaoh, you should have listened when God spoke through Moses.

Man is not my doorkeeper, nor are my circumstances.  God is my doorkeeper.  God opens and closes doors on my behalf.  It’s in the hallway between doors where I have to be careful.  I have a tendency to want to hurry and go through a door, literally kicking it down, before considering whether or not that’s the door God wants me to go through. God says it’s his door – so if I’m trying to kick it down and he wants it closed, all I’m going to come away with is a broken leg.

Sometimes God’s doorway is for privacy.  In our private closet is where he speaks to us, heals us, teaches us.  It’s here that he heals our hidden past and hides our dirty laundry away from the rest of the world, laundry that no one else needs to see and that God has already forgotten. God doesn’t expose us.  Instead he shuts the door on all our “stuff,” heals us, forgives us, and opens doors to use us. And doors that God shuts remain shut.  No man can open them again. 

Remember when they rolled a stone in front of the tomb?  How silly!  Who did they think they would stop?  A holy God of unfathomable strength?  The Christ who rose from the dead?  Crazy, crazy. He caused the stone to roll away and the stone the builders rejected walked out, a risen and glorified Savior.