Closed Doors

Have you ever had a door slammed in your face? I don’t necessarily mean in the literal sense but in the metaphorical sense. Maybe it was something that you wanted so badly, a promotion, a relationship, or a ministerial opportunity. Take a moment to think about a time in your life where you didn’t get something that you really and I mean really wanted and felt as if the figurative door shut powerfully and loudly right in your face. Got one?

How did you feel about that? Or how do you feel about that? Are you still struggling with hurt feelings or maybe with the bitterness that often accompanies longings unfulfilled? Do you ever mull it over and over in your brain till you think you will just about lose your mind? How are you doing with that slammed door?

Are you still trying to open it even though it won’t budge? Do you find yourself ignoring a door that is wide open because it isn’t the door that you wanted? Are you barely even noticing an opportunity that is blatantly open to you because your eyes are fixed on what you can’t have? Why do we do that? Why do we always want what we can’t have?

Did you know that in the book of Revelation it tells us that God is the initiator of open and closed doors?

“These are the words of him who is holy and true, who holds the key of David. What he opens no one can shut and what he shuts no one can open” Rev 3:7

Sometimes it is really hard to try to understand why God closes a door on something that seems so right for us; don’t you think? We look at it from every angle and we just can’t reason why ‘no’. Sometimes we think that God is cruel and He is holding out on us, though we would never say that out loud.

As I am working through the Bible this second day of the New Year I was once again reminded of the tender gracious care of God and those shut doors. Finding myself in the familiar account of Adam and Eve and the entrance of sin through a serpent and an apple, I related to their subsequent banishment from the garden.

“So the LORD God banished him from the Garden of Eden to work the ground from which he had been taken.” Genesis 3:23

Now that is one seriously shut door. Would you agree? Not only did God banish Adam and Eve and shut the door back to the garden but He posed guards and a flaming sword at its entrance so that they couldn’t get back in. God was making a point.

“After he drove the man out, he placed on the east side of the Garden of Eden cherubim and a flaming sword flashing back and forth to guard the way to the tree of life” Genesis 3:24

Why such harsh treatment and banishment from the Garden?

“And the LORD God said, ‘The man has now become like one of us, knowing good and evil. He must not be allowed to reach out his hand and take also from the tree of life and eat and live forever.” (emphasis mine) Genesis 3:22

Believe it or not this is a poignant example of the mercy of God. His intention wasn’t to punish Adam and Eve from enjoying the fruit of the garden but to prevent them from eating also from the tree of life and living forever. He didn’t intend for man to exist forever in the sinful state that they now found themselves. He closed the door to that possibility. God’s shut door was the best possible alternative for them.

Can you accept today that the shut door that you have been questioning God about was directly from His hand for your best interest? Can you start to look at closed doors as blessings and not as frustrations? Can you trust that God loves you enough to fill your life with His imaginations for it? Can you maybe turn from the door that is so firmly shut and fasten your gaze on the one that is wide open? Would you be willing to walk through it?