Advance 2020 #05: An Open Door

Of all the literary images in history, few are more powerful than the image of a door. A door can represent a lot of things. A closed door represents security and safety. In teaching us how to pray, Jesus said, “Go into your closet and shut the door.” This is a picture of secrecy. It can also represent hiddenness. Or rejection: “She closed the door in my face.”

But it is a representation of opportunity as well. A “door” of opportunity is spoken about in Revelation 3:7-8, where we read, “To the angel of the church in Philadelphia write: 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. I know your deeds. See, I have placed before you an open door that no one can shut. I know that you have little strength, yet you have kept My word and have not denied My name.”

Jesus was saying to the Philadelphian church of that day, “I am opening a door for you….” This is a statement of the sovereignty and authority of Christ. HE opens doors. HE closes doors. HE brings opportunities to us. HE keeps us from going in the wrong direction. HE calls us through those doors.

But He also says in this passage in Revelation that He is giving us… His bride… His church… His body… an “open door that no one can shut.” When God opens a door, it stays open!

Tragically however, we can choose NOT to go through it. Sometimes we are weighed down with a sense that the open door will require too much of us. To those He replies, “I know that you have little strength.”

When God opens a door and calls us to go through it… He does not expect it to be by our strength. It is “not by power nor by strength but by My Spirit says the Lord” in Zechariah.

Maybe a door stands open to you today. God is calling you to take a step of faith to go through it. Not by relying on your own strength but on His… and who knows the blessing awaiting on the other side of that door.

What might God be calling us to through that open door? We will never know…

… without the first step.


FOR MEDITATION: I am the door….    John 10:9-10

FOR REFLECTION: Think about “open doors” in your life right now. What is stopping you from walking through them? Fear rooted in unbelief? Indecisiveness rooted in an inability to trust God? When He calls you through a door… He is always waiting for you on the other side. God never sends us without His strength… and His presence.

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