48. WHEN THAT DOOR WOULDN’T BUDGE

(The Faith Forum Series – Batch 3)

You’ve been praying for a promotion for months but nothing has happened. You’ve been approaching the throne of grace for years for a spouse, a house, a baby (in a marriage), some kind of healing or breakthrough but nothing. You see doors opening for everyone else it seems but yours remain closed and not just that but locked and not just that but padlocked.

What do you do when you’ve prayed and you’ve wept and you’ve poured out your heart to God and you’ve praised and worshipped until your voice is almost gone and you’ve fasted and repented and examined yourself every way you know how and you’re fighting daily to do God’s will and not your own and to walk in the Spirit and not the flesh and so you’ve let go of gossip (or at least you are trying your utmost best to do so), you’ve distanced yourself from troublemakers like he wants you to and you’ve changed this and addressed that and worked on the character flaws within yourself that you’ve asked God to reveal to you and you are trying truly to be more like Jesus…yet the door you need to move you forward, refuses to budge?

Some days you wish you could find the key or a hammer or something. Other days you feel tempted to shove yourself against that door with all your might with the hope that it would just shatter to pieces. If it did, it would serve it right for keeping you stuck in this dreadful prison! Then you return to reality and you know that such efforts are futile.

You’ve gone from moments of elation, when you’ve searched and found a key in that room and rushed excitedly to the door, to finding a key in the room and slowly and reluctantly moving forward because the keys have a track record of never working!

You feel stuck and that clock on the wall keeps getting louder and louder and LOUDER. Oh, you wish it would stop it’s silly ticking! After all, how heartless can it be!

And the door just sits there and remains shut.

You are weary and tired. You’ve kicked and you’ve pushed and you’ve shoved but yet that door still stands as a formidable barrier with not even a dent to account for all of your efforts.

Your destiny, your future is on the other side but for today, like the many other days that have gone before (seemingly wasted), you have no choice but to sit here.

I don’t really have the answer, other than to say that there is nothing more that you can do but to continue all that you have been doing. There is nothing more that you can do but to continue believing. Doors have a way of opening, when you’re not really looking.

Perhaps you should take your eyes off the door for a while. Maybe you should focus on other things and perhaps you can pray for the doors in other people’s lives to open. It’s not all about you, remember?

When you have done all that you can and you’re still stuck on the other side of a door that refuses to open, all you can do is continue trusting and learn patience in waiting.

God has the key. Of that I am convinced. Believe me, if he wants that door to open, it will open. All he has to do is speak the word and it shall be done. It is His word, not yours, that has the power to change your circumstance.

If the wall is still up therefore, then its not his will…as yet. As painful and frustrating as the wait is, that door is serving a purpose.

Maybe he wants you to attend to some things still on this side of the room. The sooner you get to it, including the things you know he wants you to do, maybe the sooner that door will open. Maybe he wants to spend some more time with you on this side of the room. Maybe he wants to prepare you some more for the other side of that door and all that it will entail.

Even when we don’t understand God and life makes absolutely no sense, we have to keep trusting him.

When God wants you to move forward and he has determined that it is the right time, that door will no longer be able to block your path, whether this means it has to open or it has to come down.

God had the Israelites march around the great wall of Jericho seven times but when he was good and ready, that wall came down!

And when you are allowed to step into your future, you will realize why God kept you behind that door for so long. The reason or reasons may be varied but you will find, that his timing was best.

And maybe you’ll find that you were a caterpillar in a cocoon all along. And maybe you were detained by God so that he could fully shape you and mould you and transform you into who he wanted you to be. Maybe, he kept you there until your wings had fully developed, so that upon your emergence, you could fly to unprecedented levels.

Or maybe you will find that that door never opens because it is not the door that God wants you to go through. If so, you may find another door or a window or some other form of escape in that room, that was previously hidden.

You may have thought that your destiny lay on the other side of the first door, when in fact, it was on the other side of this one.

(Written on 18th April, 2016)

Dear Reader, be sure to check out the song: ‘IN HIS TIME’ by Maranatha Singers on YouTube. This song has been a tremendous blessing to me and I know it will be to you as well, as you wait on God.