Kindred Fuel: did God just open (or close) that door?

Maybe you've heard about what God does with doors.

God opens doors. Or God closes doors.

We walk through doors that God opens for us. We walk away from the doors that God closes to us. Sounds fairly simple, doesn't it?

Perhaps. But not always.

For most of my life, I've heard this paradigm in the context of how to discern situations and life choices. And for most of my life, this made sense to me.

But then I heard a talk once that challenged my reflex thinking, and I recorded the quote and wrote it down because it rocked me that much.

"Christians get a little too caught up in the open door, closed door thing. They say, 'Well, I'm praying about getting married, or trying some new job, or learning some new skill, and I'm going to see if the Lord opens a door or closes a door.

You know, sometimes the door is open. Sometimes the door is closed. And sometimes you need to tear the door off the hinges.

Sometimes you have to say, 'This is a closed door, and God isn't going to make it easy for me.' You look at all the quest stories in the Bible, time after time, God throws up one obstacle, maybe two obstacles, puts people off, makes them face some barrier, and after they face that barrier and persevere, then God gives it to them." -Dr. DD

This continually encourages me.

God's plans for life seldom fit so simply into a closed door/open door paradigm.

As I've accrued life and experiences, I'd rarely describe God's will for my life feeling as easy as waltzing through a wide-open door. In fact, few things in life are that easy (except of course, walking through actual doors, particularly supermarket doors that open as you approach).

Usually, it feels like...

-building the door frame,

-securing the frame in place for the door,

-sanding the frame,

-pulling out the splinters accrued from sanding the frame,

-finding the tools to build the door,

-finding the lumber,

-and THEN getting to work on building a door.

A takeaway point from this?

Often, what's best for life and what God desires for me will involve actual struggle, because ... it's actual life. It will take real effort, and it'll rarely be as easy as walking through an open door. It'll require more of me (and of you) than that.

Give this some thought.