When God Closes A Door, God Often Opens A Window Transcript

Would you pray with me? Heavenly Father, thank you for gathering here this day to hear your word read and proclaimed. We thank you that your spirit is moving among us. We ask that our hearts would be open to receive the lessons that you would have in store for us, that we might feel the presence moving, that we may know that your spirit is guiding us from here out into the world to proclaim your good news to all that would hear it. May the words of my mouth and the meditations of all our hearts be pleasing to you. In Christ's name, we pray, Amen. 

Challenges of Closed Doors, Open Windows

When God closes a door, he opens a window. That's this week's saying, and it sounds good. It means that usually, we say this when somebody has had a letdown. Maybe somebody was applying for a job, and they didn't get it, or some hold up that they didn't expect. And it's said in a way supposed to offer comfort, like all of these other sayings, or most of them that we've talked about, that this isn't the end, that this point that you've reached is not the way things are going to stay, that there is a path forward and on its surface, this sounds good. We want people to know that the way things are is different from the way things will remain. We want people to know that they're not stuck, that God has not simply closed a door in their face, abandoned them, and said you're on your own from now on. We want people to know that good news. But the second half of that saying gets us into trouble. 

When God closes a door, he opens a window. Now, there are a couple of reasons why this gets us into trouble if we think about it. One this suggests that our paths in life, the journeys we make, the things we're trying to achieve, and where we're trying to get to are linear. When a door closes, a window will open up, and you climb through the window and you keep going. That the path from here to there is just a straight line. You might get an occasional slowdown with a closed door, but you won't stay there for long. This short time is sometimes the case. 

Frequently, our journey in life, our journey of faith, our journey in the life of wherever we're trying to do as we honor God with our living or go through life, are not always linear. There are setbacks, and sometimes we have to sit and wait. There are times when a door closes, and that area, that region, that part of life is closed off to us, and that's hard to say, that's hard to hear, especially when the door is recently closed. It's hard to find comfort in that because we're left asking why that door is closed? Why doesn't God want me to go there? Questions lead to uncertainty, and questions lead to angst and anxiety. We don't like to sit. This idea that God closes doors and then opens windows can also lead to this understanding of the Christian faith that somehow our lives will be made easy, that yes, a door will close, but we can always get to where we want to go, and it's going to necessarily be easy. 

But I've had to climb through some windows due to closed doors. In fact, I've had to send Joshua in through some open windows because of closed doors. I try not to use my kids as examples in my sermon illustrations so as not to embarrass them, but this is on us. He was about two or three at the time. Two. Rebecca says she's much better at those dates than I am. 

We were going to the aquarium or the zoo, one of those two, and we had loaded into the car, or we had gathered all of our stuff, we had pulled the door behind us, and all of a sudden, we realized that our car keys and house keys were still in the house. I have done this more times than I care to admit. There are a few times when I've had to climb into my dining room window and have a clear view of the major road that we lived on in Springfield, and I'm waiting for people to call the cops because somebody is blatantly breaking into somebody's house over here. But it was the only door I could reach from the ground, the habit of locking my keys in the house. Anyway, on this particular day, we visited the aquarium to meet some friends. We had a time frame that we needed to get there. We needed to go, and, like I occasionally do, I shut the door. 

As soon as you pull the door shut, I don't know if you've ever done this, but it's almost as soon as you hear the door click that you immediately realize that you forgot something inside that you absolutely need, especially your keys. You couldn't get that moment of inspiration before you poured the door closed. It's that click, whether a car, a house, or something. It can't be the only one that's happened. So anyway, fortunately, we had our front window open. It was only, yay, high off the ground, and so we decided to push Joshua in through the window.

Two-year-old Joshua, the purse, and the keys were in the living room. We could see it, or right there in the hallway, you could see it from the window. And we put Joshua in the window and two-year-old him, as bless his heart, as we cheer him on from outside the window, saying right over there, grab the purse. Right over there, see it, see it, you can get it and bring it here. His two-year-old walking such that it eventually catches on to go over into the hallway to grab the purse or the keys and bring them to us in the window. We were able to get the keys, unlock the door, and then we were able to grab our son, which we had shoved through the window into a locked house, and move on our way. Perhaps not the best experience or example of good parenting, as we put our kid into a locked building, hoping he'll eventually come back to the window. However, we trusted him then or were just exhausted from having a two-year-old. We needed to get on our way. 

But the whole point of that is why I'm telling you this story is that when we talk about God closing a door and opening a window, we're talking about the same space. We're talking about the same thing. We're talking about why would God close a door so we can't get in and then immediately open a window so that we can get into the space that he just closed the door on? It just doesn't make sense. When God closes a door for us, perhaps for a while, he may open that door again. The door may not be closed permanently, and that may be his plan for us or his desire for us that what we want, what we're seeking, the answer may not be yet, so he closes that door for a while. That's one option. Or, if he closes the door, the answer may never be. He may be closing that door on us so that we don't go into that space; we don't try to explore it further or down a path that he doesn't want us to go. 

There's a Garth Brooks song that often stands out in my head. It's called Unanswered Prayers. Some of God's greatest gifts are unanswered prayers. If you've never heard it, I get the idea of that song. It's about a guy who meets up with a high school flame, and he is glad that he did not end up with that girl because of his life and the wife he had later in life. And he realizes that sometimes God's greatest gift is unanswered prayers. The answer was likely given. The answer was no that the door was closed. The door to that relationship was closed, and he didn't try to enter through a window. 

I think, more often than not, God closes a door for us. Then we try to make a window, we try to open that space up, we try to go around God's prompting, God's desire for us to not go in there yet or not go in there at all, and instead of listening to God, we try to find another way in. We usually cause ourselves harm in the process. Things don't always work out like a two-year-old grabbing some keys to let us in, but the goal is the same. Now, what if, instead, God is using those closed doors, not as a way for us to find our way around to get back to where we want to go, but as closing doors so that we might either wait and prepare ourselves or move on to something better that God has in store for us. We talked about a few weeks ago, where we talked about God's plan not being a blueprint but a way of living in our world. We may not be ready for a way to live in that space if we go through that door. I don't know how many times over the last few weeks. 

Granted, I don't buy tickets. But, God, if you would give me that one and a half billion dollars on the lottery right now, surely I can handle it. Indeed, I'll be one of the few people who handle it responsibly, do well, and don't ruin my life by winning the lottery. So, god, surely you can trust me and open that door for me, and I'll honor you. Now. I didn't win. I can't say that's because God didn't make me win. I don't think God shapes the number, so individuals win or not; it's random. But if God did say he was involved in that and making that choice, I'm sure he would have seen that what I just said was probably phony. 

I'm herald with money. I make poor choices. All of the time, I spend money on things that I don't need, I don't want, and may or may not necessarily be good for me. Like that Garth Brooks song, The Unanswered Prayers, I talked about. How many times did he pray that that girl? That God would make that girl his, Probably saying the same thing: God, you can trust me, everything will go fine, leave me, I'll be good, just make her mine. God closed the door. That God often does when there are things that are not good for us, not meant for us, or won't build up our character. So, as you think about your life, if you think about those times when maybe God felt like a door was closing, or God had closed the door on you, those times when you thought you had a clear path. You just wanted to get from here A to B, and it seemed like it was just such an easy route to take, and the door was closed along the way; in today's passages, we see in Isaiah a call to trust in him, that God is doing a new thing, and to trust in him to do that. I think we can learn from that, we can envelop that, that when a door closes, when something changes, when transformation happens, and it feels like something is closing off or closing down or cutting us off or is just so radically different that we need to look out for the new thing that God is doing and trust that he is still at work, that when this door closes, another door to another space, another way of being will open up. And if we're too busy trying to get into the old space, going in through a window, building a window, or taking a wrecking ball to the brick wall so that we can get in, we miss out on seeing the new thing that God is doing, the new thing that God is opening doors for, and we refuse to step through. 

The apostle Paul. His journey of sharing the gospel to the known world, to the Greco-Roman world at the time, was certainly not linear. We saw in today's passage there were places he was supposed to go, and there were places that the Holy Spirit had closed off to him for some reason. He said he wanted to go to Asia, but the Spirit of Jesus told him to wait, and he was limited. Now, he could have said Well, maybe God didn't want me to go by land. I'll go by boat. Instead, he said, Maybe that area is cut off from me; maybe I am not supposed to go to Asia right now. Instead, he went to all those cities, I am sure I mispronounced, and you were glad we were not a part of your reading today when he did that. When he went to the places that God had opened up. Instead of fixating on the doors that had closed, he spread the gospel, and their numbers grew daily. 

Decisions and Open Doors

It's tough for us as humans, for some reason, that when God closes a door, it's tough for us to not just sit at the door knocking and waiting and begging to be led into what we think we want and what we think is good for us. It's hard to step back from that door and say, God, where do you want me to go? And to notice the doors opening in front of us. There's a small book called Let Your Life Speak by Parker Palmer. It's one of the required readings of our clergy seeking to answer God's call, but it's not specifically for clergy and only for clergy. He recounts this conversation with this Quaker woman, and there's this understanding and the Quaker faith of the way, of God's way, opening and then stepping through it. And he goes to this woman, and he's trying to discern his own calling, and he says, how do you know where God wants you to go? How do you know the way that God wants you to go? She thinks about it for a moment and says, I haven't always seen the path that God wants me to take when I'm going on the journey; I haven't always seen the way ahead of me that God wants me to take. But you know what I have seen? I've seen ways close behind me, doors close behind me, the way closed behind me to say that was not the way close to go.

We have this multitude of paths ahead of us, any one of which could seem like a good thing, and we can be paralyzed by that complexity. We can be paralyzed by the sheer number of options ahead of us. And we sit, and we wait, and God shows me which way to go, which path to take, which one to decide. There are so many open doors. One is the right one. We sit, and we wait, and we never take a step. So not only can we pay, paralyzed behind closed doors, but now we're paralyzed behind open doors Because there are too many. You may have experienced this whenever you've gone to pretty much any diner I've ever been to, and you open up the menu. It's about eight pages with about 20 to 40 different options on each page, and it takes you what might be a good half hour of looking at all of the options, and you can't decide. Usually, Mike, that's what happens to me. The more complex the menu, the more options, the longer it takes me to choose which one I will have, and that's just food. 

What I feel like God often does for us when we're standing in front of a multitude of open doors is he's asking us to step forward, trust in Him, take a step, not give up, and not be stuck behind a closed door and to not be paralyzed by a multitude of open doors, but start walking, start taking particular doors. Sometimes, they will be closed ahead of us, and sometimes they will be closed behind us. Then, if it's closed ahead of us, we step back and go with a different turn. Closed doors aren't a sign that we're unfaithful. Closed doors, doors closing in front of us, not a sign that God has abandoned us. They're not a sign that we're stuck. They're a sign that we started heading in a particular direction that wasn't meant for us. Sometimes, we need to step back and head in a new direction, and that door may close on us as well as it goes to a new turn. 

I've yet to hear that booming voice from the sky saying do this and don't do that. I am curious to know how many times I've asked for it. I do know faithfully following after God, seeking to live as he wants us to live in this world, and being willing to take a step, even amid uncertainty, when it seems challenging. We take those steps. We will quickly find out if that's how we're supposed to go and if that way will honor God and carry us. Sometimes, the answer is no. Sometimes, the answer is to wait. Sometimes, the answer is a door. But if God closes the door, we only answer the push-through like a wrecking or sneak-in-through. Those things are the kinds of things that I'll spring. 

So, as we progress and go about our life this week or in the coming weeks, look back and say, where are God's open doors? Where is God's closed door? And when God has closed a door, why would he have done that? Was it a blessing that that door was closed to you? Indeed, it was a challenge. There's no way around that. Where's God open doors? Where is God doing a new thing in your life? 

What are some doors that are open to us that we might step through, faithfully share the gospel, so that all may come to know who Christ is and how much they love Him, so that they can bring their doubts and their questions, their uncertainties, to a place where those things can be expressed and, in community, find answers, at least direction, but at the very least somebody else who's got the same questions they do and are still walking along the journey? Some of these doors that we walk through may feel foreign. They may feel like they're being left behind or not being thought of. Some of the things that we do as a church are for the people who are not yet here but that we hope to come. The challenge is to step forward, figure out and discern that call, and faithfully answer, but to always be moving forward. 

Moving Forward Through Open Doors

We have to move beyond that point where we're staring at a multitude of open doors and get to the point where we've picked one and moved forward, and maybe that way isn't the right way, and the door will be closed. But that will guide us. Guide us to the next door, the next one. We can only say with certainty that we stay paralyzed, and with the uncertainty of the open doors, we won't move anywhere. I can almost guarantee that's not a faithful. Which doors are open for you? Where do you need to take a step? Where are the places that you can't quite decide? Look back, forward, and faithfully walk, and you will see doors close and open. But if you're faithful on the journey, you will be blessed. Our hymn of response today.