By Chris WittsTuesday 23 Apr 2024Morning Devotions with Chris WittsFaithReading Time: 1 minute
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Transcript:
We often hear it said, When God shuts one door he opens another. Those words are not found in the Bible anywhere but the statement is basically true.
Alexander Graham Bell once said, “When one door closes another door opens, but we so often look so long and so regretfully upon the closed door, that we do not see the ones which open for us.”
Are you guilty of that? If a door closes in your life; if you don’t get that one job you expected and hoped for, do you focus so much on what you lost that you don’t see any other opportunities that may be opening up right in front of you? If you were hoping to buy a certain car and all of a sudden that door closes and someone else buys the car before you, do you mope around so much that you don’t see other cars that are just as good if not better right in front of you? If a door closes it closed, move on to another.
With so much happening in the world today—the recession, job losts, etc—it seems like all the doors are closing right in front of our faces. It seems like there’s no way out of the situation we’re in. We pray and pray (day and night) asking God to open up the windows of opportunity for us, but what do you do when all the doors seem to be closed? There’s encouragement for you today. When one door closes another opens! Sometimes God will close a door to protect us from a situation, or even bless us in ways that we may never have thought about.
God has a plan for you
There are times when we pray and ask God for things: God bless me with a job; give me that promotion at work; help me to pay my bills. We ask God for a lot of things. However, we never ask God to open doors he wants to be open and shut doors he wants to be closed. God has something better in store for me. My plans are not always his plans.
As strange as it may seem, God has another plan for you. Do you believe that?
And we know that in all things God works for the good of those who love him, who have been called according to his purpose. (Romans 8:28)
Sometimes the things we pray for aren’t the things God has in store for us. Often, we pray for little things when God wants to bless us with bigger things. Sometimes we pray for God to bless us with the wrong things. You may be going through a situation right now feeling as though nothing is working out for your good. You might want to give up and throw the towel in. I want to encourage you today and tell you not to give up.
When God closes one door he opens up another. It could be that God wants you to have or be somewhere else in life. Or that he simply has another route for you to go down. Sometimes we have to hear No in order to get to where God wants us to be. Sometimes the door closes not because God is against us, but simply because it’s used as a tool to guide us where God wants us to be.
God is guiding you
When you feel as though you want to lose hope, don’t! You want to give up; don’t do it. Know that God is with you. Guiding and ordering your footsteps. He has a specific path just for you to travel down but sometimes as children wondering we lose track and go down the wrong path. And he will put road blocks in the wrong paths to get us going down the right path.
Be encouraged and know that God has the key to open every door; to change every situation and open new windows of opportunities. Be encouraged and know that God does everything for a reason; not for our downfall, but for our good and to his glory. The road blocks we face is simply God guiding us. Be encouraged in Jesus name knowing that when one door closes another opens.
Have you ever had something like this happen? You are going along with plans or doing this or that and all of a sudden, bam! It’s like God closes a door and prevents you from heading in that direction or doing some activity anymore—a career, job, a relationship, a vacation, or even something as simple as a planned trip the grocery store.
God knows what is best for you
Have you ever wondered why God closes some doors and opens others? In God’s sovereign wisdom, grace, and love, I have to believe he is leading us to what is best. The Apostle Paul said in Romans 8:28, “And we know that in all things God works for the good of those who love him, who have been called according to his purpose.” No person, no organisation, or group really knows what’s best for you, whether it be for the short term, or for eternity. Only God really knows what’s best for us, and he’s the only one really able to do something about it.
God understands things, and can see things that we just can’t see.
God understands things, and can see things that we just can’t see, things that will hurt us or others, things that are not in our best interest. He even knows which things are better for us and will help us grow. He even knows what will bless us in the long run.
Like a loving parent who tells their child No when they want to do something that may cause that child harm. Or when the parent forces their child to do something that they may not want to do at first, but then they excel at it and even like what they were forced to do, we have to believe that God knows us even better than a loving parent.
We need to learn and be convinced of the fact that God sees beyond these closed doors, and so we need to learn to trust him when those doors close.