I know all the things you do, and I have opened a door for you that no one can close. You have little strength, yet you obeyed my word and did not deny me. Rev 3:8 (NLT)
In the book of Revelation, John records that this is the message God gave to the Angel of the Church in Philadelphia. These guys were a faithful bunch. They had little strength and resources. But their seemingly smallness didn’t stop them from having big hearts. They kept their lives and spirits open to the divine and his leading, and they outstretched what little they had in their hands to the community. They did not allow the smallness of their resource or influence to define them. They made choices independent from their circumstances and responded rather than reacted to what was going on around them and within them.
Because of this, God said that he had “opened a door for [them] that no man [could] close.”
A closed door blocks a pathway. It hems people into a room or space. They’re not always bad… there are some things we should close the door of our hearts to, such as hatred, greed, prejudice, cheating, etc… Then there are some doors that are meant to be opened. A closed door doesn’t mean you can’t knock, or that there isn’t a key that unlocks it or someone strong enough to open it. Some doors are closed so that we learn and mature to the point of opening them. When I have a fight with my husband (yes, it happens, we’re normal – ha!) sometimes I go into another room and shut the door, separating the space between us. We have a choice at that moment, to open the door and reconcile or leave it shut and increase the tension and gap between us.
Our choices are the greatest ‘knocks’ we can make on these doors in our lives. Doors to hope, freedom, love, forgiveness, grace, learning, growing…
This wonderful church didn’t stay hemmed in a room of smallness, of little resources, but they threw open their ‘doors’ (so to speak) anyway, regardless of what they looked like or what little public reputation or image they had. They obeyed God and did not deny his presence, his grace, or his unfolding truth to outwork in their lives. As God knocked on the doors of their hearts, they turned the key and invited him. And this simple act of being vulnerable and open to God, hiding nothing and holding nothing back, didn’t just open the door of their connection with God, it flung it wide open, it almost came off its hinges, and was locked open by God himself.
No man can close the door to your choice to respond to what happens to you or around you. Sometimes we sit in closed, small rooms and we blame the world for locking us in when all the while the power to knock on those doors that keep us in that room lies within us. We choose. No one makes us hate, or makes us greedy, or keeps us offended, or holds us down. I know for some of us, it's a difficult choice to make – to rise up out of abuse and depression and fear, but we CAN. God empowers us, strengthens, makes things that would ordinarily be impossible for us to do, possible.
And when you begin to see that our faith and hope can live independently of our physical resources and circumstances… well, no man or thing or situation can shut the door between you and the divine, you and God, you and hope, you and love. A door no man can shut, that is held open by grace and faith, is your receptivity to the divinity of God.
Be encouraged by this small but wondrous Church in Ancient Philadelphia… Ask, seek, knock… and the door WILL be opened to you.
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