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“Every time God closes a door, he’s up to something.”

A thought by John Ortberg, (2015-02-24) from his book. All the Places to Go . . . How Will You Know?: God Has Placed beforeYou an Open Door.  What Will You Do?  (p. 211). Tyndale House Publishers, Inc.. Kindle Edition. (Click on the title to go to Amazon.com to buy the book.)

Have you ever thought about that?  Oh I know we have problems with open doors.  We are afraid to step out, to risk but for sure we have problems with closed doors.  I mean, I’ve prayed and prayed and prayed and I can’t seem to get the answer I want.  We have problems with that don’t we?

Well there are many different reasons why God closes doors in our life and one of them is He has something better for us.  At the time it is hard for us to realize it but over time God shows us what is best.

Back when I was 21 I had gotten pretty serious with a young lady.  I thought she was the one but she wasn’t and I went through some years after that with some deep despair.  I wasn’t sure if God was going to open the door for me to be married.  Well when I was 27, an old man of 27, on November 9, 1974 I married Margaret Ann Fletcher. That was the best thing that has ever happened to me outside of my relationship with God.  We have been together for over 40 years.  Now here is the point.  The week we got married, Margaret turned 18.  From 21 to 27 there was a growing up period for Margaret to be old enough for us to get married.  God knew what He was doing. 

John said, “Thank God he sometimes says no.  I was at my reunion some time ago, and I saw a girl I had been nuts about. Now it was years later, and once more the same prayer got whispered: ‘Thank God!’ I know it got whispered because I heard her whisper it.”  I love that.

John also says, “It is fundamental to the kind of person God is and to the nature of prayer that God always reserves the right to say no, because he knows what will lead to better outcomes than we do. For every kind of power human beings have access to, we find a way to use it with great destructiveness. It’s true for verbal power, financial power, political power, nuclear power. Imagine that in prayer we had access to supernatural power that would always make things happen the way we wanted them to happen. It would be a disaster. Anybody who thinks that closed doors disprove the efficacy of prayer just has not thought about prayer very deeply. Prayer is not an incantation. It is a talk with a Person — a very wise Person. So sometimes God will say no, and thank God he does.”


It is all the matter of who we trust, isn’t it?
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