I Am Waiting For A Door To Open

He can tell you every door.

The job in another county that came up in the third year and went to somebody else. The house that fell through twice. The conversation with a man about a thing they were going to do together, that started well and just went quiet and was never mentioned again by either of them.

Nine years of that, and he has a way of reading it that has become completely automatic.

A door closes, that is an answer. A stretch of quiet, that is a no, or at least a not yet. A thing that goes well, that would be the door opening, except that nothing has gone quite well enough to count and he is aware, at some level, that he has never actually specified what counting would look like.

He is fifty-two, on a porch, in the good light, with coffee, and three people he has known his whole life are on the steps arguing about a fence.

And what he is thinking, and what he has been thinking on and off for nine years, is: I do not want to force anything.

That is the whole method. It is not laziness and nobody who knows him would call it that. It comes from a real conviction that a man who moves before God opens something is a man making his own way, and he has watched two people he respects do exactly that and it did not go well for either of them.

So he waits, and he reads, and nine years have gone by, and nothing has opened, and he has begun to wonder whether the closed doors were the answer all along and the answer was no.

What is not coming on this page

Let me say it plainly, because you are a plain man and you deserve it.

Nothing here is going to tell you what you are for. There is no list at the bottom, no exercise, nothing dressed up as insight about you.

And nothing here is going to tell you that nine years of waiting was disobedience. It was not. You were guarding against forcing your own way, and you have watched that go badly for people you respect, and that is a real conviction honestly held.

And nothing here is going to hand you a plan or a direction or anything that reaches past this week.

You are not being corrected and you are not being handed a program. That is not caution on my part. Scripture handles this in one verse that draws a line down the middle of the whole question, and the Holy Spirit has never once needed a man to read a circumstance correctly before He would deal with him.

The verse that splits the question

Here is the sentence, and it does something surgical.

The secret things belong unto the LORD our God: but those things which are revealed belong unto us and to our children for ever, that we may do all the words of this law.Deuteronomy 29:29

Two categories, and a wall between them.

Secret things belong to Him. Which includes what is going to happen, why the job went to somebody else, what would have been if the house had gone through, and the whole shape of the next nine years.

Things which are revealed belong to us. Which is the written word, and the ordinary duties in front of a man, and the things he already knows to be true and right.

And then the purpose clause: that we may do all the words of this law. The revealed half is given so it can be acted on.

Now here is the thing worth sitting with on a porch. Reading doors is an attempt to get information out of the first category. Not by rebellion. By hopeful inference. It is a man trying to work out the secret things from the outside of them.

You have spent nine years working in the category Scripture assigns to God, and there is a second category with your name on it that was given specifically so it could be acted on. I am not stretching that. Deuteronomy 29:29 divides the two and assigns the revealed half to us with a purpose clause attached, and the Holy Spirit is the one who takes a written line like that and lands it on a man on a porch in the good light.

Doors are not nothing, and they are not a language

Now let me be careful, because I am not going to tell you that circumstances mean nothing.

They mean something. Paul talks about a door being opened to him and about being hindered. God closes and opens things and Scripture says so plainly.

What Scripture does not do is treat circumstances as a language you can read.

Nobody in the Bible works out what to do by studying which things went well. Paul does not conclude anything from being shipwrecked. Joseph does not read the pit as a no. The pattern, over and over, is people doing the next obvious right thing in front of them and God working the circumstances around that, and the reading is done afterward, in retrospect, if at all.

You have been treating an event as a message when the word treats events as His business and the next obvious duty as yours. That is Deuteronomy 29:29 in its own division, and the Spirit who searches all things has been on that porch for nine years and has not been sending you signals you failed to decode.

And the week is small

Here is where I want to be exact, because a man who has waited nine years hears start and thinks of a door.

You are not being asked to force anything. You are not being asked to make a move, choose a direction, or take a risk with your life.

One thing in front of you this week. Something ordinary that is already there and that you already know is right, from the revealed category, requiring no inference about anything.

Not because doing things opens doors. That is a promise about outcomes and I am not making it and nobody should.

Because the revealed half was given so it could be acted on, and a week is a small enough piece of it.

You are able to do one ordinary thing this week without forcing anything and without deciding anything about the nine years. Scripture never requires a person to read a circumstance correctly before they may do the next known right thing, and the Spirit who was given to guide is not standing behind a door waiting for you to identify it.