open doors

Open doors are great. But they have their down sides, too.

Adversaries abound on the other side.

"A great door for effective work has opened to me .... and there are many who oppose me."

That was Paul's experience. Opposition didn't trouble him. It went with the territory. He stayed.

This morning I met with a man who ministers here in the city. I'd suggested we meet for a coffee since we hadn't touched base for a while.

His circumstances were pretty much like this. A clear sense of call from the Lord to the place where he's at. Signs of the Lord being at work as he preaches the gospel and points people there to the Lord.

A great door for effective work has opened to him.

And ... yes, there are many 'adversaries'.

They come in all sorts of shapes and sizes. Pressures and problems, being hastled and hustled, and coping with lies, deception and flak. There are those who want him out.

It goes with the territory. When the Lord opens doors of opportunity and opens them wide, hell goes wild. It's a standard, predictable pattern, writ large through the story of those who have honoured the Lord.

And the devil's not choosy what form the adversaries take.

The man found it helpful to talk and to share. He sensed the Lord speaking, I think, and underlining to him at this time that he was to stay meanwhile. Whatever it cost.

He hadn't really seen it in this light before. A great door for effective work has opened to you and there are many who oppose you. So you stay.

We prayed. He meets with a colleague involved in the same work there each week on a Wednesday morning. I suggested I'd join them one week in the month, and share with them both as they prayed.

We're all in this together.

Most of today has been spent like that. One person after another.

And in some ways the theme has remained the same throughout the day. A great door for effective work being opened by the Lord. And many adversaries.

Late on in the afternoon I was seeing someone else. Another situation where a door has been opened by the Lord for effective work: and, yes, again there are the adversaries. It's not plain sailing at all.

We chatted for long enough, without (it seemed to me) getting down to what our meeting like this was really all about. I thought the person was finished, and I was getting ready to leave: but then we suddenly moved on to a rather different tack.

And then the point of our meeting and speaking become crystal clear.

Early on in the day, the Lord had laid on my heart a simple word - "one thing I do." As if this was the word that someone would need to hear.

I'd wondered to start with if maybe it was in fact a word the Lord was speaking to me. But it soon became clear that this was a word I was given from him for another.

And here, late on in the afternoon - here was the person for whom that word was intended. I gave the person this word that the Lord had laid so forcibly on my heart. It was humbling to see how astonishingly apt this word from the Lord proved to be.

The person confessed to being not clear at all as to why we were meeting at all. There had just been the sense that we needed to meet.

This was why. The Lord had a word that he needed to speak, that the person needed to hear. Clear, directive, liberating.

It's thrilling to see the Lord working like that and speaking with such patent clarity.

That one thing. Concentrate on that. Run with that and stay there.

Adversaries or not, there's a wide open door for effective work.

And that's the case here as well. A great door for effective work, opened by the One who holds the key. And when he opens no one can close. Not even hell itself, despite throwing all that it's got.