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Topic: Doors (04/05/04)
TITLE: Doors By Doug Laird 04/08/04 |
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This includes the doors to our home, social & professional lives, & most importantly, our souls.
Doors can provide protection from unwanted persons or evil, but they can also deny us the benefits & services that many persons who come to our door may have to offer.
Depending on our environment and the degree in which we want to restrict who can enter & leave the literal doors of our lives, doors are constructed with varying materials, monitoring devices, and locks to accomplish these objectives.
The same principle applies to the symbolic doors of our minds and souls.
The human mind and soul operate much like a computer, as the quality of the output is equal to the data that is entered into its memory banks. For this reason, it is very important to decide what “monitoring devices and security” locks we choose to install on the doors to our minds & souls.
Jesus taught that He is the door in which His sheep must enter into the fold. There are no other doors in which a person can gain access to salvation. Once inside the fold, He is the gatekeeper and the monitoring- security device and lock on the door of our minds and souls in as much as salvation is concerned. He is the guard that is placed at the door of our souls and personally takes on the responsibility of our eternal security.
Even though the Guard posted at the door of our soul guarantees that He will not let anyone or anything steal our salvation, we never the less are responsible for the internal security systems that will determine the quality and quantity of what is produced. This is what is referred to as the sanctification process in the spiritual realm. The inner rooms must be swept clean and maintained by installing doors to the inner rooms of our souls. If we allow contaminants to enter into the inner rooms of our souls, our ability to function and produce the fruit of the Spirit will be compromised. We cannot lose our salvation, but we can become spiritually dysfunctional if we do not install & maintain the doors to the inner rooms, that symbolically represent all of the areas of our lives that must be in submission to the leading of God the Holy Spirit following salvation if we are to glorify God.
God the Holy Spirit will call and invite all of us to enter the “door” of salvation, but He will not force anyone of us to do it. It must be as a result of our own free will to do so. The key to that door is faith in the Person and the Works of the Lord Jesus Christ. Once inside, our salvation is secure for all of Eternity.
After salvation, God will come and knock on the “doors” of our inner rooms. Just as He did not force us to enter the door of salvation, He will not force Himself through the doors of any of the rooms of our lives that He is not welcome. He will discipline if we continue to slam certain doors shut & we will forfeit certain rewards that we would have otherwise received, but He does not revoke our salvation.
If you are not saved, but hear the voice of God calling you to enter the Door of Salvation, consider very carefully the blessings or consequences of your decision to respond to or reject His invitation. If you are saved, and hear the knocking of God at the door to one of the rooms of your life, consider carefully the blessings or consequences for either allowing Him in or shutting Him out from any area(s) of your life.
Finally, there are the doors of opportunity and guidance. If we are to accomplish the purposes of God in our individual lives, like the Hebrews who received their marching orders from the movement of the Cloud and the Pillar of Fire, we must develop the discernment to know when it is time to stay and when it is time to move on.
We do not have a cloud over us in the day or a pillar of fire over us at night, but we have the indwelling Holy Spirit. We must not only learn what it is we are to do through the identification of our individual spiritual gift, but specifically where & how it is that we are to exercise it.
We cannot “drop anchor” or “grow roots” when God has closed one door and has opened another the door of opportunity. At the same time, we must also learn to be fully committed to functioning in the rooms that God has opened to us until the work there has been completed.
When two animals try to pull a cart, they must work together and at the same pace if they are to function most efficiently.
When we are working as a team in unison with God the Holy Spirit, the burden in easier. When we try to go off in a different direction or at a different pace, the burden of “pulling the cart” becomes increasingly difficult.
God, often times, establishes the goals and sets the pace by first closing one door & then opening another door. The opening and closing of doors of opportunity then can also be seen as doors of guidance.
May God give us the discernment to function within the “doors” as He wills.