Matthew 7:7-11
Here are 5 things God wants you to do when you need him to open a door for you.
1. Before God Will Open a Door for You, You First Need to Open the Door to Him
If you want God to open a door for you in life, God first needs to be in your life. God is certainly omnipresent, but that is different than you and him being in an active relationship together. When you ask God to leave your life with your actions but you are asking him to move in your life with your words, God will listen to your actions over your words.
While the promises in Revelation 3 may not be literally directed to you as an individual, the principles recorded there are certainly helpful to apply to your life. In Revelation 3:17-21, it states:
For you say, I am rich, I have prospered, and I need nothing, not realizing that you are wretched, pitiable, poor, blind, and naked. I counsel you to buy from me gold refined by fire, so that you may be rich, and white garments so that you may clothe yourself and the shame of your nakedness may not be seen, and salve to anoint your eyes, so that you may see. Those whom I love, I reprove and discipline, so be zealous and repent. Behold, I stand at the door and knock. If anyone hears my voice and opens the door, I will come in to him and eat with him, and he with me. The one who conquers, I will grant him to sit with me on my throne, as I also conquered and sat down with my Father on his throne.”
When you think you are fine but you are actually struggling, when you think you are well when you are actually sick, and when you think God is in your life but in reality you asked him to leave with your actions, the first step you must take is to repent zealously. God will never leave you nor forsake you if you are a Christian, but when you sin he will also reprove and discipline you before blessing you.
If you want God to open a door for you, you first need to open the door of your heart to him.
2. If You Want God to Open a Door That No One Can Shut, You Must Keep His Word and Not Deny His Name
Perhaps you are afraid because you are imagining life to be like a crazy obstacle course with swinging doors. If you don’t time things just right, boom, you miss you chance. Game over.
That is not how God works. When God commands a door to be open, it opens. Notice the principles found in Revelation 3:7-8, which states:
And to the angel of the church in Philadelphia write: ‘The words of the holy one, the true one, who has the key of David, who opens and no one will shut, who shuts and no one opens. I know your works. Behold, I have set before you an open door, which no one is able to shut. I know that you have but little power, and yet you have kept my word and have not denied my name.’”
This church did not earn this open door that could not be shut. Anything good, God produces by grace. But before God will open a door that cannot be shut, he will teach you to rightly honor him no matter what. Notice that this church had “but little power.” And yet they learned to honor the Lord no matter what.
If you want to receive an open door that cannot be shut, you must allow the Lord to prepare you by teaching you to keep his word and not deny his name.
3. Before God Will Open a Door for You, He Will Wait for You to Knock on the Right Door He Wants to Open for You
Perhaps you have been praying for God to bring someone back into your life that left you or that you needed to remove because of their bad behavior. Or perhaps you really liked someone, but now you feel like you missed your window to be with them because they are no longer in your life. Or maybe you are great friends with someone but deep down you want to be more than friends with this person but every time you make a move towards that goal you don’t sense the other person feels the same way.
While it is good to ask God for what you want, you can also waste your whole life if you keep asking God for something he doesn’t want for you. Prayer is less about God learning what our will is so he can follow our lead and it is more about us learning what God’s will is so we can follow his lead. Your will can never override God’s will. Powerful prayers are those prayers which come in agreement with the plan God already has for you.
Therefore, if you really want God to open a door for you, you have to make sure you are knocking on the right doors God wants to open for you. As 1 John 5:14 states, “And this is the confidence that we have toward him, that if we ask anything according to his will he hears us.”
4. If You Need God to Open a Door for You, It Helps to Ask Others to Pray for You as Well
Certainly God hears our prayers as individuals, but throughout the Bible there is also a clear theme that Christians are called to intercede for each other in prayer as well (James 5:16-18). As Paul requested in Colossians 4:2-4, which reads:
Continue steadfastly in prayer, being watchful in it with thanksgiving. At the same time, pray also for us, that God may open to us a door for the word, to declare the mystery of Christ, on account of which I am in prison— that I may make it clear, which is how I ought to speak.”
One reason I believe God loves for us to include others in prayer is so that God’s glorification is maximized when he answers the prayer. The more people that pray, the more people who will get to praise God for the answer to that prayer.
As Paul also wrote in Philippians 1:18-19 and in verse 26, “Yes, and I will rejoice, for I know that through your prayers and the help of the Spirit of Jesus Christ this will turn out for my deliverance . . . so that in me you may have ample cause to glory in Christ Jesus, because of my coming to you again.”
5. If You Need God to Open a Door for You, You Need to Follow Jesus
While God certainly wants to open individual doors in our lives so we can receive the job, the relationship, or the miracle we seek, ultimately he has not promised to always open every door we feel we need opened. But he has promised to open the door that we truly do need most of all. As John 10:7-11 explains:
So Jesus again said to them, ‘Truly, truly, I say to you, I am the door of the sheep. All who came before me are thieves and robbers, but the sheep did not listen to them. I am the door. If anyone enters by me, he will be saved and will go in and out and find pasture. The thief comes only to steal and kill and destroy. I came that they may have life and have it abundantly. I am the good shepherd. The good shepherd lays down his life for the sheep.’”
We are sheep, and for sheep to survive they must listen to their shepherd. We are simple creatures, therefore we need to trust our great Shepherd that he knows best. Jesus is the open door to salvation and to a relationship with God, which is what we need most. And when we follow our great Shepherd, he will close those doors that lead to evil and he will open those doors that lead to us bringing him more glory. We just need to keep trusting and following our Shepherd. For in John 10:3-4, Jesus also said:
To him the gatekeeper opens. The sheep hear his voice, and he calls his own sheep by name and leads them out. When he has brought out all his own, he goes before them, and the sheep follow him, for they know his voice.”
