You try one door after another, yet no one responds to your résumé. No university accepts your application. No doctor has a solution for your illness. No buyers look at your house.
Obstacles pack your path. Road, barricaded. Doorway, padlocked. Do you know the frustration of a blocked door?
God uses closed doors to advance his cause.
He closed the womb of a young Sarah so he could display his power to the elderly one.
He shut the palace door on Moses the prince so he could open shackles through Moses the liberator.
He marched Daniel out of Jerusalem so he could use Daniel in Babylon.
And Jesus. Yes, even Jesus knew the challenge of a blocked door. When he requested a path that bypassed the cross, God said no. He said no to Jesus in the garden of Gethsemane so he could say yes to us at the gates of heaven.
It’s not that our plans are bad but that God’s plans are better.
“My thoughts are nothing like your thoughts,” says the Lord.
“And my ways are far beyond anything you could imagine.
For just as the heavens are higher than the earth,
so my ways are higher than your ways
and my thoughts higher than your thoughts.” (Isa. 55:8–9 NLT)
Your blocked door doesn’t mean God doesn’t love you. Quite the opposite. It’s proof that he does.
From God’s Story, Your Story
Copyright (Zondervan, 2011) Max Lucado