When the Automatic Door Isn’t Automatic

There is nothing quite like trying to go through an automatic door when it is not behaving itself and being automatic. I’m the kind of person who doesn’t just walk away from the door. Nor do I just patiently wait and twiddle my thumbs. If I held a mirror to my face, I am fairly certain I would see my eyes roll clear to the sky. Then my eyes would quickly descend. Because I would no doubt be staring at the “automatic” door wondering why the heck it won’t do its job. After all, it does have a job to do, doesn’t it?

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Shouldn’t it automatically open? The trouble is that the longer I stare at it without making a move, the more my eyes want to roll straight upward again with my “Duh, you’re supposed to open. Now open already” attitude. Then, as though the world might come to an end if I don’t get through the door that should truly be fired for being totally NOT automatic, I PUSH with ALL my strength – NOT – my way through the door with all the world watching. As though the world has nothing better to do than to watch my battle with the automatic door that isn’t automatic after all.

Now as silly as this might sound to others, my trouble really isn’t so much with automatic doors which refuse to budget. My real problem is all the time I have spent standing in front of the “doors” I have come across in my life that blatantly are not opening which I, quite frankly, expect to automatically open simply because I want and expect them to. Job doors. Relationship doors. Financial doors. Relocation doors. Ministry doors. Doors, doors, and more doors. You get the point, don’t you?

Then, imagine to my surprise, when I discover that God has been calling – and calling – and CALLING – me in another direction. Why, then, am I standing in front of the CLOSED door when the Lord of my life is making it altogether clear that that is NOT where He has called me to be? Oh, I could give all sorts of excuses when it comes to my past. Fear. Stubborn. Pride. Selfishness. Well, you get the point. I could go on and on. And I won’t.

Suffice it to say I’ve spent far too much of my life standing in front of the wrong doors doing anything but twiddling my thumbs. Temper tantrums anyone? Pity parties? Galore. Not so very long ago, by the grace of God alone, I finally came to a place in my life when I realized I was either God’s or I was not.

If I was really God’s, then I needed to let Him choose the doors. Was it easy? Let me rephrase the question. Not “was”, but IS it easy? No, it is never easy to the flesh to go contrary to what my sin nature wants to do. But it is always a blessing beyond measure when I walk away from the automatic doors that really aren’t automatic after all, let alone refusing to open, or, worse yet, opening and revealing something awful on the other side, and submit my life once more to the one to whom my life belongs.

Jesus Christ did not die on the cross to pay the penalty for my sins so I could repent and believe the Gospel, be forgiven and promised eternal life, and continue in my wicked ways which include banging on doors God does not desire for me to walk through. He died and rose again so I could be adopted into the Kingdom of God, into God’s family, and to love and honor Him, to revere and glorify Him, and to yield my life to Him – to His doors and all.

Rom 6:13  Neither yield ye your members as instruments of unrighteousness unto sin: but yield yourselves unto God, as those that are alive from the dead, and your members as instruments of righteousness unto God. 

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