God Opens Doors In Your Walls

David W Ebel: Hi, my name is David Ebel, and I host God Says Yes, the podcast. But I've been a pastor a long time, and from time to time topics come up that I feel like I should share about. Listen listening to people lately, it seems like a lot of people are using the words impossible or I'll never get past this. that there's just no way to finish this off, or I don't know how we're gonna finish, how we're gonna even make it through. And I I wanted to talk about that for just a little while. faith is a piece of the puzzle, but we have to trust God for more than just saying, saying we'll do it. we've got scripture that tells us and assures us of things. Revelations three, seven through eight, it ends up the best quote of it out as, see, I place this before you an open door that no one can shut. Remember, if God is really for you, no matter the challenge that's there, God's not sealing the door you can't get out. Philippians 4 13 says, I can do all things through Christ who gives me strength. Which means that no you know, Jesus can see how little strength we have. He opens the door that no one can shut because we he knows we can't. It's we're powerless to do it. We just don't have the the oomph, the strength. sometimes we don't feel like we have the power. But that's one reason why we need to go back to God when we feel powerless. And ask him to fill us with his Holy Spirit and give us power. I've been through a bunch. I know others who've been through more. But I can tell you that the best way to quit is to stop trusting. The best way to feel overwhelmed and stay that way is to try to figure it out in your head and to figure it out with your friends and not figure it out with God. God is able, and He'd love to be able to do work in your life. Does it mean your life's gonna get super easy? No. But he said he'd never leave us or forsake us, he'd be with us always. I gotta tell you, folks, if you trust him, he promises to provide your needs according to his riches and glory. Which means that at some point, maybe not this week, but at some point he's got a plan that you can't see right now, but he's seen the end from the beginning. And he can't wait to do something powerful in your life. In Acts 12, beginning with verse five that the the the scripture that's in there it says it opened for them by itself and they went through they're talking about that that the door that God can only open. You want God you want to go through a door that seems like it's sealed? Man I've had a few. You've got to trust God before you get there, before the door is even open. You may even look at it and see there's no door in the wall. It just seems sealed. But if we sit there from a distance and look at it, we'll never know. If we make a few steps forward, we'll be surprised to find the outline of that door in the middle of that wall of impossibility, of of unbelief, of doubt, of fear, of frustration. We're going to be miserable forever if we trust what we see instead of what we feel and what we pray about. God's word, first and foremost, never changes. We never fail if we trust him, because he never fails us. So when we when we go ahead and trust him, big things happen, even if they happen not at our speed. I kiddly tell people when they look at their watch that God doesn't need a watch because he is time. He was there at the beginning, he's here now. He's never late because he's always here. It's us who measure God by a watch like this. Doesn't matter what the watch looks like. If we're measuring our life by the watch, we're not leaving room for God to do things that seem impossible. But with God all things are possible. I know. I've lived it. And I've helped people for 50 years figure it out and live it too. And I want you to live it too. I want you to get past this struggle that you're stuck in. remember Peter was in prison. The church is he was praying. And God sent an angel and Peter gets up and follows, and the iron gate that sealed him in suddenly opened up. There was no way Peter was going to get out of out of prison. he had armed guards and a I I've seen a prison like when I toured Israel, I sa I saw a prison like the one he was in. And these are not little small pieces of iron. These are these are pieces bigger than a fifty cent piece. And that you're not getting out. And when God says you are getting out, when God has a solution, it doesn't matter what the logic says. It doesn't matter what we feel. It doesn't matter what we get on the news or we get from our friends. What matters is what did God say? And when it was time, God said He'd open the door. An angel came and opened the door, and the iron gate was open to them. And in it's it's the same all the way through. In Isaiah, beginning in chapter forty, twenty nine through thirty one. He he says he gives strength to the weary and increases the power to the weak. That's not just an old testament thing for people. I've had people say, Well, Old Testament, that's history. No, and Old Old Testament is foundation. We don't when the New Testament came, that's the New Testament in Christ's blood, but that doesn't erase everything before. That's still scripture. That's still truth. There's still a lot of foundation because you wouldn't even know who Jesus is. If it wasn't for an old testament, because Jesus re is revealed over and over and over again in the Old Testament. If you're like me and you're you you get comfortable in the New Testament, you may forget some of the most important, powerful things you can find. Go back to the Old Testament and look for the stuff in the New. You'll get answers to your problems, and a lot of your doubts and fears will be blown out of your out of the water because you now see from the beginning of the Bible. The truth was always there for you. The truth is there now. So the reality is that you don't have to stay stuck. Now it may feel like it. You may have no money in the bank, and groceries are short. But that doesn't mean you're going to be without. I remember, I remember very well, we were sent to a church in Wisconsin that was so small. And when we got there, we had been given poor information. We were told we get so much a week, and we had a place to stay. We got there and there was no money in the bank, and the place we were we we were to stay in. We had to pay the rent on, and we had no money. And if we this is northern Wisconsin with forty below zero, and they were telling us that we're we only had twenty eight days before we'd be evicted. The church was three months behind on its rent. And all of it all this was on me. I can tell you that it was not fun the first day. And my flesh, my old nature, I was all upset and I wanted to get on the phone and straighten somebody out. And then I stopped and prayed. I said, God, I got three kids, there's they'll starve. It's cold enough here they'll freeze to death. Lord, we can't we can't do what you sent us to do if you don't help us. Some of the church members had given up and gone to another church because they couldn't see how we could survive. They just didn't want to f watch the the end from the beginning. So they they were gonna go someplace else just so they didn't have to watch. But I made a couple phone calls and said, Can a few of you come back long enough to at least tell me what I'm what I'm up to? What's going on? They not only came back, but they stayed. And we rebuilt the church. We paid our bills. We stayed current on our bills. And we were there for twelve full months. Our kids never went without a meal. There was times there was nothing in the pantry. We'd get on our knees and pray, and the doorbell would ring, and there'd be groceries sitting on the porch. No car in front of the house. Don't know how it got there. But on more than ten occasions the doorbell rang, and there was groceries with nobody, no notes, nothing. we it was 40 below zero. It was cold enough that if you're if you didn't plug in your car at night, your car would the oil in your car would turn into goo and you couldn't start it in the morning, so you had to plug in the radiator and the block heater and keep it all hot. And it many times run the car all night. Just so that everything would continue to run. But I had to be there on Sunday morning to be able to hold church service. Seemed impossible. But somehow it wasn't. And we had church every single Sunday. We had people there every Sunday. And we had lives changed on a regular basis. And then when I had said to the Lord, Okay, I'm willing to stay, I'll well do it, whatever you want, then He opened the door for us to move. And the next step was much more beautiful and much more blessing and much more wonderful. And we changed a lot more lives in that move than we ever dreamed. But we had to live through the tough time. It doesn't mean God's mean. No, it just means He knows the end from the from the beginning. And sometimes our best growth is when we're under pressure. A diamond's just a piece of rock until the pressure hits. And when that pressure hit presses it down hard enough. It it converts from rock to diamond. When we are put in allowed to be under pressure, when things are hard and we go to God and He carries the pressure with us, we're not crushed by it. We're challenged by it. We grow from it and we can be something remarkable because of it. I want that to happen for you. Don't give up. Get serious about your faith to another degree. Step it up a notch. You say, well, I'm a Christian and I believe along. I've always believed. Good. That's the foundation for this next step. I'm disabled, I can't get on my knees. So how do I get down to pray? I sit down and pray. That's only an excuse. I can pray just fine in any position. But the God of this universe loves me just the way I am. And you know what? He never fails. I'm here at 74, and I can tell you that we've never, ever been so in trouble that God didn't find a way to open a door in the middle of a wall and walk us through it. And if God can do it for me, he can certainly do it for you. And I pray that you will let him, that you'll open your heart and allow him to do it. So here's a prayer that you can pray. Say, Lord. You know the wall in front of me. Show me the way forward. Give me strength to take the next step. And and give me the courage to trust you, regardless of anything else. Because faith isn't faith isn't faith if you can feel it, touch it, and smell it. Faith is when you can't see it, when you can't feel it, when you can't smell it, when you can't touch it. But God said it, you believe it, and that settles it. That's real faith. So ask God to give you that real faith. He already placed a chunk of it in your heart before you were even born. Let him anoint that with his Holy Spirit and give you the power to beat the situation you're in. God has a plan for your life. Let him open the door in the middle of your wall.