"It's Open!" Series

You know in many ways, life is all about the doors. We come into doors and go out of doors. We open doors and shut doors. Sometimes, we slam doors, no need to confess, we’ve all done it. And if you really stop to think about it, it’s the closed doors in life that really are the most difficult to deal with.

Let me explain what I mean. I want to give you some examples of how closed doors negatively impact our lives. For example, I have an older brother, which means that I’m the baby in the family. How many of you, on all of our campuses, are like me, you’re the baby…which also means that you’re the favorite? And the better looking? And the more talented? I could keep going!

So I have an older brother and I don’t know why he loved to do this to me, I think it’s just an older brother thing, but my older brother loved to hide behind closed doors and scare me to death. He did, and to this day, if you were to wait behind a closed door and just let out a little boo, I would probably scream like a little girl because closed doors can be scary! They can be scary.

If you can’t relate to being terrorized by an older sibling, maybe you can relate to this…remember when you were a kid? Remember what lived at night behind your closed closet doors? Huh? How many of you had a monster who lived in your closet? Come on, raise your hands! Yes sir Jack, and I don’t know what it was but when you would pull those covers overtop of your head it was like a magical force field protecting you from the monster who lived behind the closed door. Why? Because it was scary, it was scary.

I was thinking about it the other day, closed doors can also be quite frustrating. I mean, it’s frustrating when you want to get into a door but the door won’t open. Locking yourself out the house, that’s frustrating. The only thing more frustrating than that is when someone else on the inside of your house locks you out of your house. That’s really frustrating! How about this? Walking up to a store, thinking it’s open, only to find that the door is locked and it’s closed. Frustrating.

Here’s something I found, my kids can’t stand locked doors, they get frustrated! We have a “no-lock” policy at our house; we don’t lock bedroom doors and such, except for Tabitha my wife and I. We have an exemption! If you pay for the door, you should be able to lock it. And it never fails, never fails. Some of you parents know where I’m going with this! If I go to the bedroom to, I don’t know, let’s just say, take a nap with my wife, and I lock the door behind me, it’s only a matter of time. Parents, am I right? I’m telling you, you can start the stopwatch, we’ve got precisely 7½ minutes until somebody starts knocking on the door. That’s frustrating and TMI.

But that’s the nature of a closed door. Closed doors are scary. Closed doors are frustrating, and sometimes closed doors are heart breaking. They’re painful.

My little niece Anna, a few years back closed the car door on her finger. It was painful. Oh man! They sent me a picture; the tip of her finger was barely hanging on. I think we might have that, if you want to see it? I’m kidding! We don’t have it. What’s wrong with you people? Even if I did have the picture, I wouldn’t show it to you because it was GROSS and it was heartbreaking!

Closed doors can be that way. And you see here’s what I know today about you, without even knowing some of you. Here’s what I know about you. I know that you have felt the fear and the frustration and the heartbreak of a closed door.

• The closed door of an opportunity. The closed door of a new job, of a promotion you were promised, of a better financial future. But that door never opened. It’s scary, it’s frustrating. It’s heartbreaking.

• Some of you have experienced the closed door of a relationship, and you thought it would be one way forever, that he would be your one and only, that she would be with you till the end, only the door closed. You thought your kids would grow up to be your best friends and now the relationship is so strained, you hardly ever see them. The door is closed. You thought you could count on him, but he walked out. It’s a closed door.

• Maybe it’s the closed door of health. The door shut when the doctor said cancer. The door shut when the test was positive. When infertility was the consuming topic and it was scary and it was frustrating and it was heartbreaking.