Slammed doors!
Revelation 3:8”I know your deeds. See, I have placed before you an open door that no one can shut. I know that you have little strength, yet you have kept my word and have not denied my name.”
Have you had doors slammed on your face? I have had many, many, many, so much so, my nose is flat like a boxer’s nose now! Like Mary Kom, I have not given up, I am fighting the obstacles and overcoming it victoriously! Time to do victory dance!
Friend, we need fortitude to hang on to God and wait for Him! I repeat fortitude! It is no fun jumping from one tree to another looking for bananas, you guessed right, we should not live like monkeys, but wait for God to establish us! Be it ministry, job, business, education or whatever – your fortitude is in doing what God wants you to do and not what you desire! Are you listening? Don’t worry about doors closing on you – He has greater plans for you! Say Amen. As I write this piece, my daughter Shalina had and still has great desire to do a particular professional course, she not only dreamed about it but worked her way through by applying for leave from her present work place to proceed with her dream. Alas, the entrance for coaching classes has closed! This is not the end of your life friend, look beyond! That is exactly what I told my daughter! Look beyond!
My very first writing venture, which I started doing for a group of people who actually had a different owner – came to a grinding halt because the readers were not able to take the heat from the messages and they shouted unanimously ‘ask her to stop writing.’ Very politely I was asked to move away; humiliation, frustration and feelings of defeat overwhelmed me. On the flip side, God had actually prepared another big platform for me to reach the globe, which was not visible to me then. God takes you through one step at a time! Amen. God spoke to my heart to launch my own internet ministry and write devotions under the title ‘Daily Delight’, slowly I started sending devotions to subscribers through emails and thus now it has grown gigantically. When God is in the project, success is guaranteed and certain! Amen.
When I saw my ‘Daily Delight’ devotional magazines which I painstakingly wrote and prepared, which I spent sleepless nights to design and launch, be abandoned in a stinking storeroom of a book house because we had not taken delivery for want of funds, my heart was broken to million pieces. Finally when we did take delivery, the due date to send to my subscribers had crossed, some of the books were eaten away by moth and others were torn and dirty. I wept! We had actually relocated our ministry to a different city by then and I did not have a clue as to how to go about this. But God knew the plans that He had for me! Job said: “But he knows the way that I take; when he has tried me, I shall come out as gold.”(Job 23:10) Though the magazine project closed, God opened a bigger, wider and a much more greater door through the internet ministry! Trust Him in the dark!
I had a passion to preach for the youth but there were no openings – closed doors everywhere! It was an eerie period and I did wonder at times, ‘if God called me at all!’ Was it a hallucination I felt? I write this devotion to encourage people who are going through a dark period of failure, uncertainty, isolation and defeat. Boy! I know how it feels! I still shudder! God prepares you and then takes you to the platform, He does not want you to fumble and fall! Amen. We got to dig our heels deeper and stand strong, never stagger or doubt, He will take you through. Cheer up! Fear not! You are very, very special! The apple of His eye! You are dear to Him! Too dear to ignore you!
