THE OPEN DOOR

I set before you an open door.—Rev. 3:8

The point of this article is that God in his mercy and goodness has set before us all an open door, so that a meaningful and spiritual existence is within the reach of us all, depending upon our own willingness to take advantage of the resources of power available to us. It is the truth I draw upon in urging my less ambitious college students that they do not have to be the way they are, that they can make something of themselves if only they will. They can come to class; they can study and learn; they can amount to something in this world. The fact that one can change from what he has been and become a new person is among God’s greatest blessings to humanity. If we were doomed to our littleness, forever trapped by our indolence, what a tragedy human existence would be. In his great mercy the Father has set before each of his children an open door, a way out of his little shriveled world into the glory of a new creation.

I recall the young lady at Texas Woman’s University who came to my office to pour out her heart over a tragic sin committed a few days before, in violation of all she had stood for as a Christian. She was heart-broken, unable to understand how she could have ever sacrificed her virtue. What a blessing it was that I could speak to her of God’s love and forgiveness. “It is not what you were the other night that matters so much;’ I could say to her, “but what you are now and what you will be for the rest of your life.” That particular girl was able through prayer and repentance to accept God’s forgiveness, but she had difficulty in forgiving herself. She could see the open door that God placed before her, but she was her own obstruction in getting through it.

The older I grow and the more I work with people, especially people in trouble, the more impressed I am with the role of will or will power in human experience. The difference in people is for the most part a difference in will: some have their “want to” fixed better than others have! And after all that I have read from the philosophers and psychologists about the nature of will or will power, I am persuaded that the best definition is a simple one: will power is desire. When we say that one can quit smoking if he has the will power, we are only saying that he can quit if he wants to, if he desires good health more than he desires the nicotine. Every smoker has his open door from God. He can quit. He doesn’t because his “want to” isn’t fixed. Oh, yes, he may claim that he wants to quit, and perhaps he does, but his desire to quit isn’t strong enough. Willpower is nothing more than that. It is no magical faculty within us, whose secret would work wonders for us if we could only discover it. It is like the man cheating on his wife and blaming it on his lack of will power. The truth is that he is sleeping with his girl friends because he loves sin, because he desires them more than he desires to be true to his wife. He has an open door out of his life of sin, all right, but he doesn’t want it. That is all his “will power” failure amounts to!

This prompts me to tell you about one of my black students at Bishop College, who, along with his wife, is to be at our house for dinner tonight. There is a story behind “look who is coming for dinner.” Once when I was lecturing to a large class of students, I was hurrying to finish my last point lest I keep them overtime, for lunch followed my class. This young man, the one coming for dinner, rather arrogantly rose from his seat and, taking the long way out of the large room, walked out of the class, leaving me with another minute to go. At the time I made a mental note that one day I would get him for his rudeness. At that time I had already had him in another course, and he was anything but a good student.

It was sometime after this that I saw him sitting alone in the cafeteria, absorbing his lunch better than he had been his studies. Sitting across from him, I began to tell him about myself, making no reference to the walking-out episode. Briefly describing the poverty of my youth, I told him of how I never managed to get out of high school and the difficulty I had of ever getting into college, but that I finally managed, with God’s help, to graduate from two of the greatest universities in the world. I explained that my wife and I both had to work and scrounge, living in one room and sharing the bath with five families in order to get through Princeton and Harvard. I told him how I had to stay away from my family months at a time in order to get my Ph.D. thesis at Harvard written, and how I would get the custodian to let me in the library before it officially opened and how I was the last one to leave at night, and that sometimes I’d have a headache from working so hard.

All this I was saying to him while he half-heartedly continued with his lunch, puzzled no doubt over my behavior. Then I told him of how I had gone to college and university for twelve years so that I could teach young folk like himself, studying under the most renowned professors of the entire world. Then I nailed him: And you know, Charles, in all those years of study I never once walked out on a professor who was trying to teach me something!

Then I walked out on him, leaving him with his lunch and his misery.

It was my mean way of pointing him to the open door. And it worked! After awhile here he came to my office. “Dr. Garrett...” he began with some hesitation, “I’m sorry I walked out of your class like that.”

Well, to make a long and glorious story short, Charles was soon transformed into a different student. The next term he enrolled in my logic class, and I noticed he was starting strong, scoring high on his papers. In the hall one day I let him know that I was aware of how well he was doing, and I challenged him with a door open wide. “Charles, this is the fourth time I’ve taught logic at Bishop, and I haven’t had anyone to make an A yet. I haven’t even had anyone to make a B yet, and most of them either fail or drop out, saying it’s too hard. I want you to make an A. If you do, there’s a chicken dinner waiting for you at my home in Denton.”

You talk about being turned on! It wasn’t long until I had him tutoring other students. He scored consistently high all term, and when he turned in his final exam, I had him stand by while I graded it, and together we shared the glorious experience of his making not simply a 90 or a 95, which would have been an A, but a full 100, a perfect paper! On a test that would curl your hair.

So guess who’s coming to dinner tonight? We’ve made a gala affair out of it, in Charles’ honor. I suppose I could never have guessed it back on that day when he was walking out of my classes and failing his work. And yet in a way it is a simple as well as a sweet story: he got his “want to” fixed. The door was always ajar before him. Once he really desired to walk through it, he did. My, my, how proud I am of that young man!

My impression from the study of the Bible is that it is this virtue of really desiring truth and righteousness that most pleases God. David was a man after God’s own heart because he could say it and meant it that “As the hart pants for the water-brook, so does my soul pant for thee, a God.”

Jesus assures us that those who hunger and thirst for righteousness will be blessed by being filled. It is the broken-hearted, the poor in spirit, the contrite to whom God looks in mercy. He hates the proud and arrogant. If, as new born babes, we long for the pure milk of God, then wholeness will be ours. The question is Do we realty hunger to be like God? To turn loose of our own will and to accept God’s will for our lives, that is the point of the open door.

The story of Simeon in Luke 2 points this up so well. We all love the old man as we read the story, not only because he was “upright and devout” but also because he “watched and waited for the restoration of Israel.” We know little else about him. He must have been among “the Quiet of the Land,” those who prayerfully and peacefully waited for God to act in history through the Messiah. Referred to simply as “a man in Jerusalem,” he was in no sense among the renowned, but rather unknown and unheralded. But he made God’s honor roll because of what he longed for deep down inside him. So great was his desire to see the Redeemer of Israel that God made it so, “the Spirit disclosing to him that he would not see death until he had seen the Lord’s Messiah.”

The record indicates that the Spirit directed Simeon to the temple the day that Mary and Joseph were to be there with the infant Jesus. What drama there was in the temple that day! The aged Simeon makes his way there, and once he has placed himself where the parents come with their children for the purification rite, he searches for any sign that will reveal the child he longs to see. Perhaps the Spirit directed him to Jesus. Or he may have overheard what Mary said to the priest as she presented her child to him. However it was, his tear-dimmed eyes fell at last upon the Son of God, fulfilling the yearning of a lifetime.

God wonderfully fulfilled a simple man’s deepest longing, allowing him to see the Christ himself, even when it was not a necessary part of the gospel story. Things could have gone along very well without Simeon. It shows us God’s concern for the little things when they involve the heart’s desire. God “took time out” from the main plot, so to speak, to assure one quiet soul who longed to see Jesus that it would indeed be so. Dear old Simeon, he waited and watched for no telling how long, until the signal from the Spirit at last came. He never doubted but what God would make good the promise. He said at last: “This day, Master, thou givest thy servant discharge in peace; now thy promise is fulfilled.” How can we ever doubt that God will make good his promises to us? He will fail us or forsake us no more than he did Simeon, who was ready to move on once his longing desire had been realized. Our problem may be that we do not want the things that God wants us to want.

Interestingly enough, when Simeon spoke to Mary he made reference to our point about the open door. “The child is destined to be a sign which men reject; and you too shall be pierced to the heart. Many in Israel, will stand or fall because of him, and thus the secret thoughts of many will be laid bare.” Jesus became the door of deliverance, the door through which but few would choose to enter. His coming thus proved to be to the fall of many, those who do not really desire righteousness. Jesus assures us that “I am the door” and that if we enter by him we shall find pasturage and security (John 10:7-9). Do we truly want to be fed of him? is the only question.

Rev. 3:8 not only assures us of the open door, but we are also told that it is a door that no one can shut. It is saying that no one can keep us from doing what we ought to do and being what we ought to be. Men may threaten and circumstances may bear down hard upon us, but nothing can bar the way to the open door. It is the assurance of Heb. 13:5-6: “Do not live for money; be content with what you have; for God himself has said, ‘I will not leave you or desert you’, and so we can take courage and say, ‘The Lord is my helper, I will not fear; what can man do to me?’”

Precisely what Jesus meant by the open door in his words to the congregation at Philadelphia we have no way of knowing. “I have set before you an open door” may refer to that church’s evangelistic opportunities. The figure seems to have that meaning elsewhere, such as in 1 Cor. 16:9 where Paul’s open door refers to his opportunity to win souls for Christ. In 2 Cor. 2:12 the open door refers to his chances to do the Lord’s work in Troas. This is an especially appropriate interpretation for Philadelphia, a city founded by the Greeks for the express purpose of serving as a missionary station for Greek culture to the barbarous peoples beyond. Its situation was such that roads flowing into it stretched like fingers over the main mass of Asia Minor. Their opportunity to spread the word was great.

We all have such an open door, wherever we are, whatever we do. We are in the dead middle of the human predicament, with a sea of people and their problems all about us. To use the door of opportunity to witness of our faith in Christ is both our privilege and our opportunity.

We can also think of the open door as the door of prayer, which makes the presence of God available to us all. I have always been impressed with how difficult it is to see busy and important people. The president of the United States is often too busy to see his own cabinet members. Even nobles cannot always make their way to a queen or king of an empire. Nowadays even lesser lights leave the impression that you are imposing on them if you take even a few minutes of their time. It makes me feel like a nobody when the secretary of some executive says even in response to a phone call, “May I say who is calling, please?”

The God of heaven places no such limitations upon himself. We do not have to wait in line in order to talk to him. He is not someone who is out of town and out of reach during an emergency. Nor do we have to step back and give our place to someone more important than ourselves. Each of us has his own open door to God, to truth, to a glorious and abundant life. What is more, the Lord stands beyond that door, lovingly inviting us his way. He wants us. To him we are important. We are somebody.—the Editor