When You're Waiting For God To Open The Door
“Ask and it will be given to you; seek and you will find; knock and the door will be opened to you. For everyone who asks receives; the one who seeks finds; and to the one who knocks, the door will be opened.” - Matthew 7:7-8
Today’s key Scripture passage is one of the most encouraging passages in the Bible, and also one of the most frustrating all at the same time. Let me explain.
These verses are encouraging when you’re waiting for something or asking God for something, because He is saying that eventually we will get an answer. If we’re praying according to His will, we will see our desires come to fruition. But this passage gets super frustrating when it seems like you’ve been asking for the same thing over and over with no apparent response, or when you’ve been knocking at a door that seems permanently locked.
Knocking on a door when it seems like no one is going to answer is such a frustrating experience. And it’s even more frustrating when what we want most is on the other side of the door. But just because the door hasn’t opened yet, doesn’t mean we should stop knocking.
When I go to visit my parents, I typically tell them I’m stopping by so they’re expecting me. When I pull into the driveway, I park my car, I walk up to the front door, and I knock. But sometimes, they don’t hear me. So should I just walk away and drive back home if they don’t hear me knock the first time? Of course not! Instead, I knock again. And if they still don’t hear me, I start banging on the door or I call my mom’s phone and tell her I’m at the door so she can let me in. But I don’t leave, because I know my parents are inside. I know they’re expecting me. And I know they want me to come in and visit.
It sounds silly to suggest I just knock once at my parents’ door and then walk away if they don’t answer. And yet we are tempted to do that exact thing with God all the time. We knock once or twice, asking Him to open the door on an opportunity or a relationship or a life change, but if we don’t get answered quickly — if He doesn’t open the door right away — we give up and quit asking. We stop knocking. We don’t stick around to wait for His answer.
I wonder how many times we’ve missed out on something God had in store for us because we weren’t willing to wait for it. And I wonder how many times we’ve neglected His desire to develop our patience and our perseverance because we didn’t want to keep asking, keep seeking, and keep knocking.
So if you’ve been asking God to grant you a certain desire for a while now, or if you’ve been knocking on a certain door for what seems like forever, I hope you’ll take this as a reminder to not give up. I hope that you will continue to ask God to grant you the desires of your heart, that you will continue to seek His will for your life, and that you will continue knocking on the door He’s placed you in front of, even if it takes longer for Him to open it than you expected.
His will and His best for you are always worth waiting for, friend. So don’t give up. Keep knocking.