The Blessing of Closed Doors

As I sit here today, I am pondering closed doors. Often we think of a closed door as a bad thing, like having a door slammed in your face. However, I can attest to the fact that closed doors can be a tremendous blessing because they can lead us to the right door to walk through.

Let’s face it, nobody gets it right 100 percent of the time. We do our best to listen to the Holy Spirit and get His direction, but there are occasions when we have to try something to see if it is of God. And many times, once we try it, we realize it was not the Lord’s leading. Call it process of elimination or whatever you want, but sometimes we must try some things so we can eliminate the ideas and opportunities that are not in God’s plans for us. I have heard Joyce Meyer mention that sometimes we must step out to find out, and that is what I am referring to.

Closed doors can help us to find the door God wants us to walk through. We can learn valuable lessons from those doors that have been closed to us; lessons about timing, our motives, etc. As we experience each door that we are unable to walk through, we understand more about God’s desires for us because we have seen yet one more thing He does not want for us. It helps us to narrow down the direction He has for us.

Visualize this: you are in a large hallway with many doors. As you walk down the hall, you try to open doors, but they are shut. You eventually reach a door that opens and you walk through it, finding yourself in another smaller hallway. This hallway has doors as well, but not as many as the first one. After trying a few doors, you find one and you walk through it to an even smaller hallway. This is how it can be for us- as we try different things we begin to narrow down our options.

Please understand, I am not saying that the best way we can get the Lord’s leading is by process of elimination, but it can be helpful as we are trying to follow Him. The Holy Spirit is our Guide and He is always ready to lead us. If there is a problem, it is on our end- not His. For any number of reasons, we may not be receiving His direction clearly, and coming to some closed doors can put us back on the right track. On some occasions, the door is closed for our protection.

The steps of a [good and righteous] man are directed and established by the Lord, And He delights in his way [and blesses his path]. Psalm 37:23 (Amplified Blible, AMP)

If our hearts are right and we sincerely wish to follow God’s leading, He will order our steps and use even the closed doors to our advantage. There really is a blessing in closed doors, and we should be thankful for those doors He has not permitted us to walk through.