We Need Wider Doors

A few years ago, the church camp I work with built some new buildings. After construction was finished, we ended up with several pallets of leftover sheetrock. A board member found someone willing to buy the extra but we needed to load it up for them. The only problem was the sheetrock panels had been put it the building before the walls had been finished and now had to be taken out one piece at a time. In one building, it was much more difficult because all the doors were small. We had to twist and maneuver each piece out the door in an exhausting process. However, the other building was much simpler since at the end of the building they had made a wider door. The process was made so much easier and less tiresome by just that little bit more room.

In 1^st Corinthians 16:9, Paul mentions that “a wide door for effective service has opened to me”. I thought out this previous incidence when I heard this verse. In my ministry I had seen both types of doors. Some places will have opportunities for service but they narrow the doors by binding personal opinions and traditions. They narrow the door with complaining and meddling. Apathy (I don’t care it is not my work) or competiveness (Your success might impinge on mine) might work to shrink the door as well. The work still can be done but it takes much more time and much more effort.

However, I seen those that widen the door as well. A positive attitude about the task and enthusiastic support will make the work easier. People that are do not “merely looking out for your own personal interests, but also for the interests of others.” (Philippians 2:4). People are willing to volunteer, help, and promote because they welcome opportunity instead of fearing it.

What kind of doors do we create? Do we widen doors or shrink them? We may not be a major part in a work but we still can influence it by helping those in that service by widening the doors for them.

Comments

I Know All Those Words, But That Sentence Makes No Sense To Me

Let’s say you travel back in time six hundred years or so. Luckily, you happen across a fellow that speaks English. Upon hearing your tale, he describes you as nice, smart, and handsome. Wouldn’t you feel good? You shouldn’t. As Sol Steinmetz in his book, Semantics Antics , explains; Nice originally meant someone who was foolish, ignorant, senseless, or absurd (middle English 1300). Smart for the first 300 years of its use meant causing pain, sharp, cutting, or severe, a sense that survives in the idiom "smart as a whip.” Handsome wasn’t complimentary. When coined around 1425, it just meant easily handled; it didn’t have its current positive connotation until 1590. You might think he said you were a kind, intelligent, good looking bloke, when in reality he said you were a foolish pain easily dealt with. Words have an annoying habit of changing meaning over time in the same language and it becomes even more compli...

Master Your Self

In a contest for the toughest president of the United States, it would be hard to go against Theodore Roosevelt. He was known for his “manly” pursuits hunting big game, climbing the Matterhorn, participating in boxing match while president. (These weren’t play fights, he lost the vision on one eye because of them!) Once before he was about to give a speech an assassin shot him in the chest. Roosevelt refused to go to a hospital and insisted on giving his speech, still wearing his blood-soaked shirt! Teddy might have become tough but he wasn’t born that way. He was a sickly child that suffered from severe asthma that almost proved fatal. As was a young boy, doctors discovered that he had a weak heart, and advised him to get a desk job and not strain himself. He was homeschooled because of his many illnesses and spent most of his time indoors. But then as a teen his father, whom Teddy Roosevelt revered, told his son, “ ...

Why Does A Lion Tamer Use a Chair?

Ok, I know you have seen the image. A lion tamer enters in the cage of the beast and forces it to obey his commands using a whip, a gun and a chair. Now you can see how the whip and gun could come in handy but you might be wondering why a chair would intimidate an animal as powerful as a lion? Clyde Beatty taming a lion with a chair It's not that the lion is afraid of the chair -- it's that the lion is confused by the chair. Cats are single-minded, and the points of the chair's four legs bobbing around confuse the lion enough that it loses its train of thought. Casually put, the chair distracts the lion from wanting to claw the lion tamer's face off. The powerful creature could destroy the chair in moment’s notice but instead it is distracted into submission. It’s not too much different than how Satan controls us today. By the power of God we could overcome anything that he would use to subdue us. We can overcome the evil one (1 st John 2:13-14). ...

Ecclesiastes 12:10

Search This Blog