A Friend's Remark....

Sometimes I find my own desire to save memorable comments a mere fancy of selfish pride. However, I do mean to keep those posts or, in this case, a facebook dialogue that has illustrated a long lost point. Do enjoy.

Me:

Today I was listening to a podcast by Dr. Willian Craig. He made an interesting point in illustrating God's omnipotence. He said, "All things are possible through Christ who strengthens us. I'm not saying that door's will always open in your life. Sometimes, through God, you need to break them down." Perhaps this is common knowledge, but it struck me in a very different way than what I normally hear. Any thoughts?

Yurchn Tlern :

The Israelites had to walk around Jericho 7 times, and I'm betting that was a lot harder and sounded a lot crazier than spending the time just breaking the door down. (Though the idea is the same as a closed door.) I think the church's version of "normal thinking" includes a lot of fear of our passions running away with us, and I think passionately pursuing a closed door falls into that category.
Is it always wise to break the door down? I can't say, but I know that God loves to break "normal thinking", and maybe by giving up when a certain door closes we give up an opportunity for God to show himself strong through our weakness. With that, I'm convinced that sometimes we can miss out on something wonderful because we waited for it to get up and walk over to us. What do you think?

Me:

I think you hit it on the head. In contrast to the normality of church teaching, we find that the God of the Old Testament was quite provocative towards action. For some reason or another, I think action tends to be subverted under the guise of pious contentment. Whereas, I would contend that the term contentment is action-oriented towards finding the fullness of what you already possess.

However, I suppose what made me really start thinking was the notion that what we presume to be closed doors are open insofar as we open them in Christ. When we think of the verses such as, "You have not because you ask not" and "We can do all things through Christ who strengthens me," I feel that we assume that if we see the door open then we are free to go through and if a door is closed that assumes we are not to go through. Instead, we should be asking, in light of Christ, ought that door be open or ought that door be closed. And if that door is open in contrast to Christ or closed in contrast to Christ, it is in those moments we ask for what we do not have and strive for what we cannot do.