Live from the Wilderness! Hard Truth #4: Asking God to close the door for good

Oh boy.

Last night I had a conversation with a fellow believer and she mentioned that her parents pray this prayer:  

Lord irrevocably close doors that don't need to be open.

As I told her, that is a very mature prayer.  I didn't stop thinking about it and I finally asked myself why I wouldn't want to pray something like that.

Three guesses but I will save you the time:  Unbelief....again.

I don't want God to irrevocably close doors because:

• I may not get what I want
• It may be uncomfortable and hard
• I still have some semblance of control
• I think that I should have more choices (more like distractions)

So then I said: "Well if I really believe God's plans for my life are good and he does not want to see me die out here in the wilderness then I should pray this prayer".

I asked God to irrevocably close doors that should not be opened.  As I have said on this blog, I'm in a season where things are changing.  I'm changing jobs, I'm launching new business ventures, and I'm in general transition.

Closing the Door as a single woman: Yikes

I think the scariest part of praying that prayer is as a single woman.  Now I have no doubt that God is going to take care of me when it comes to my professional life.  I don't think I will be out on the streets begging for money and if it doesn't work out, something better will come along.  I don't have any doubts about that BUT when it comes to the famine that is my romantic aspirations I'm not as hopeful.

When you ask God to close all the doors as a single person that's pretty scary.  However, I get the feeling that's what is going on anyway because things have been especially quiet on that front.  I'm talking about ZERO excitement.  I can't even make myself get excited anymore.  

I asked God to show me without a doubt and with no second guessing that this is the door that I'm supposed to open.  I will know it is the right one because I will see His glory.

Tackling Unbelief and Distractions

All of my problems are rooted in unbelief.  Satan has convinced many of us that God doesn't have any kind of positive plans for our lives.  He's convinced us that those dreams and desires that we have are just fantasies and they won't happen.

While he's at it, Satan also provides us with some pretty good distractions.  I can speak from experience that he knows what we like and he will send it. I'm talking about he has it down to the nitty gritty what we like and puts it before us. 

Ultimately what happens with Satan's distractions is that he uses them to get us to believe all of the lies he has told us about ourselves.  In my own personal experience his distraction further got into my head that no matter what I will never be good enough and I will always be rejected.

Enough of that story.  Remove all the distractions and close the door to things that are not in God's plan.

God's plan is better even if it is hard and uncomfortable

I don't know why I INSIST that I should have any kind of control or that my ideas about my life are better than God's.  

Perhaps it is just like with any other type of improvement:  Human beings always want to take the path of least resistance.  But it is just like what I heard in the podcast:

Easy choices lead to difficult life circumstances

Difficult choices lead to easier life circumstances

As a human being my natural tendency is to want to choose easy, but as I learned with my last job easy is too hard to maintain.

SHUT IT!

As you'll see when I update you on the prayer challenge, I have asked God to just make it clear.  Close the doors that don't need to be opened, open doors that I need to walk through, no more distractions, and no more second guessing.

SHUT IT!

Yikes

To God Be the Glory