When God Closes a Door

One of the more frustrating experiences of my life was when I was forced to wait for a work visa to be approved so that I could move overseas to work with the church in Australia. I left the congregation that I was working with in Tennessee expecting to be able to move overseas four months later; it ended up being an additional seven months after that before I could even go to Australia with any hope of getting a visa (I got one two months after arriving there). This left me without full-time preaching work for the better part of one year. While I spent the first four months visiting congregations and raising support for my mission effort, for those next seven months, I really was in limbo. Day after day I would check my email for news about the visa process; Sunday after Sunday and Wednesday after Wednesday I endured a barrage of, “So, when are you going over?” questions from my brothers and sisters at church. It’s really hard to commit yourself to doing something only to find that the door is closed and that you can’t open it.

When Paul set out on his second missionary journey, he too found that God closed a door. The Bible says that when he and his companions “had gone through Phrygia and the region of Galatia, they were forbidden by the Holy Spirit to preach the word in Asia” (Acts 16:6). Further, when “they had come to Mysia, they tried to go into Bithynia, but the Spirit did not permit them” (Acts 16:7). We’re not told why the Holy Spirit forbade them which is perhaps a good indication that they weren’t either. They simply tried to go to these places and were told, “No.”

When Jesus began His address to the church in Philadelphia, He applied a statement Isaiah made in prophecy to Himself: “These things says… ‘He who has the key of David, He who opens and no one shuts, and shuts and no one opens” (Revelation 3:7; cf. Isaiah 22:22). Since Jesus has been granted, “All authority… in heaven and on earth,” He holds an exclusive right of approval and refusal over everything (Matthew 28:18). If He determines that something will happen, nothing can stop it; if He determines that something won’t happen, it won’t, no matter what man does (cf. Job 9:12; 23:13; Isaiah 43:13; 46:9-10; Daniel 4:35; Acts 5:38-39).

Paul was very aware of this aspect of Jesus’ nature. He encouraged the church in Colossi to pray “also for us, that God would open to us a door for the word, to speak the mystery of Christ” (Colossians 4:3). Paul knew that while it is Jesus’ right to close doors and keep them closed, He also grants to every Christian the right to request through prayer that doors be opened. Jesus’ servant James taught, “The effective, fervent prayer of a righteous man avails much,” and then illustrated how much by discussing the prayers offered by the prophet Elijah concerning rain (James 5:16-18). While Elijah alone could not close or open the windows of heaven, the implication of this reading is that if he had not asked for the weather cycle to change, it would have continued as per normal.

The fact that Jesus opens a door does not imply that everything is going to be easy. When Paul wrote to the Corinthians, he told them that he was going to delay his trip to see them, “For a great and effective door has opened to me, and there are many adversaries” (1 Corinthians 16:9). The door was “great,” probably not qualitatively but as other versions read, “wide” (ESV, NASB), that is, “wide open,” and “effective,” a word translated as “powerful” or “active” when it describes God’s word in Hebrews 4:12. Essentially, there was an awesome opportunity, but, as Paul went on to say, there were a lot of things opposing it. This reveals something though about open doors: facing difficulty is not the same thing as God saying, “No.”

There are times when we will face a rather definitive “No” though, just like Paul when he attempted to go to Asia and Bithynia. While the Bible doesn’t lead me to expect as clear of a “No” as Paul received from the Holy Spirit, who directly guided him as an apostle of Jesus Christ, there have been several times when I have found myself unable to do something that I wanted to do. It’s so important in times like these to realize that there is never a time when a Christian has absolutely nothing to do. In her beautiful hymn, “Little Is Much When God Is In It,” Kittle Suffield wrote, “Are you laid aside from service, Body worn from toil and care? You can still be in the battle, In the sacred place of prayer.” As the saying goes, when one door closes, another one always opens.

Paul did not interpret the “No’s” as a message to stop altogether. Instead, he kept looking for Jesus’ open door. He went from Phrygia to Galatia to Mysia, only being told, “No,” but he still went to Troas. It was only then that he was given his open door through a vision that appeared to him “in the night” of “a man of Macedonia” pleading for help (Acts 16:9). Rather than “grow weary while doing good” (Galatians 6:9), Paul responded to the vision by “immediately” seeking “to go to Macedonia” (Acts 16:10).

This was not as easy of a decision as it seems in the record of Acts. The Bible later reveals 1) that Paul actually intended to preach in Troas and 2) that Paul had missed a connection in Troas with his friend and fellow laborer, Titus. He writes of this time:


Even though Paul “had no rest” in his spirit, he still determined to pursue God’s open door. Looking back on this time, he saw God’s plan at work. His fears and frustrations were only a short chapter in a story about “triumph in Christ,” one that allowed God to diffuse “the fragrance of His knowledge in every place.”

Interestingly, Paul’s closed door in Asia eventually became an open one. After following the Macedonian call to Philippi, Athens, and Corinth, Paul went to Ephesus (which was located in Asia) on his way back to Jerusalem and Antioch (Acts 18:19-22). He then was able to return to Ephesus on his third missionary journey (Acts 19:1ff). After being told not to go there at all, he ended up staying there for three years. In fact, when Paul spoke of his “great and effective door” to the Corinthians, he was actually describing Ephesus (1 Corinthians 16:8-9).

It’s impossible to know why God closed the door for Paul in Asia only to open it later. It’s possible that some unforeseen danger awaited Paul in Asia had he gone there earlier rather than later. It’s also possible that Paul’s labor in Asia would not have been as fruitful had he gone earlier rather than later. While in Corinth it was true that Paul “planted [and] Apollos watered” (1 Corinthians 3:6), these roles ended up being reversed in Ephesus. Apollos came to Ephesus knowing “only the baptism of John,” and ended up being converted by Aquila and Priscila (Acts 18:25-26), a Christian couple who were at the very least influenced by and possibly even converted by Paul themselves while he was in Corinth (Acts 18:1-3). It’s also possible that as profitable as the labor in Asia would eventually be, a more important work needed to be done right then in Macedonia and Achaia. Paul was able to plant a strong church in Philippi and give the Gospel an important foothold in Corinth, aided in part by an ambivalent Roman ruler named Gallio (Acts 18:12-17). As Roman proconsuls only served for one year, it’s possible that if Paul had gone to Corinth at a different time, he might have faced a more antagonistic proconsul.

As I return to my own story of trying to get a work visa to move to Australia, the door did eventually open, and I was blessed to work with the church in Australia for four years. Since then, I’ve been able to look back on that entire period and see a host of lessons that I learned and blessings that I received because I went to Australia when God was ready rather than when I was ready. I believe it always works this way. Even if we don’t see the benefit of a closed door in our lifetimes, eternity will one day reveal the amazing things Jesus did as He wielded “the key of David,” opening some doors while closing others (Revelation 3:7).  

-Patrick Swayne  
patrick@tftw.org