OUR NEXT PASSAGE: “When I came to Tro´as to preach the gospel of Christ, a door was opened for me in the Lord” (2 Cor. 2:12). “A door was opened for me in the Lord.” Is there always a door opened for us if we stay in the Lord, and provided we preach the gospel of Christ? We close doors if we get off the gospel of Christ and if we get off of being in the Lord. It is the devil’s own strategy to get us out of the Lord and to get us preaching everything except the gospel of Christ. A passage says: “the Pharisees began to press him hard, and to provoke him to speak of many things” (Luke 11:53). If the Adversary can get us as ministers to “speak of many things” then he has us off of the One Thing—Christ—and he has us rendered innocuous. He doesn’t mind how many things we speak about provided he can get us to lay off of Christ. We lay off of Christ if we put Him on the margin and something else at the center.
I have just come from a great church—great in passion and vision of evangelizing India. They are not entering that great open door, however, for they are tied up in a controversy over whether the communion is a symbol only or whether there is a real presence in the communion. The devil’s own strategy to keep them preoccupied there. I know of an evangelist who could have swept India if he had remained in the Lord and had preached the gospel of Christ; but instead he left the cross and took the judgment seat and began to tell who was going where. He became “an accuser of the brethren”—a name given to Satan in Revelation! His influence is circumscribed—there is no great open door.
I was in another section of India where the church has a great spiritual heritage, but this great church was cancelled out by an inner tension over caste. Which people, from which caste, will be in the ascendency? Both parties have sunk—there was no great open door before them.
O Jesus, my Lord, save me from speaking of many things and missing the One Thing. Forgive me if my heart is preoccupied with championing marginal things so I become spent when it comes to Thee. In Thy name. Amen.
AFFIRMATION FOR THE DAY: When I remain in Christ there is always an open door—if I can’t do this, I can do that—with and in Him.
