The Door Opened And So Did The Trouble

She prayed for two years for that door to open.

Not casually either. She prayed for it the way she prays, which is out loud, on her feet, at unreasonable hours, and she has a notebook that would embarrass most people with how specific she got about it.

And it opened. In May. Cleanly, in a way that could not be mistaken for anything else, and she stood in the kitchen and shouted, actually shouted, and her neighbor knocked to check she was all right.

Within a fortnight it started.

Not one thing. Several. A person she had counted on going strange with her, for reasons that have still never been explained. A piece of the arrangement turning out to have been described to her inaccurately, not maliciously, but inaccurately, which meant a whole part of it had to be rebuilt while she was already standing in it.

Then a stretch in July where three separate things went wrong in eight days, and she remembers standing in a corridor at the end of it thinking, with total clarity: this is not what an open door is supposed to feel like.

She has never said that to anyone.

What she says is that it is a season of building and building is hard. And that is true, and she believes it in the daytime.

What is underneath it is different, and it goes like this: God does not open a door into a mess. So either this was not the door, or it was the door and I have already damaged it, or somebody is against me and I do not know who.

And this is a woman who knows better. She could preach on Ephesians six with no notes. She is not a stranger to the idea that opposition exists.

But it is different when the trouble arrives fourteen days after the thing you begged God for, because then it does not feel like an attack. It feels like a review.

And you know that feeling. Something opened for you and something came in behind it, and you have been quietly letting the trouble grade the door.

He put both halves in one sentence and never explained himself

Paul writes a line so plain that it should have settled this permanently, and somehow it did not.

He is describing why he is staying where he is, and he gives two reasons in one breath.

For a wide door for effective work has opened to me, and there are many adversaries.1 Corinthians 16:9

Read the conjunction. And.

Not but. Not although. Not a wide door has opened despite the adversaries, and not the adversaries prove the door was false. He puts them side by side as two facts about the same situation and moves on without a word of explanation, because to him they were not a contradiction at all.

You have been treating an and as a but, and that single word has been costing you since May. It is written that a wide door for effective work has opened, and there are many adversaries (1 Corinthians 16:9), and it is the Holy Spirit who takes a small conjunction in an old letter and unlocks a woman standing in a corridor in July with it.

Now let us take the three thoughts underneath, one at a time, because they deserve better than being called doubts.

God does not open a door into a mess. Except that He does, constantly. Israel walked out of Egypt into a wilderness. The disciples were sent out and told plainly they were being sent as sheep among wolves. Paul went to Macedonia because of a vision and was in a cell by the end of the chapter, and nothing in the account suggests he had misread the vision.

You are standing in a normal thing, and the fourteen days are not unusual, and nothing about the trouble is evidence that you took a wrong turn. Scripture says do not be surprised at the fiery trial when it comes upon you, as though something strange were happening (1 Peter 4:12), and it is His Spirit who takes the strangeness out of it, which is more than half of what was crushing you.

The second thought: it was the door and I have already damaged it.

Look at what actually happened. A person went strange for reasons nobody has ever explained. A piece of the arrangement had been described inaccurately by somebody else. Three things went wrong in eight days.

You are not in any of those sentences. There is no place in that list where a mistake of yours is the hinge, and the fact that you have been carrying it as though there were says a great deal about how hard you are willing to work and nothing at all about what happened.

You are not the cause of the mess, and you have been carrying a bill that was never addressed to you. It is written that God is not unjust so as to overlook your work and the love you have shown for His name (Hebrews 6:10), and it is the Holy Spirit who keeps a woman working like that from being crushed by a debt she does not owe.

And the third: somebody is against me and I do not know who.

This one is closest to true and needs the least drama. Opposition is real, and Scripture treats it as ordinary rather than as a special event, and the response given is never investigation. It is standing.

You are already fully equipped for the standing, and the equipment was issued before the door opened. Scripture says take up the whole armor of God, that you may be able to stand firm (Ephesians 6:13), and it is His Spirit who makes armor an actual thing a woman is wearing in a corridor rather than a chapter she can teach on.