Break Out!: 5 Keys to Go Beyond Your Barriers and Live an Extraordinary Life (25 page)

Stay open and let God do it His way. Put the request on the altar. It’s okay to be honest and say, “God, this is what I want. God, You know how badly I want it. You know how much it means to me. But God, if it’s not Your best I don’t want it. God, I trust You.”

I didn’t see that young lady for the longest time. She ended up moving to another city. About five or six years later, she came to church with this handsome man by her side. Come to find out they were married. They had a beautiful daughter. She was as happy as can be.

At one point her husband stepped away and she whispered in my ear, “Joel, you remember the young man we used to always pray about? He’s already been married and divorced two times. He’s constantly in and out of trouble. He can’t hold down a good job.”

She made the statement, “I thank God every day that He didn’t answer my prayer.”

When you want something so badly that you convince yourself you can’t live without it, you try to make it happen. You may pray night and day for it, but God is so merciful that if it’s not His best, He is not going to answer that prayer. He loves you too much to open that door. Why don’t you trust Him? He wants you to fulfill your destiny more than you do. He is in complete control.

When you come to a closed door, consider it a test of your faith. Will you become bitter, live in self-pity, and give up on your dreams, or will you move forward knowing that God is still in control?

If you pass the test, God will release what He has in your future. And many times it will be exactly what you’re praying for. God will bring back the person you wanted. Or He may bring an opportunity you thought was lost, or a dream you’d thought impossible. God just wants to see if you trust Him enough to be happy even if it doesn’t happen your way.

That’s what happened with Abraham. God instructed him to put his son Isaac, the person who meant the most to him, on the altar as a sacrifice. Just when Abraham was going to harm him, God said, “No, Abraham. Don’t do it. I just wanted to see if you trusted me enough to give me your own son.”

Abraham passed the test. What happened? God gave him back what he really wanted, the person who meant so much to him. When you face a disappointment, or a closed door, or when your plans don’t work out, if you keep a good attitude and stay in faith, you will pass the test. If you do that, it allows God to give back to you what you really want the most.

Proverbs 20:24 says, “Since the Lord is directing our steps, why do we try to figure out everything that happens along the way?” You could find freedom if you would just quit trying to figure out everything.

“God, why did I go through that breakup? I’m a good person.”

“God, why didn’t I get that job I applied for? It’s perfect for me.”

If you’re trying to figure out everything that doesn’t go your way, you’ll become confused and frustrated. Let it go and move forward. God can see things you can’t see. It may not make sense right now, but one day when God’s whole plan unfolds you will see what God was up to. A part of trusting is saying, “God, I don’t understand it. It doesn’t seem fair. But God, I believe that my steps and my stops are ordered by You. I know just as You can close doors, You will open them. So I’m keeping a good attitude. I’m moving forward in faith knowing that You have my best interests at heart.”

There was a woman who complained constantly. After one particularly bad day, she said, “God, why did You let so many bad things happen to me? My alarm didn’t go off, and I was late to work. At lunch they made my sandwich wrong, and I had to send it back. Driving home, my cell phone dropped the call right in the middle of a conversation. To top it off, God, when I got home I wanted to put my feet in the foot massager just to relax, but it wouldn’t turn on. God, nothing went right today.”

God said, “All right. Let Me go down the list. Your alarm didn’t go off because there was a drunk driver on the freeway. I delayed you on purpose so you wouldn’t be harmed. The sandwich you had to send back was made by a cook who was sick and I didn’t want you to catch his flu, so I had someone else make you the new one. I cut off your phone call because the person you were talking to has been spreading rumors, and I didn’t want you to hear too much. And that foot massager? I shut it down because there was a short in its wiring. If I’d let you turn it on, the power would have gone out in your entire house, and I didn’t think you would want to sit around in the dark all evening.”

God knows exactly what He is doing! Everything about your life is calculated. You may not understand when something doesn’t go your way, but that’s because you’re not God. He has a reason for every door that closes to you. Since the Lord is directing your steps, don’t try to figure out everything that happens. Trust Him instead.

A minister friend of mine once had this big outdoor event planned in another country. He and his staff spent more than two years preparing for it. They had government officials, business leaders, pastors, and several organizations involved. It was a huge undertaking, costing thousands and thousands of dollars.

Just a few days before the event, they were nearly done with preparations. They had the staging out. The sound system was up. Their advertisements were playing on the radio and television. Then they received word from the local government that because of a swine flu outbreak, all public meetings had been cancelled.

My friend was so disappointed. Two years of hard work came to nothing. It seemed like the biggest waste of time, energy, and money. He and his team got on the plane and came back home. That weekend, just when their event would have been underway, the military staged a coup and overthrew the government. It was total chaos.

People panicked. No law. No order. Shooting in the street. All kinds of mayhem. If his event had not been cancelled, he would have been right in the middle of it. No telling what would have happened. He said, “I know this sounds odd, but I thank God for the swine flu. We may have lost some time, energy, and money, but we could have lost our lives.”

You may wonder why something you’d planned didn’t work out, just as my friend did. But like him, one day you will thank God for the door that closed. You’ll be grateful that it didn’t work out.

First Corinthians 13:12 says, “Now we see in part like looking through a glass dimly but one day we will see clearly face to face.” Right now you may not see all clearly. You’re only looking at it in part. But one day it will come into focus, and you’ll look back and say, “Wow, God! You are amazing! You had it all figured out. You closed the door on purpose so Your perfect will would be done.”

That’s what happened to this one bright young man who was a straight A student in high school. He loves to study. Academically, he’s in the top five percent of the nation. His dream was to become an engineer. It’s always what he wanted to do. After he earned an undergraduate degree, he applied to do graduate studies at about a dozen or so of the best engineering schools in the nation, but he was turned down again and again.

It didn’t make sense. Some of his friends with lower grades and scores were accepted, but he wasn’t. He could not understand it.

While he was waiting to hear back from a few other grad schools, he went on a mission trip with a group of doctors from his church. He was there to just run errands and to help out. They were in a very poor nation.
When he saw the doctors taking care of the people, treating their diseases, something new was birthed on the inside. He thought, “I don’t want to be an engineer. This is what I want to do with my life. I want to become a doctor and help to take care of people.”

After he returned home, he applied to medical school and he was immediately accepted. In fact, he had several schools to choose from. What was interesting is that the first engineering school he had applied to finally sent him a letter of acceptance. If he had received that letter months earlier, the young man never would have gone on the mission trip, and he might never have felt called to become a doctor. God closed the doors to the engineering school on purpose, to push him into his divine destiny.

You may be discouraged because your plans have not worked out, but those closed doors were not an accident. That was God directing your steps. The reason God closed them is because He has something better in store. Will you trust Him? It may not make sense now, but one day it will. Remember, you’re not really trusting Him if you are happy only when things go your way. Put your desires on the altar. “God, this is what I want, but let Your will, not mine, be done.”

If you adopt this perspective and thank God for your closed doors just as much as for your open doors, then like Abraham you’ll pass the test. I believe and declare you will see the exceeding, abundant, above-and-beyond future that God has in store.

M
ost of the time we believe God is in control when everything is going our way. We’re getting good breaks. Business is up. The family is happy. The kids are making good grades. We know God is directing our steps. Life is good.

But having faith doesn’t exempt us from difficulties. The storms of life come to every person. We get a bad medical report. A friend betrays us. Business takes a downturn. In the difficult times it’s easy to think, “God, where are You? How could You let this happen to me?”

But the same God Who is in control in the good times is just as in control in the tough times. God will not allow a storm unless He has a divine purpose for it. He never said He would prevent every difficulty, but God did promise He would use every difficulty.

Here’s the key: God will direct the winds of the storm to blow you where He wants you to go. We see storms as being negative. “Oh, this is so bad. Can’t believe this is happening to me.” But God uses the storm to move you from point A to point B. The winds may be strong, the circumstances may look bad, but if you will stay in faith, not get bitter, not start complaining, those winds will blow you to a new level of your destiny.

It may have been meant for your harm, but God knows how to shift the winds. Instead of blowing you backward He can cause them to blow you forward where you will come out better, stronger—and that storm also will move you to a place of greater blessing and greater influence.

A lot of people say they have faith, but in the tough times they fall apart. They feel like God has disappointed them. They won’t be happy until the storm is over. But you have to remind yourself God is in control of that storm. Nothing happens without God’s permission. If that storm was keeping you from your destiny, God would have never allowed it. If that person who left you, or that financial difficulty, or that legal situation was stopping God’s plan for your life, He would have never permitted it.

The reason He did allow it was to move you one step closer to your divine destiny. Instead of using your faith to try to pray away every difficulty, you should use your faith to believe that when the winds stop blowing you will be exactly where God wants you to be.

The Apostle Paul did just that. God promised that Paul would stand before Caesar. Paul was doing the right thing, fulfilling his purpose, when he was arrested. They put him on a boat that was headed toward Rome. Paul told the captain and the crew, “This is not a good time to sail. There’s bad weather up ahead.”

Paul had inside information, but they wouldn’t listen to him. Their ship was in the middle of the ocean when a huge storm arose. For fourteen days they didn’t see the sun or the stars. It was dark. The sea was turbulent. The wind was howling.

The storm was so bad they started throwing equipment overboard to keep the ship from sinking. They were sure they would be killed. Imagine what must have been going through Paul’s mind. Here he was doing the right thing, but he still ended up in the middle of this huge storm.

Sometimes you face difficulties not because you’re doing something wrong, but because you’re doing something right. It’s just another step on the way to your divine destiny. With most storms, we can see the end. At some point we know it’s ending soon. We just have to dig in our heels and endure it. But there are some storms, like the one Paul faced, that never seem like they’ll end. You may have problems like that. It seems like they will never be resolved. You may think that in the natural you’ll never get well, or never get out of debt.

Paul was facing that sort of never-ending storm. The crew finally said to him, “You were right. We should have listened to you.”

Paul didn’t say, “I told you so. Now look what you’ve done. You’ve doomed us all.”

Instead, he said, in effect, “Don’t worry about it. The God I serve has given me a promise. He said that I will stand before Caesar. He would not have allowed this storm if it would keep me from my destiny.”

When you have a promise deep down in your heart, everything in the world can come against you. The dream may look far away, but like Paul, you know this setback is not permanent. It’s only temporary. It will not keep you from becoming who God has created you to be.

The wind became so strong, the waves so big, that the crew on Paul’s boat could not control the ship anymore. Instead of fighting it, instead of trying to steer it where they wanted it to go, it says in Acts 27 that they took down the sails and let the wind blow the ship wherever the storm wanted it to go.

Like with that crew, there comes a point when you’ve done everything you can. You’ve prayed. You’ve believed. You stood in faith. Now you’ve got to do as they did. Quit fighting it. Quit trying to make it happen your way. Quit trying to force it to work out and just relinquish control. Let the storm take you where God wants you to go. God will never take you someplace where He won’t sustain you.

It’s a powerful attitude to relinquish control—when you quit worrying about it, quit losing sleep, and quit dreading it—and say, “God, I trust You. I know You control these winds. They can either blow me backward, forward, sideways, up, or down. But one thing I’m confident in: where You take me is where I’m supposed to be.”