When God Opens the Gates We Cannot Move

With a Subtitle: This passage shows that God overcomes both human weakness and impossible barriers

A brief Excerpt: Acts 12:10 reminds us that God can open doors no human strength can move. He is able to overcome every guard, every gate, and every weakness as He shapes us into the image of His Son.

The Author is: Rich Holt

Scripture

Our verse for today comes from Acts 12:10, “When they had passed the first and the second guard, they came to the iron gate leading into the city. It opened for them of its own accord, and they went out and went along one street, and immediately the angel left him.”

Background

Our two garage doors have been through the raising of six children, and they certainly look and act like it. Both have windows that are partially or completely busted out. One is significantly dented, and the rod that pulls it up is bent. But that doesn’t really matter because neither one of them rises or lowers when you push the garage door button. A few months ago, one of our neighbors got a new garage door and gave us the disassembled panels and pieces of the one he replaced, having realized that our doors were broken down and inoperable. And those parts have rested inside my non-working garage doors from that moment until yesterday. For the night before, he texted and said that yesterday seemed like the perfect day for him and his kids to come over and assemble and replace my garage door. He was off from work, and he wanted to give his kids something to do besides be on their electronics all day, so their free day turned into the project of my garage door. Now, this neighbor is not a garage door repairman. Neither is he a septic system specialist, bicycle repairman, mechanic, welder, or landscape architect. But those talents, and many more, are some of the clearest evidence that this neighbor makes a living with computers and is mechanically inclined. He is the embodiment of one who is good with tools and can intuitively understand how things work, and he has no problem taking unfamiliar things apart and putting them back together to work again.

Application

Many if not most of us are not gifted this way. Some might have the “soft” skills of dealing with people, and others might crunch numbers or be everything athletic. But your strength is somebody else’s weakness, and vice versa. If you could have gotten past the guards near Peter, you may have struggled with the iron gate. If the gate was no problem, then dealing with the sentries might have been. Fortunately, God is great at both. He can help us overcome the temptation of things and also equip us to gracefully deal with all sorts of people, even ourselves. So let Him be more than a neighbor who is kind, generous, and skilled. Let Him be the One who makes you into the image of His Son.

Charge

As we seek Him today, let your strengths and weaknesses be transformed in the hands of Almighty God.