A Wide Open Door

Sometimes the Lord opens a door so wide that it shocks you as you stumble through it into a place that is clearly His will. Especially when the door opens in a place where you know there is opposition to you or to your message. Paul said the same of his time in Ephesus, a godless city of affluence, worldly lusts, and idolatry. He wrote to the church in Corinth, “I hope to spend some time with you, if the Lord permits. But I will stay in Ephesus until Pentecost, for a wide door for effective work has opened to me, and there are many adversaries.” (1 Cor. 16:8-9)

On Thursday, May 9, I finished my college classes for the spring. On the occasion when we have time to do it, I love to have the students do an impromptu speech on the last day. They draw two topics out of an envelope, choose one, and then they have two minutes in the hallway outside the class to prepare a 1-minute speech. And I sweeten the pot for them a little by telling them at the end of the round, I will go to the hallway and they can decide as a class what my topic will be. “Anything you want,” I say to them, “but keep it clean.” They are to write it on the board and call me in to speak for at least a minute without notes and without any preparation. I love these days. Especially when they choose a topic like my 8am class this spring. I walked in and saw they had written, “Roe v. Wade” on the board. They were grinning at me like, “Hey, Prof, we know you are a Christian and a pastor, so what are you going to do with this one?” I felt like Brer Rabbit in the briar patch. I smiled and started with this, “The most famous quote from the Declaration of Independence, one of our founding documents, is this: ‘We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness.”  Then I said that there are two dark and ugly stains on America’s history, the first being slavery. The Three-Fifths Compromise in the US Constitution stated that only three out of five slaves could be counted for the purpose of taxation and representation. That fostered among many a belief that slaves were not fully human and were therefore disposable. In fact, slave owners could kill their slaves and were very rarely punished for doing so.  They could sell a husband to another slave owner and keep the man’s wife. They could sell all of the children that belonged to a slave couple or split them up and sell them. I asked the class, “How could we have ever believed such an atrocity, that it is ok, even good, to own another human being? How could we commit such a heinous crime against humanity? That is the way we think about slavery now, isn’t it? In the same way, I pray for the day that America’s second dark stain will be looked at the same way. I pray the day will come, and it may not be in my lifetime, when we look back at the practice of abortion and say, “How could we have ever believed that it is perfectly acceptable to kill an unborn child? How could we have ever said, “It is a woman’s right to choose?” God alone has the choice to give or to take away. 

When I finished, I saw a student in the class who comes to Antioch grinning at me. He told me later that he now uses that same argument with his friends who believe in abortion. 

I give all glory to God that He gave me the opportunity He did and that He had prepared me to speak to the topic. He did it. Not me. 

There is a wide open door for effective ministry given to us as followers of Christ. Every one of us. Not just to speak on the subject of the sanctity of life, which God surely cares about. But to speak to the issue of eternal life, which is offered only because of the sacrifice of Jesus Christ on the cross. 

We cannot be silent, saints!