Around Christmas time there is another story, other than the birth of Jesus, that is told over and over again. Regardless of whether you read it or watch it as a movie, written by Charles Dickens, “A Christmas Carol” is a story that reminds us that we must take hold of the opportunities that we have now to make a difference to those around us.
The opening scenes of the story have us seeing Scrooge locking up his business premises and unlocking his house. He appears to be obsessed with locks to protect what he has and to stop others from getting into his life. These locks also serve to keep him locked in, away from the world. I have to wonder if it was these pictures that Rita Coolidge had in mind when she said: “Too often. The opportunity knocks, but by the time you push back the chain, push back the bolt, unhook the two locks and shut off the burglar alarm… it’s too late.” Someone commented that it is never too late but I think that depends on what you are confronting. I want to share with you some of my thoughts about this.
First of all, there are those new opportunities that we are given here on earth to change our career or lifestyles. Sometimes we don’t recognise opportunity knocking at the door. We all have twenty/twenty vision in hindsight. It’s not always easy to hear Opportunity Knocking. Maybe you cannot hear it simply because you do not recognise it for what it is, maybe it’s a case of not seeing this as an opportunity but you might see it as something else such as a temptation. Is God calling you to do something new! Are you having trouble hearing Him over the noises around you? Like Scrooges ghosts, many things in our past will make a lot of noise and make it hard to hear what God is saying to us, but it is necessary to take time out to listen, quietly by ourselves.
Sometimes we have to be prompted by those around us to actually listen. I’m thinking of Esther. When Haman decided to destroy the Jews, it took Mordecai’s prompting for Esther to see that this was the opportunity that God had for her. It’s hard to listen to other’s ideas at times particularly if you have the feeling inside you that you are not qualified to carry out those duties. Yes, some opportunities will be scary, they will not always be profitable but they will be the ones where God wants you work for Him. There will be times when by refusing to step out in faith we will miss the blessings that could have been ours. That’s not to say that God will not continue to love you or use you but something will have been missed.
So let’s assume that you are hearing the knock of Opportunity. Maybe there are those locks that are keeping you shut in. They will all look a bit alike. The will have similarities. They are locks after all; they all do the same job but in a different way. So are you being held back?
Maybe that first chain that needs to be pulled back is the chain of fear. Are you are too afraid of being a failure, of not measuring up to your own or other’s expectations? There may be a very bad experience in your past that you are too afraid of repeating which is holding you back. Time passes quickly when we are frozen to the spot in fear. If it is fear that is holding you back remember Peter at the trial of Jesus. Fear meant that Peter denied that he knew Jesus and kept him on the outer edge of the crowd. Jesus can help you to overcome the fear. “For God hath not given us the spirit of fear; but of power, and of love, and of a sound mind.” 2 Timothy 1:7 this is how we can undo the lock of fear.
Let us consider what happened to the Israelites when they were too afraid to cross the Jordan River and move into the Promised Land. Deuteronomy 1:19-45. Their fear cost them dearly. It cost them not only forty years of wandering in the wilderness but also they never got to taste the blessings that were available to them in the Promised Land. This doesn’t mean that we are not going to experience fear, we will, but are we going to allow it to rule our lives and stop us from receiving all the blessings that God has in store for us.
I don’t like giving advice often but if you think fear is the thing that is holding you back, please go to the Lord and ask Him to show you what it is that you are afraid of and how to attack it. It may be fixed by something very simple. The Israelites were also afraid of goliath (1Samuel 17) Saul decided to sit in a chair of fear but David stood in sandals of faith.
So if it’s not fear that is holding you back maybe you are having trouble drawing back the bolt of procrastination. You wouldn’t be the first person to have this problem. A lot of people come up with excuse after excuse for not doing something. Some of them are just as simple as not having time or not wanting to change their current routine. Again we are all in good company here. Consider all the excuses that Moses came up with when God asked him to go and bring the people of Israel out of Egypt. (Exodus 3) Do we refuse to think about trying to do something for God because we haven’t had the proper training? Maybe it’s the training we don’t want to do? It prevents you from going down a road that the Lord is leading you and that training or the lack of it, is stopping you. Putting things off doesn’t mean that God will find someone else to do the job that he has for you. It might take you longer to get there but there, you will get. Think about Jonah, for a moment, he even ran away and yet God wanted him to do a particular job and God was patient, He kept prodding Jonah and eventually Jonah got around to doing what God wanted of him. When my children were at home they would often try and get out of doing the dishes by leaving them. Often that worked because I would get sick of waiting for them to be done and do them myself but on other occasions I would dig my heals in and wait. Two or three days later they would do them because they finally realised that mum wasn’t going to give in this time. The way to break this lock, is to do what God told Moses in Exodus 4:17 “And thou shalt take this rod in thine hand, wherewith thou shalt do signs.” Get moving and see what God will help you do.
Then next maybe there are those two locks that need to be unhooked, one of them could easily be a lack of preparation or willingness to seek other’s advice and learn from those who have gone before. This one is also tied up with procrastination – (I did say there were similarities) the fear that you don’t have the right qualifications to do what is being asked of you. This doesn’t come from scripture but Henry T Blackaby says: “The reality is that the Lord never calls the qualified; He qualifies the called.” Even organisations can get caught up in the need to have qualifications, those pieces of paper that say you are capable of doing a particular job because you have met a set of benchmarks. Let me tell you that there have been many times in my working career when people have been employed on the ‘say so’ of their qualifications and failed to even remotely meet the standards stated. On other occasions I have worked with people who were the first to tell me that they are not sure of what they are doing but give them a task, show them how to do it and whamo it’s done and done properly. Do I put faith in pieces of paper, not really? I’m not suggesting that we throw people in at the deep end of a job and stand by and watch them sink or swim. There is a real need to encourage people to do what God wants them to do, particularly within our churches but we should be careful about what we are putting our faith in.
That other lock that needs to be unhooked, could it be time and resources? Do you ask yourself if you will have the time on top of your current routine and job list to make the most of the opportunity that is being presented to you? Do you find yourself refusing to add something extra to your life because you feel that you do not have the energy to do anything else? Are you hanging on something that is taking up your time and resources that maybe God would like you the let go of? It is only through serious time in prayer that you will be able to decide if there might be things that you need to stop doing so you can serve God in another way. Letting go is not easy but the blessings will be greater as we obey Him.
Finally, there is the burglar alarm! This is the big one, the final round if you like; I think this one is that we are so often afraid of stepping out in faith, particularly when it involves a completely new venture. Some people find it much easier than others but most of us even when we do step out in faith, do it with some degree of fear and trembling. James 2:17-18 says “Even so faith, if it hath not works, is dead, being alone. Yea, a man may say, ‘Thou hast faith, and I have works: shew me thy faith without thy works, and I will shew thee my faith by my works.” Faith is something that must be exercised (like muscles in our bodies) to become stronger. We can tell people that we have faith but if we don’t use it, then it is of no use to us or the people around us.
Let us go back to the quote, I also thought about the other opportunity that knocks and we often miss it because it is too late. That is our eternal opportunity.
I was reminded of the parable of the Rich Fool. (Luke 12:16-20). Here was a man that took every opportunity that knocked on his door. He planted, reaped, sold, expanded and become very rich indeed. He accumulated so much earthly wealth that he was able to take early retirement. Yet, when it came to the eternal opportunity, he missed out. Why? Because when it knocked on his door, there was the chain of sowing that had to be dealt with. Then there was bolt of harvest that needed to be taken care of. Then of course he had to unhook the two chains of expanding his empire and looking after his accumulation of wealth, you don’t actually stay wealthy unless you take every opportunity to expand and look after it. Finally, he had to shut of the burglar alarm of retirement. So by the time he could open the door it was too late, too late to enter into the kingdom of Heaven. If at any time he had decided to just open the door with no regard to the things that were keeping him locked up, Jesus would have been more than willing to open His arms of love and receive him as a cherished child. You may be thinking but what did the rich fool do that was wrong, you just said that he took advantage of every opportunity that came his way. Well, the Bible tells us that we have all sinned, we have all ignored God and we are doing things the way we want to do them not the way God wants us to live. “For all have sinned, and come short of the glory of God;” (Romans 3:23) and Jesus wanted this man to live so that God would get the glory for his wealth and prosperity. Instead in verse 19 the man is taking all the credit for what he has done, achieved and gained. There is absolutely no thought that it was God who made the soil, sent the rain and sunshine that helped his crops grow which made him so rich. This is what keeps us out of Heaven, our lack of fellowship with our God the father, Jesus Christ our saviour and the Holy Spirit our comforter.
No, it’s never too late while we are here on earth, to just break the locks and come to Jesus, to ask for His forgiveness and start a new life outside with Him. But our time here on earth is limited. Our days are numbered. Psalm 139:16 says “Thine eyes did see my substance, yet being unperfect; and in thy book all my members were written, which in continuance were fashioned, when as yet there was none of them.” which tells me that even before I was born, God knew exactly how many days I have on this earth. He is not going to force me to love Him, He will lovingly draw me to Himself but if I refuse to accept that gift, then once my days are over I will have no more opportunities to change my mind about accepting that gift. “And as it is appointed unto men once to die, but after this the judgment:” Hebrews 9:27.
So we have managed to look at opportunity knocking from two angles. The first one was what might stop us from entering into a new adventure with the Lord, either in our church environment or our everyday work situation. As we face a new year, there will be many new and exciting opportunities that will come our way. Some will be small and seemly insignificant, or daunting and challenging while others may be life changing. Are we going to allow those locks stop us from finding out what extra blessings God has in store for us? Jeremiah 29:11 says: “For I know the thoughts that I think toward you, saith the LORD, thoughts of peace, and not of evil, to give you an expected end.” No matter what plans God has for us they will be for our good, He wants them to help us grow closer to Him, strengthen our faith and show others how God loves them, but we must be willing to open the door and run out to meet Him.
The second was how we might lose our eternal reward by not answering the door when Jesus knocks. Revelation 3:20 says: “Behold, I stand at the door, and knock: if any man hears my voice, and open the door, I will come in to him, and will sup with him, and he with me”. Yes, Jesus is knocking, He is giving you the opportunity to open the door of your heart to Him so that He can forgive you of your sins and allow you to spend eternity with Him in Heaven. We don’t know if we have enough time left of our lives to even see the new year in but if we don’t then we have to ask ourselves where we would like to spend our eternity. “Jesus saith unto him, I am the way, the truth, and the life: no man cometh unto the Father, but by me.” John 14:6.
How many locks do you have that are causing you to miss the greatest opportunity there is to have eternal life? It will only take one lock to keep the door shut between you and God.
It doesn’t matter if we are talking about a new opportunity here on earth or your willingness to accept Jesus as your Saviour, now is the time to open the door. Let me encourage you to break those locks apart, they are weak they look strong but they aren’t. Grab hold of that handle and pull that door open or like Scrooge throw the door open, run down the stairs and step out in faith into the arms of Jesus who is waiting for you on the other side.
The new year is just around the corner and we can embrace the new opportunities it holds but the most important thing is that when we do venture out, that we do so with Jesus as our friend and Saviour. The most important opportunity that we cannot miss, and one day it will be too late, is to move into the arms of Jesus who is waiting for us on the other side of that door. He will accept you as you are, He will give you the strength to make the most of what He has for you and if He is not your friend and Saviour now then, He really wants to be. Don’t let those locks keep you from missing out on the blessings that the next moment, day or year could bring but especially don’t miss out on eternity by staying inside behind a locked door.