You're here: oChristian.com » Articles Home » John Henry Jowett » The Friend on the Road and Other Studies in the Gospels » Chapter 2 - The Challenge of the Closed Door

The Friend on the Road and Other Studies in the Gospels: Chapter 2 - The Challenge of the Closed Door

By John Henry Jowett


      "Knock, and it shall be opened unto you."--Matt. vii. 7.

      WE are more ready to speak of the challenge of the open door. Some opportunity shines before us with gates ajar, and the opening is a calling, in which we hear the voice of God, "Behold, I have set before thee an open door!" But, after all, it is the closed door which most severely challenges our faith and tests our ingenuity and courage. The real quality of our spirits is displayed when we have to stand knocking at the iron gate.

      For instance, there is the closed door of the heart. We want to enter it with the holy love of the Lord Jesus, but it appears to be almost hermetically sealed. We knock, but we get no answer. We can hear the sounds of revelling within, and we catch glimpses of many bright distractions, but we cannot persuade the much-engaged friend to heed our knockings and make room for our Lord. The world is too much with him, and he has no use for Christ. It is the challenge of the closed door! There is nothing for it but to go on knocking, in the sustaining hope that some day there may be a lull in the whirling distraction, and the door may be opened to Jesus.

      And there are the iron doors of caste. What a challenge they present to the servant of the Lord! Shall we just sit down before them and wait until on some happy day they open of their own accord? Or shall we exercise a sacred inventiveness, and in a thousand gentle knockings entice the imprisoned spirits to open their doors to the Lord and Saviour of all men? There is the door of prejudice. Where stern prejudice reigns every door and window is closed. How to overcome the barrier! It is a great challenge to Christian tenacity and devotion. We are called upon to bombard the closed life with light--but the light must be sunlight, it must be both light and heat, it must be both grace and truth, it must be both wisdom and love. The friendly besiegement must go on day after day, until all opposition yields to grace, and the doors are lifted up, and the King of Glory can enter in.

      Anybody can enter an open door. The real challenge comes when the door is locked and barred and sealed. He who would open a closed mind needs a big mind He needs the grace of magnanimity and all that magnanimity breeds. In this ministry little minds are altogether without resources. We need "the mind of Christ." We need a mind purified and enlarged by His saving grace, and with such endowment we can confront other minds, and by patient knockings we can persuade them to let in the King, that they also may come into possession of their great inheritance.

Back to John Henry Jowett index.

See Also:
   Chapter 1 - Critics and Surgeons
   Chapter 2 - The Challenge of the Closed Door
   Chapter 3 - How the Best Things Become Ours
   Chapter 4 - Sixpennyworth of Miracle
   Chapter 5 - The Peace of the Larger Life
   Chapter 6 - Education by Contagion
   Chapter 7 - The Tares Among the Wheat
   Chapter 8 - Things New and Old
   Chapter 9 - The Buoyancy of Faith
   Chapter 10 - Sound the Great Recall
   Chapter 11 - The Bright Cloud
   Chapter 12 - Mercy and Obligation
   Chapter 13 - The Simplification of Life
   Chapter 14 - Life's Perilous Heats
   Chapter 15 - Feverishness
   Chapter 16 - The Truly Sensational Life
   Chapter 17 - The Dominant Passion
   Chapter 18 - Doing the Impossible
   Chapter 19 - The Life I Should Live
   Chapter 20 - The Blessing and Discipline of Retirement
   Chapter 21 - Endless Possibilities
   Chapter 22 - The Price of Liberty
   Chapter 23 - The Dynamics of Expulsion
   Chapter 24 - Evils That Never Arrive
   Chapter 25 - Returning in Power
   Chapter 26 - The Old Tackle and the New Presence
   Chapter 27 - The Noble Dissatisfaction
   Chapter 28 - The Malady of Not Wanting
   Chapter 29 - Sentimentaltsm
   Chapter 30 - The Pedantic Conscience
   Chapter 31 - A Receiver of Wrecks
   Chapter 32 - The Supreme Test
   Chapter 33 - Fainting
   Chapter 34 - Doing the Impossible
   Chapter 35 - Divine Visitations
   Chapter 36 - Self-Possession
   Chapter 37 - The Treacherous Kiss
   Chapter 38 - The Friend on the Road
   Chapter 39 - Dull Scholars
   Chapter 40 - The Unknown Christ
   Chapter 41 - The Worst and the Best
   Chapter 42 - Increase and Decrease
   Chapter 43 - Hating the Light
   Chapter 44 - Heroic Goodness
   Chapter 45 - Living Words
   Chapter 46 - The Last Bridge
   Chapter 47 - The Ministry of Infusion
   Chapter 48 - Breaking the Awful Silence
   Chapter 49 - Preparing for the Miracle
   Chapter 50 - The Inner Door
   Chapter 51 - The Revelation in the After Days
   Chapter 52 - The Troubled Heart
   Chapter 53 - The Gift of Peace
   Chapter 54 - Settling Down in Christ
   Chapter 55 - The Joy of the Lord
   Chapter 56 - The Joy of Christian Life
   Chapter 57 - The Sense of Mission
   Chapter 58 - Living at Second Hand
   Chapter 59 - The Great Act of Receiving

Loading

Like This Page?


© 1999-2019, oChristian.com. All rights reserved.