Search
TRY WALKING THROUGH THE OTHER DOOR!
Updated: Nov 1, 2024
Today’s Message of Encouragement from Discovering A BETTER LIFE MINISTRIES
(Stories of Real People, Real Events, Real Places)
And are dedicated to HELPING
PEOPLE FIND PEACE and HOPE
(John 10:10)
(January 24th, 2022)
TRY WALKING
THROUGH THE OTHER DOOR!
Friend, perhaps you’ve read Dr. A.J. Cronin’s novel: Hatter’s Castle? However, I wonder if you know the story behind how he became a writer? Well, when he was a doctor in London, on the verge of his greatest success, his health broke. He was told to take a year’s rest and that he might never again be fit to stand the wear and tear of the medical profession. What a blow!
Dr. Cronin loved his work! From a small and humble beginning, he had achieved his life’s objective, and now it must be abandoned. The door to a medical career was slammed in his face. He voiced bitterness and resentment to all of his friends. Life had turned sour.
Then, while in exile in the West Highlands, time hung heavy on Dr. Cronin’s hands. Hours felt like years; the door to success had been shut. Suddenly one day an impulse came to him to write, and he began the novel “Hatter’s Castle.” When it was finished, it was parcelled up and sent to the publisher. To his glad surprise, it was accepted. Out of all reason, another door had opened to him. In fact, a whole new career of writing lay before him as he walked through “the other door.”
As I reflect on what happened to Dr. Cronin, I think it would be true to say that many of us, when meeting with sudden disappointment, misfortune, or defeat, raise a cry of anger and resentment against God and life. When we miss a chance of promotion or when we are deprived of good health, it is hard to understand. Sometimes we cry, “Why did this happen to me?” or “Why did God allow this to come into my life?”
But as strange as it might seem, disappointments and trouble are often the instruments with which we are fashioned for better and bigger things to come. You must never give up because life never takes away from us without giving something better in its place. In reality, life is no straight and easy corridor; the road is not always smooth and unhampered.
Many times our paths are like a maze of passages through which we must seek, search, and find our way. Sometimes we find our way and then are confused—now a clear light to go, then we are checked by a red light to stop. At one time we find ourselves on a freeway and then again in a blind alley.
However, always—if we exercise faith—God will open another door. Perhaps it is not the door we thought was the best, but another door that He knows is the best, one that will take us to a greater and more useful destination. I know this to be true because out of my deepest hurts, have evolved my greatest strengths.
“Stand up to your obstacles and do something
About them! You will find that they haven’t
Half the strength you think they have.”
Norman Vincent Peale
Robert Louis Stevenson said it well: “Give us the strength to encounter that which is to come, that we may be brave in peril, constant in tribulation, patient in all changes of life, and down to the gates of death loyal and loving to one another.”
Friend, if the door you hoped for has closed, why not try the other one, it just might become the pathway that could lead to the greatest fulfillment of your dreams. In essence, as someone once wrote: “All life is making choices and choices make destiny. I become what I choose. The law of choice is the same as the law of faith. What I take takes me.”
Are you one who easily embraces hope, or have fear and worry duped you into believing that hope will only lead to disappointment? When life crashes around you and everything you have wanted most seems to be dissolving, does your hope and faith in God keep you going? Or are you paralyzed by fear and afraid to walk through other doors? If so, we invite you to write for a small booklet titled: “Faith: Is it reasonable?”
Faith! It’s tremendously important and the message in this booklet will help you develop a strong faith…and the courage to live by that faith.
To receive your FREE copy of “Faith: Is it reasonable?” Write to Discovering A BETTER LIFE, 175 Smuts Road, Kendenup, Western Australia 6323, or email us at: abl-alb@omninet.net.au
“I have learned that success is to be measured
Not so much by the position that one has
Reached in life as by the obstacles
Which he has had to overcome
While trying to succeed.”
(Booker T Washington)
Friend, if you would like to read more human interest stories, we invite you to visit our Website Blog at:
Ron Bainbridge
Editor: Don't follow me! Follow Jesus and receive God's grace. Jesus declared, “I am the way, I am the truth and the life.
The only way to the Father is through me” (John 14:6).
Hello Ron,
my late husband and I have a kind friend who lives in Kendenup. He is in need of assistance. Not financial assistance but physical help to assist him doing a couple of chores which are difficult for a man in his sixties who, while once was fiercely independent, is now slightly limited in his abilities. Because he is on a disability pension he would find it very difficult to pay a lot to have someone come to help him do some off the things he is trying to do single handed - for instance string up wire to repair his front fence.
When my husband was still here we would go down to visit (from Wagin) and…