You’ve prayed that kind of prayer before, right? “God, if this is the job you want me to take, please let them offer it to me.” … “If you want us to rent this house, please let them accept our lowball offer.” Those prayers come from an assumption that if God opens a door for us, he probably wants us to walk through it.

But what if that’s not always the case?

Think about the story of Paul, when he was unjustly imprisoned in Philippi. God literally opened the door for him to walk out:

About midnight Paul and Silas were praying and singing hymns to God, and the prisoners were listening to them, and suddenly there was a great earthquake, so that the foundations of the prison were shaken. And immediately all the doors were opened, and everyone’s bonds were unfastened. (Acts 16:25-26)

If I was in prison for something I didn’t do, and I was singing praise songs, and all the prison doors miraculously buzzed open all at once, and the handcuffs miraculously dropped from my hands and feet, what would I be thinking? Obviously, that God wants me to escape. I have the favor of the Lord. I’m outta here!

But Paul understood that not every open door is really an open door. So he stayed right where he was:

When the jailer woke and saw that the prison doors were open, he drew his sword and was about to kill himself, supposing that the prisoners had escaped. But Paul cried with a loud voice, “Do not harm yourself, for we are all here.” (Acts 16:27-28)

He knows that if he runs out of this prison, he’ll have to keep running, right out of town. A place where he’s already seen God bringing many people to Christ. He won’t be able to stay there, he’ll be a fugitive. And when the authorities find out that it was a Christian who led all these hardened criminals in a mass escape, they’ll go after the Christians who are still in town. They’ll be dead. So Paul has no other choice — he has to stay. In that dark, dirty, putrid prison cell.

And look at what happens as a result:

The jailer called for lights and rushed in, and trembling with fear he fell down before Paul and Silas. Then he brought them out and said, “Sirs, what must I do to be saved?” And they said, “Believe in the Lord Jesus, and you will be saved, you and your household.” And they spoke the word of the Lord to him and to all who were in his house. And he took them the same hour of the night and washed their wounds; and he was baptized at once, he and all his family. (Acts 16:29-33)

The closed, locked, and triple-deadbolted door of the prison has become an open door for the gospel. All because Paul didn’t go through the open door of escape, and stuck around.

He still doesn’t know what’s going to happen to him. After breakfast, the jailer might take him right back to maximum security. That’s what he should do if he’s going to do his job. But Paul doesn’t care. He knows that the open doors God wants us to walk through often lead to discomfort, pain, and suffering.

When we see look through a door and see suffering, we usually think that’s a sign that the door is closed. If it looks too hard, it’s probably not for us. But if Jesus thought the path that led to suffering was a closed door, he never would have gone to the cross for us. He never would have died for our sins.

And if we’re followers of Jesus, why would we expect anything different?