When Opportuntiy Knocks!

When Opportunity Knocks!
John R. Petrilli

Doorways. We spend most of our lives passing through them without a second thought. Most doorways have a bi-directional function, allowing us to enter into an area as well as to exit one. Closed doorways provide the privacy necessary for the confidential exchange of information. Doorways also function in a security capacity by keeping people inside an area, or preventing people from gaining accessing to an area. In the summer heat doorways allow a cooling breeze to refresh our homes, while, conversely a closed door locks out the chilling winds of winter. I’ve gained a new appreciation for these things called doorways, they really do have a lot of uses. When you think about it, without them, we go nowhere fast!

Most of the time we putter along, muddling our way through our daily routine until it’s suddenly interrupted by one of those golden moments. Those times when a really big doorway breaks open for us, sending us into galactic orbit. Seemingly out of nowhere, a door of opportunity opens before our surprised eyes. We may have sought it for months, sometimes years, and when it finally presents itself, our adrenaline flies off the charts!

Since these opportunities are rare for most of us, we can get caught off guard and not know just how to respond to what we just experienced. The early church found itself in a very similar position. As they began to fulfill Jesus’ directive to gospelize the entire globe, God started flinging open door after wonderful door to make that happen. Each step of the way God led His followers down a thrilling path that eventually brought the gospel out into the whole known world! As we consider their experience we can glean some really helpful and encouraging insight into how to respond when opportunity knocks.

WHEN OPPORTUNITY KNOCKS, IT’A TIME FOR WONDERFUL NEW BEGINNINGS! Acts 2

Thousands of years had passed on God’s calendar when just the right time arrived to unveil His most exciting plan ever. On the day we now refer to as Pentecost, the Church of His Son was birthed. Not many things can compete with the joy and wonderment of welcoming a newborn into the world, and the birth of the Church was no different. The day came, thousands of Jewish folks had made enormous pilgrimages to Jerusalem for a major holiday, and God set off the fireworks to get their attention. After the crowd recovered from the initial surprise of hearing the apostles speak multiple languages simultaneously, Peter explained that they were witnessing Biblical history in the very making! The event ended on an even greater miraculous note as no less than three thousand attendees turned to God in repentance and faith! God had first opened the door of faith in Jesus Christ to His chosen people, the Jews. So what’s this mean for us today? Simply this, that when God opens a door, be prepared for a brand new work in your life as well as your ministry for Him. If life’s getting a bit too “humdrum”, perhaps it’s time to ask God to open a new door of opportunity for you. When He does, you’ll be entering on a whole new adventure for Him!


WHEN OPPORTUNITY KNOCKS, IT’S TIME TO FOLLOW THE SPIRIT’S LEADING! Acts 8

The early church didn’t quite “get it” when Jesus had charted their mission as global in nature, so they settled into the comfortable environs of familiar Jerusalem. Not for long. Can God use the ungodly to get His work done? You bet! He used the intense persecution of the church in Jerusalem to knock His fledgling birdies out of their warm and cozy nest, sending them cascading down headlong into a rough and tumble world. It wasn’t long before they saddled up their gear and went outside the holy city into the surrounding areas. One of their more gifted men, Philip, felt led to preach to the Samaritans. Now that was a spiritual giant leap in itself, as the cold war between them and the Jews was centuries old and still fierce. But to Samaria he, and apparently God went with him as the town exploded in a heaven-sent revival under his preaching. The gospel seeds that had been planted earlier by Jesus Himself (see John 4:39-42), had taken deep root and were bearing luscious fruit. But wait, did Philip hear that right? A voice clearly spoke to him right in the middle of revival fires. It told him to go where? Gaza? The desert? No way, that can’t be God…can it? Before he knew it he was on his way to an unknown location in the middle of a Palestinian desert. Obedient to the questionable direction, Philip crosses paths with an African government official who “just happened” to be reading a passage from the Old Testament. Within minutes the man heard the gospel from Philip and placed his faith in Jesus Christ. Many scholars believe that this was also a critical juncture as God was opening the door of faith to the African continent via this high-ranking employee of Ethiopia’s government.

Lesson? When the Spirit of God tells us to go somewhere or do something, we really need to follow Him even if that leading flies in the face of conventional wisdom. God can’t be boxed, canned, or packaged. He works in sometimes mysterious ways … all we need to do is be sure He’s leading us, everything else will fall into place and make perfectly sense once we see it from hindsight.


WHEN OPPORTUNITY KNOCKS, IT’S TIME TO STEP OUT IN FAITH! Acts 10

Change. GRRRRRR ….none of us welcomes it readily. Whether a new cube at the office, a different procedure in our taxes, or a detour on the main highway, change can be a real inconvenience. Picture yourself in Peter’s shoes. Here he is, a lifetime loyal Jew being told by God in a dream to hook up with a group of people that any good Jew would avoid at all costs. But three’s a charm with God as well, and by the third replay of the dream, Peter was beginning to warm up to the idea that perhaps … just perhaps … God loved the non-Jews as much as He did the Jews (10:34-35)! He follows through and steps foot inside the “unclean” home of a Roman military officer named Cornelius. It didn’t take long before Peter realized just what God was up to as he witnessed the outpouring of the Holy Spirit upon the God-fearing Gentile and his entire extended family. The fact that God was indeed opening the door of faith to the vast non-Jewish world was subsequently attested to by both the apostolic leadership in Jerusalem (Acts 11:1-3,15-18) as well as the famed Jerusalem Council (Acts 15:12-21).

We may criticize Peter for his initial resistance, but how many times have we been reluctant to step out and do what God’s telling us to do? If we want to stay in the mainstream of what God’s doing in our world, we need to be willing to step out into the unfamiliar, undesirable, and unknown. Peter did, and the entire Roman world can thank him someday in heaven for taking such a bold step of faith.


WHEN OPPORTUNITY KNOCKS, IT’S TIME FOR GOD TO BROADEN YOUR HORIZONS. Acts 16

As we advance a few years down the gospel road we are introduced to an unusually gifted and accomplished individual by the name of Paul. Already battle-hardened by repeated rejections and intense persecution during his early ministry efforts, this dauntless apostle complies with the Lord as he sends him on the journey of a lifetime. One leg of that journey landed him in the Grecian city of Philippi, but the real story is what takes place to get him there. It was a nighttime vision wherein he encountered a European man begging him to cross the Mediterranean Sea over to his continent and bring the help and hope of the gospel to his own people. After deliberating on the vision, Paul and his associates clearly sensed God’s leading, and proceeded to center into a brand new horizon for the gospel and the global cause of Christ. Paul had the right idea in wanting to push farther out with the mission, but he was heading north when God was heading west. Paul’s horizons needed to be broadened to go outside of his own Asian continent and into the vast uncharted regions of what would someday become the mighty continent of Europe.

Lesson? When left to ourselves we tend to become provincial in our thinking and vision. We like to stay comfortably inside the little box we’ve made for ourselves, never caring enough or daring enough to go outside that perimeter. But the same Gospel that Paul brought to the entire known world of his day still has to be preached among ALL nations, and that will require us to broaden our vision as well as our plans in such a way as to include everybody, everywhere at all times. Funny thing about horizons … you can never really reach their end point. No matter where you go on earth, the horizon always beckons you to go a little farther, then relocates itself so that there’s a whole new horizon just ahead of us. Earthly horizons never run out, and spiritual horizons are always opening before us as God creates new opportunities for each of us to reach out to neighbors, loved ones and friends with His love and life-saving truth.


WHEN OPPORTUNITY KNOCKS, IT’S TIME TO WATCH GOD CLEAR AWAY ALL OBSTACLES. 1 Cor.
16:9

American military intelligence sources recognize and label certain areas of the world as “hot spots”. Hot spots are places that have the political and military potential of exploding at any moment into a global conflict. North Korea, Iran, and other countries are included in the category of hot spots. The first century city of Ephesus was what one might call a spiritual “hot spot”. During an earlier visit there the town erupted into a cauldron of spiritual warfare. In his initial contact with Ephesus Paul encountered religious opposition (Acts 19:8-9b), demonic opposition (19:11-20), fierce opposition driven by commercial self-interest (19:23-27), cultural fanaticism (19:28-29a, 34), irrational behavior (19:29b-31), social disruption (19:32), and outright illegal activity (19:35-41).
While some people may look for any chance they can get to slack off on the job. Paul wasn’t one of them. While on a holdover in the city of Ephesus he seized the opportunity to witness for his Lord there while he was waiting. But as the text reveals, strong opposition was rearing its ugly head once again. This should come as no surprise in light of the wild conflicts he had encountered in that large city earlier in his work. Not to worry. Paul had seen it all before, and wasn’t about to turn tail and run in defeat.

Which brings us to the question, how do we deal with those roadblocks that the world, the flesh, and the devil drop down in our path? If we’re smart, we’ll commit them to the Lord Who has said that HE would go right on building His church no matter what the enemy threw at it (Matthew 16:18). Like the Israelites of old we simply need to “stand still and see the salvation of the Lord!”


WHEN OPPORTUNITY KNOCKS, IT’S TIME TO CELEBRATE ANSWERED PRAYER! Colossians 4:3-4
We all need moral support from time to time to pull us through difficult circumstances. In ministry we need the faithful support of praying friends if we’re to accomplish anything of lasting value for the Kingdom. Paul had such praying friends in each of the cities, towns and villages where he had planted the gospel seed. When push came to shove, Paul knew where to go and who to call on for support. He did so with the church at Colosse, where he specifically requests their prayers for an open door of evangelistic ministry to materialize. Whether in a dark, rat-infested prison or on top of a Grecian mountainside, Paul was always looking for opportunities to tell others the good news of Jesus Christ and the forgiveness of sins. Once this particular request had been answered, I’m confident that both Paul and the Colossians rejoiced together over the door God had opened for further expansion of the gospel.

What kinds of things are we asking our Christian friends to pray for? Physical needs requests are absolutely legitimate, but never enough. We need to get people praying for us to get open doors of opportunity to share our faith with those around us. Anything less is an absolute dereliction of Christian duty! And once those kinds of entrepreneurial prayers are answered, we’ll really have something to celebrate!


WHEN OPPORTUNITY KNOCKS, IT’S TIME TO GET BUSY. Revelation 3:7-8

A life sentence on an isolated island in the middle of the Mediterranean Sea. That’s the earthly reward John received for preaching Christ to his generation. His new job? Most likely crushing rocks. Then one day God shows up. While doing time as a prisoner on the isle known as Mount Patmos, John receives an incredible glimpse into the future of the church and the world via a Sunday afternoon vision. In his vision John sees the risen and glorified Christ inspecting seven different local churches of his day. One of them was located in the city of Philadelphia. This Philadelphian assembly is the only church of the seven to not receive a rebuke. Instead it’s commended by Jesus for its diligence in spiritual matters as well as its faithfulness in the face of blistering persecution. Possibly shaken by relentless blasts of satanic opposition, the believers there are described as “weak”. So Christ bolsters their faith with a huge incentive-builder. He informs them that he’s going to open up a gigantic door of ministry for them and bless them with great results. Now that’s what I’d call encouragement! An open door means new opportunities which means new work to do.

These faithful Christians would ultimately succeed because their small size would be compensated for by Christ’s power, their spiritually vicarious position in a commercial location would be overcome Christ’s preservation, their official persecution at the hands of Rome would be trumped by Christ’s protection, and their rejection by the religious element of the city would be replaced by Christ’s soon-coming vindication. With this in mind they were to work with a sense of urgency (8a), work in the strength and wisdom of God (8b), work faithfully (8c), work confidently (9a), work tirelessly (10), and work expectantly (11-12).

So it is with us when God opens a great new door of service to us. The door has been opened, not as something to be enamored over, but as a gateway to new and greater ministry accomplishments. When the door opens, it’s time for us to roll up our sleeves and get to work!