Before they call I will answer; while they are still speaking I will hear. Isaiah 65:24 NIV
Pastor Carl was knocking on doors in his city. Not everyone was glad to see him.
At one home, a woman answered the door aggressively. “What?!” she demanded. “Hello,” Carl greeted her. “I’ve come to tell you about a church we’re planting.” Looking him in the eye, the woman said, “I don’t want some bloke in a dress telling me how to live my life,” and slammed the door. Carl walked off a bit shaken. But an inner voice told him, “Knock on the door again.” “You’re joking,” he thought. But back to the door he went. This time the woman threw the door open. In tears she blurted out, “I’ve told you once, I’ve told you twice, leave!” and slammed the door again.
Two weeks later, Carl was walking the neighborhood in prayer when he had an overwhelming compulsion to knock on the same door again. “You’ve got to be kidding,” he told God, but knock he did. “Oh, it’s you,” the same woman answered. “I’ve been trying to find you! There’s something I need to tell you. You know when you knocked on my door and I was really cross? I was raped by my brother … and I just wanted to die … I decided that that was the day; I had liters of vodka and all kinds of pills. I was just going to take them all and die. After I slammed the door on you, I said a prayer. I said, ‘God, if you are there, please send that man back again.’ You knocked on the door … and so I’m here.”[1]
The Bible records this promise of God: “Before [you] call I will answer [you]; while [you] are still speaking I will hear” (Isaiah 65:24 NIV). He makes that same promise to you, today.
[1] “A Knock on the Door.” YouTube, Streams Studio, 30 Dec. 2024, youtu.be/ylY0W-AfWCg?si=Nj2H8Yx9L2ahIPBz.
