Watch the video above and talk about it with a group or mentor. Learn more.
Many times in our lives we pray for doors to be opened and for new possibilities to appear. God will not only open doors in our lives, but will bless us by walking through them with us. But sometimes we feel like once the door is open, we are walking in alone. We struggle with feeling like God isn’t close to us anymore.
So our door is open, and we are walking through, but it doesn’t feel like God is with us anymore. What happened? When walking through a new door with new possibilities, we can allow doubts to creep into our minds and shake our confidence. We begin to question our abilities, if we made the right decision, and if we can really make it through these new circumstances. When these doubts enter our minds, we forget that we are not in control. When we are weak, God is strong. We are not on our own, but we may try to stand on our own. It is easy to feel incapable, intimidated, and terrified of failure.
God opened the door, and He is the one who makes us able, who gives us knowledge, wisdom and the abilities to do all things! He knows what He is doing, and never gets us confused with someone else. In anything and everything we do, prayer is so important. It becomes easy to think that we don’t need God when we start believing we have the ability to do things on our own. We may even become afraid and close our eyes, blocking out the fact that God is right there next to us. We keep our eyes shut out of fear and refuse to open them, making God feel so far from us.
But prayer can open our eyes and bring us the peace we crave. God wants us to come to him in all things. Go to God in prayer, and lay everything at His feet. As a child of God, our identity is rooted and dependent on our Savior. This identity clashes with our human desire to want to do things on our own and our feelings that we don’t need God. This is why we feel so far from God in our circumstances – we let our human desire block our view of God standing with us and fighting for us!
Acts 17:26-27 says From one man he made all the nations, that they should inhabit the whole earth; and he marked out their appointed times in history and the boundaries of their lands. God did this so that they would seek him and perhaps reach out for him and find him, though he is not far from any one of us.
As his daughters and sons, how far we go and how far we reach is all designed by God. It is designed so that we remember the great I Am; that we are not doing this on our own, we never have been, and we never will. This is the kind of life that God has called us to live out! Seek God and find him in all the trials of life; God is right next to you, fighting your battles. All you need to do is go to Him in prayer and keep your eyes open!
Discussion Questions:
- Watch the video together or invite someone to summarize the topic.
- What is your initial reaction to this video? Do you disagree with any of it? What jumped out at you?
- Describe one time in your life where you felt like God just wasn’t close to you anymore.
- When Kelly talks about her own experiences with her internship, she discusses the impact of her mom constantly reminding her to go to God in prayer. How are the people that we surround ourselves with impactful in our lives?
- Read Acts 17:26-27. How does this verse remind us of God’s closeness in our lives? How is this verse comforting to you?
- Why do you think we tend to close our eyes in our circumstances and forget the God who opened the door for us in the first place?
- Why do you think God wants us to go to him in prayer first?
- Talk about how this video changed your thoughts on if God is close or far from you.
- Write a personal action step based on this conversation.
