Some of you may be old enough to remember a TV commercial that used to show up on the screen quite frequently. It featured an attractive woman dressed in a fancy gown eating a popular chocolate. The camera would alternate between her taking her own “sweet” time to finish it and shots of the candy being manufactured, one ingredient at a time. The music would then slow down while the tag line was intoned:  “You can’t rush a turtle.”

(Here is a variation on the same theme…except the action takes place in a church:

You can’t rush a turtle)

This is what you will read on the manufacturer’s website:

“Everybody is in such a hurry these days. Rushing here, there and everywhere. Well, there are some things you just can’t rush… like TURTLES® brand nut clusters.

Our one and only, original TURTLES® are so deliciously good they deserve your unhurried and undivided attention! We don’t rush TURTLES. We still make them the way we always have, slowly and carefully, with crisp premium pecans, creamy caramel and luscious milk chocolate. We take our time making TURTLES, so you can take your time enjoying them. Remember… Never rush a TURTLE.”

Some things in life simply cannot be rushed. Take, for example, intimacy. You cannot get to know someone intimately without spending time with them.

The reason Sulojana and I know each other more intimately than any other person in the world is because we have spent more than thirty years together. We know each other’s likes and dislikes, body language, thought process, etc.

So, for example, Sulojana can be in a room with a hundred other women. I can tell where in the room she is, simply by the sound of her voice.  There may be other women whose voices sound similar in tone and inflection, but I can pick hers out, no problem. Why? Simply because I’ve heard her speak so often that I know how to distinguish her voice from every other person in the world.

One of the keys to advancing into your destiny as a follower of Jesus is the ability to hear His voice. Jesus himself says in John 10:22: “My sheep hear my voice.”

Judith Fain is a doctoral candidate at the University of Durham who spends several months of the year in Israel. One day, while walking on a road near Bethlehem, Judith spotted three shepherds approaching each other with their separate flocks of sheep. When the three men stopped to converse, their flocks began to intermingle. Judith couldn’t imagine how the shepherds were ever going to sort out which sheep belonged to them since by now they had melted into one large flock. Several minutes later, as the men said their goodbyes, she learned the trick. Magically, as the shepherds called out to their sheep, the one large flock sorted itself into three separate flocks, with each sheep following the voice of its shepherd.

Obviously the sheep did not have to go to obedience school to recognize their shepherd’s voice. They learned to recognize it simply by being with him all the time!

Dear DWOD friend, developing intimacy with the Lord is like the manufacturing process of Turtles and the tasting of the finished product.  You simply cannot rush it. It takes time.

Make time to be with Him—in silence, in soaking, in reading the Word. And you too will learn to distinguish His voice from other voices that try to masquerade as His.

This will surely help you accelerate into your destiny.

Recently we were ministering at Calvary United in St. Jacobs at the invitation of our friend, Pastor Drew Maxwell when Nature demanded that I take a quick trip to the little boys’ room.

 

I pushed the door open. Pitch black. I looked for the light switch which is usually located on the right side. No sign of a switch there. Perhaps it is on the outside of the door on the right hand side? No. Left hand side? Nosiree.

 

Aha! It must be on the left hand side of the door on the inside. Of course, to check the wall on the left, you have to swing the door open and step into the room. As I reached out my right hand expecting to find the switch by fumbling in the dark, the unexpected happened.

 

The lights came on, glory, hallelujah!

 

That’s when I spied with my little eyes the motion sensor on the right hand side of the door (where there would normally be a switch). Once it detected movement when I stepped into the dark room, it activated the light.

 

Holy Spirit started talking to me about the significance of this experience for all who aspire to advance into their destiny. He said: “I keep on opening doors for you all to walk through on this journey toward your destiny. But many of you never walk through them because you are waiting to flip the switch and see first what you’re walking into. When you can’t find the switch you back out. When you cannot see what’s ahead clearly, you hesitate and lose valuable time, thus preventing yourself from accelerating into your destiny. Or worse, you dismiss the open door that is right in front of you and keep moseying on looking for another open door that often never materializes.”

 

Ouch!

 

God loves to open doors for us. But He does not always show us exactly what awaits us on the other side of that open door. Sometimes He waits for us to step into the dark unknown in obedience before revealing what we just walked into!

 

Take Peter for example. In Acts 10, he receives an invitation to go to the house of a Gentile named Cornelius. Peter knows that he needs to accept the invitation (God had already prepared him to say ‘Yes’ by giving him the vision of unclean animals). It is clearly an open door, but he has no clue what would happen when he walked into it.

 

To his credit, Peter steps into it, even though he wasn’t sure he should’ve. Listen to what he tells Cornelius when he gets to his house: “You know how unlawful it is for a Jewish man to keep company with or go to one of another nation. But God has shown me that I should not call any man common or unclean. Therefore I came without objection as soon as I was sent for. I ask, then, for what reason have you sent for me?”

 

In other words, Peter is in the dark about what God had in mind when He opened up the door for him. By the time he is finished ministering though, all who gathered have experienced the Holy Spirit and been baptized in water! Gentiles have been granted access to what Peter believed was only reserved for Jews!

 

Praise God that Peter stepped into the dark unknown open door. His motion activates the switch and sheds light on the fact that God’s plan of salvation includes Jews and Gentiles alike.

 

Dear DWOD friend, when God leads you to an open door, will you step into the dark in faith? It is only then that you will discover that God is waiting for you to take that step…and the light will come on!