A Closed Door Doesn’t Mean God Has Rejected You

Have you ever felt like you didn't matter to the Kingdom? Have you ever felt that no one, not even God, was concerned about your ministry?

We all do from time to time.

Recently I remembered the time Richard Foster wouldn't see me. Or at least, that's what his administrative assistant told me.

I read Celebration of Discipline in the early 1980s. In 1985 I arrived at Pawnee Avenue Church in Wichita, Kansas, and heard that Richard Foster was on the faculty at Friends University, right there in town. So soon after arriving, I called the university and was put through to his administrative assistant.

I explained that I was a new pastor in the area and that his book had made a significant impact on me. I wanted to know if I could meet with Richard Foster personally to better understand how to move our church into some of the principles he presented. She said she would check and get back to me.

She never did.

So, I eventually called her back and asked when we could meet. She said he was not available. He had no time for me.

I told her I didn't care if it was anytime in the next year. That would be fine with me. I would put something on my calendar within the next twelve months, whenever it worked.

She repeated her answer: "He has no time for you, now or anytime within the next year."

Obviously, I hung up. I was quite deflated. I felt very much "less than." I felt rejected. And I wondered how a person could write so eloquently about godliness through the disciplines and yet not have an hour within an entire year for someone trying to apply what he had written.

I had done this once before with Frank Tillapaugh, another author who radically impacted my philosophy of ministry by meeting and mentoring me. In many ways, he confirmed that my ideas weren't crazy, but actually biblical. That's the same thing I was looking for from Richard Foster. I was practicing the disciplines myself. I just needed insight into how to help others do the same, beyond handing them a book.

Forty years of perspective

In the last forty years, I have learned a lot about these kinds of situations.

I now know that the administrator was the gatekeeper. Her words and her rejection of me may not have reflected anything of Richard's heart or mind at the time. In fact, he may never have even been asked. She was protecting him the best she knew how.

Did she lack EQ? Yes, she did. She could have told me he was in a very busy season and was guarding his time for the sake of his own health, and that calling back in a year would be welcome. She could have offered me time with one of his grad students, someone like James Bryan Smith. She could have pointed me toward Dallas Willard. She did none of that.

I hold no resentment toward Richard Foster. I kept reading his books and have benefited greatly from all of them.

We can't read every closed door as God rejecting us.

Forty years later, I can see that Richard needed space, and that God would use others to impact and mentor me greatly. I am a different person because of each of those mentoring relationships.

I must have faith and confidence in God's providence, even when it doesn't make sense to me.