S04E038, Closed Isn’t Necessarily Shut! Andy B 2 Minute Video

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It’s easy to shut a door, or close a window, without it actually working.

My grandfather once, because he was so busy concentrating on leaving for a holiday, actually was in a taxi, being driven to the airport, when he realised he had lost his keys. When the taxi had popped back for him, he found the keys! They were in the front door, with the door wide open.

It’s easy to think we’ve done something we haven’t.

In our house we’ve got doors that close easily and ones that, while not stiff, do need a bit more help.

In our kitchen, one of the windows can be both closed, and locked, without being shut – because the seal around the window doesn’t actually meet on both sides. So, you can feel and hear the wind coming in through – making for a very cold window, and that’s just from a tiny crack.

If we want to actually close the window, properly, we need help – someone has to go outside and push, gently, from the outside. Then all is good.

And it is the same in our lives. We can easily think we’ve done all we should, just to realise we’re letting in the cold wind of sin lifestyles creeping back in. And, also like just in life, we need help from outside to truly close those gaps we want closing!

Just a thought...

Andy B

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0:00
So, another Andy B 2 Minute Video. And this is all about the idea of things that are closed but aren't actually shut. Perhaps it's a window, or a door that you've closed, but you haven't actually locked. It maybe closed, but if it's not locked, it's not really shut either because it's still openable.

0:17
Well, we've got a kitchen, quite a few windows in the kitchen. And quite often we run a steamer, so we open one of the windows in the steam, and we've noticed the kitchen is freezing cold, and quite noisy from the wind. And, actually, what we've discovered is one of the windows, when you close the window, and you lock it, the bottom corner, the bottom half of the door of the window, sorry, isn't actually pushing against the other side of the window. So, although the window is closed, and it's locked, actually the air is coming through. So, the only way of closing the window properly, is to open a window, go outside, and gently close the window and it seals perfectly. But if you don't get all those seals working the window isn't actually shut. It's just merely kind of closed.

1:00
And it's like that with the sin in our life. We can, we can shut the door to sin in life. We can put a lock on it. But, if we haven't sealed it properly, then that sin's gonna keep eeking in, and leaking, in and leeching through.

1:13
So, how do we seal that properly? Well we go to the outside, we push it from the other side. We need help! And it's the same with our sin. We need to go to God and say, God, please help me with the sin, with the things I'm doing wrong.

1:25
Yeah, it's good to walk away from the sin lifestyles. It's good to move away, sometimes, to the other part of the country so those things you've been doing, which you need to escape from, in order to pursue being pure with God, are behind you and far away. But, ultimately, none of that's gonna work properly unless you have the Holy Spirit, who can come along, and properly seal all of the window. And we need assistance from the outside to do that. We need Christian community. We need brothers and sisters. People who we can be accountable to, and with, and for.

1:58
So, let's make sure we're closing the windows, to actually be shut, so we're not got the window ever slightly open, when we think it's closed because it gets a bit confusing.

2:08
Just a thought.