Two Doors No One Can Shut

Two Doors No One Can Shut

by Reginald (Reg) Goff

Transcribed from the original recording; may contain errors.

As I stood in the back of the auditorium this morning… That wasn’t me. My neck doesn’t do that. As I stood in the back of the auditorium this morning, back of the stage, in one of the lines that were blessing people as they came by, I think I received a message from God that was very, very difficult to take. For I never heard a better sermon on healing in my whole life. And I’ve been to healing conferences now for 20-some years. I never heard a better one than this morning. I want to get a tape of that and digest it over and over and over again. But as I watched those people coming at us this morning in droves, fives, tens, fifteens, twenty, hundreds, until it got thousands, something happened to me. And as I watched the face of those people, I tried to look into the face of each one that came in our line. I tried to look right into the face so I could give them something of myself or of God, if I may use it that way, you know what I mean. And I was impressed this morning upon something that really hurt me. I felt this morning that the most of the people that I saw were the same kind that Jesus looked into.

Just the same. Broken bodies, broken minds, broken relationships, and all of these things. But the tragic thing that I felt most of all this morning, and I don’t know I’ve ever felt it before in my life in a healing line, and that was that so many of them were where they were and how they were because they felt they were nobody.

I felt that in their faces. As they reached out to grab you or to touch you, I felt like as if they were saying, “But do you think I’m somebody?” And if Jesus did anything in the world, it was to make people feel they are something. They tell us that there are three things in life that are really necessary for a good life. One of those is that you may think you are of some value. Second, that you think somebody else or other people think you are of some value. And third, that you belong to a group who are doing something of value. And I don’t know anything that answers that like the church. I don’t know. And I’m talking about the church of John. I mean, see if we all combined. They’re Christian people. To feel that we are of something, some value. And so I wanted to read a scripture tonight on that very basis. Jesus had been with His people and they came down to Capernaum. And when He was indoors, He asked them, “What are you arguing about on the way?” They were silent. Because on the way, they had been discussing who was the greatest. He sat down and called the twelve and said to them, “If anyone wants to be first, he must make himself last.

And servant of all.” This is what I want. Then He took a little child and set him in front of them. And I love this. And put His arms around him. “Whoever receives one of these little children in My name,” He said, “receives Me. And whosoever receives Me, receives not Me, but the one who sent Me.”

I want to talk to little people tonight. The rest have talked to big people. Let me talk to little people. I’m very sure that tonight there are a number of people in this audience. I don’t know who you are. I’m not thinking of names. But I’m very sure there are people here tonight who are just feeling exactly what I’m saying. You don’t matter. You don’t count. You haven’t got a great witness. You can’t get up on the platform and speak. You can’t lead rhythms. You can’t do all these things. I’m nothing. I’m really nothing. In fact, I think I have looked in some of those faces this week. I want to say to you tonight, I don’t care who you are. I don’t care where you think you’re on the lower scale. You are important to God.

I don’t care who you are. You are important to God. What do I mean by that? God built a universe and God built a world. And God put everything in here to make a glorious completion of a world. Everything you’ve ever heard of. Did you know that it took thousands of years before an Edison came? Thousands of years before a Marconi came or a Henry Ford or whatever you want to think of? Well, what I’m saying here tonight is simply this. God needs people.

What would happen to a baby if there were no mothers? I mean, after he was born. If there was some way to bring him into life. What would happen to a baby who couldn’t take care of himself without a mother? What would happen to husbands and wives if there was nobody to take care of each other? What would happen to all of us if there were no doctors? No scientists. No some Wright brothers to build an airplane and fly us around the world. God needs people. Now, that’s big stuff. Let me just get down to the little stuff in closing. Listen. There are two doors open to every single person here tonight that no man can shut. Listen to this. We who feel we are nothing, there are two doors open to you which are the same doors that are open to Jim or Evan or anybody else. Or the President of the United States. Or Oral Roberts, whoever it may be. The first one I want to say is love. I thought last night when you were talking, Jim, about roots. Now, as I’ve gone back to try to find the roots of CFO, I think I found the roots of Glenn Clark’s CFO starting as prayer and love. Isn’t that right? These were the roots.

These were the pedestals upon which CFO was built. All right, love. Let me say something, folks. There is no one in the world can stop you loving. They can put you in prison. They can close your mouth up. They can teep you. They can cut your eyes. They can close your eyes. No one can stop you loving. And boy, how we saw that during the rebel days. The wonderful Christian families who expected their children to grow up with all the prestige and everything everybody else did. And then suddenly they went off the deep end. Long hair, dirty clothes, drugs, way off. And the mothers and fathers who still were able to love. It wasn’t easy. I know. I lived through it. But in God’s economy, there are no little people and nobody who can’t love. Jesus on the cross, life ebbing away, said, “Father, forgive them.” Any greater love than that? Any greater love than the fact that Jesus loved us while we were sinners? Do you know when I… That dawned on me 20-some years after I was in the pastorate, when it dawned on me what I’d been preaching for 20-some years? It dawned on me that Jesus loved me as much when I was a prodigal as He did when I was a minister.

And I’d like to have broke my heart. I cried for hours. God loves us not for what we’re doing, but who and what we are. And we have come from the hand of God. And God wants to take us back to it. So, no one can stop us loving. Let me give an illustration on that. One of the lives that touched my life very much, my wife’s book, in the early reforming of our Christian lives, early CFO days, was Starr Daily. A man who had 128 years against him. Time after time, the sentence read, “No possible parole, no possible parole.” Then one time held by two guards, as the warden stood and cursed him and said everything he possibly could. And another guard beat him with a hose until he was almost insensible, could not stand. Dragged you to the dungeon and thrown on the cold floor. Not a bed, not a blanket, not a spring. Lying there in the utter darkness, and as he said himself, filled with hate for every person in the world. And suddenly his eyes began to open, and as he looked up, there was Jesus standing in full glorious light in the dungeon. With a despicable crumble that nobody wanted to get near. I’ve heard Starr Daily say this many times.

He said, “It seemed to me that all of the love of all of the mothers in the world were pouring out of the eyes of Jesus to me.” Gentlemen, most of us are very happy if we get most of the love of one beautiful woman. Think what it would be, all the love of all the mothers in the whole world. And in that hour, a man was reborn. And soon the governor of the state said, “We’ll cancel these things. He must be turned loose.” And he became one of the greatest apostles of love I’ve ever known. I said to him one day, “Starr, how do you help criminals?” For my wife and I had been trying to help some prison people, and we’d gotten hurt and hurt and hurt and hurt and hurt and hurt. And I said, “How do you help these criminals?” I’ll never forget it. He said, “Put love in your eyes and let them look into it.”

Put love in your eyes and let them look into it. Quickly, the other door that no man can close is prayer. Jesus prayed on the cross. Stephen prayed as the stones showered down upon him. The martyrs in the Colosseums prayed as the lions were being released to tear them to shreds, and they had done nothing but be good. We can go on down the road.

Prayer. I am so glad. I’m sure Cohn would say this with me tonight. How often we have stood at the bedside of life, flipping away, going out. And I’ll be telling you there’s never a time in my life where I am so thankful for prayer, as in those moments as we stand there among the bereaved and with the one who is going out, or with the one who is finding God and looks up and for the first time sees Jesus, really. Not because of what somebody has told him, but because of something he has felt. This place of prayer, which no man can shut. But I’m saying to you tonight, if there is one here tonight who feels, “I’m nothing,” you can love and you can pray, and no man in this entire world can stop you. And I would say tonight, with all of the things we’ve had today and the glorious day we’ve had, if you can lay your head on the pillow tonight and look up in the face of God and say, “Thank You, God, that I am me.”

I don’t want to be Reg Goff or somebody else. Thank You, God, I’m me. And thank You, God, that You made me my son, and that You love me, and that You’ve opened two doors no man can shut. The door of love and the door of prayer. Thank You.