“Open the Doors & the Windows” | Sunday AM | Pastor David K. Caruthers

Original Broadcast of Sunday Morning 11 AM Worship, 07/12/2026 

Speaker: Pastor David K. Caruthers

Message Title: "Open the Doors & the Windows" 

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Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:05

Psalm 24, verse 7 through 10. Lift up your heads, O ye gates, and be lift and be ye lift up, ye everlasting doors, and the king of glory shall come in. Who is this king of glory? The Lord strong and mighty, the Lord mighty in battle. Lift up your heads, O ye gates, even lift them up, ye everlasting doors, and the King of glory shall come in. Who is this King of glory? The Lord of hosts, he is the King of glory. Lord, thank you for your presence and power for every person that has joined together with us today. We pray, Lord, that you would speak to our hearts and minds through your word and just encourage each one of us to worship you from our hearts. We give you praise and honor and thank you for your anointing and grace in Jesus' name. Amen. You may be seated. I'm trying to pay attention to the clock so we'll know where we are. Social connectedness is uh essential for health and longevity, and isolation extracts a heavy toll on the individuals and societies. I'm quoting from a study from Science Direct, and and uh to emphasize how important these social connections are for us, but we we live in this uh interesting time where we have a lot more screens, a lot more screen time, and a lot less face-to-face communication time. And uh so our society, our culture has shifted because of the screen time. Many people work remote, that took away the interactions, uh, face-to-face interactions through their jobs that many people depended on for a lot of their interactions with others. And then, of course, uh a few years ago now, but still affecting us, the pandemic uh accelerated those trends and also caused people to be have a sense of fear and anxiety about uh interacting with people. And uh, we used to say you had a cold, don't worry about it, just keep on going. You know, and now people are afraid of that. So it's just kind of changed, and uh so increasingly it seems like we're living our lives behind barriers that we've constructed a mask, a work from home, uh virtual relationships, whatever that may look like. We we've built these in our culture, built these walls, these barriers to sort of keep us to our own and keep us separated. We live our lives in sort of closed loops uh and not venturing out. We live our lives in the same echo chamber, the same hearing the same things and only participating in the same things of our lives, and we we we have very little uh personal interaction with other people compared to what we used to have, and uh that has changed dramatically. Um in fact, uh I'm just gonna again I was doing some research for this, and um for adults since 2020, for adults, our face-to-face interactions has reduced by 30 percent. For children, it's reduced by 50 percent. So we're having not nearly as much face-to-face activities outside of the people in our immediate surroundings. And so it's it's shrunk down our social circles, our real social circles, our real community connections. It's really struck uh a cord of fear in many people's hearts and causes us to have communication challenges because we're not really engaging enough to learn how to communicate without uh the devices in our hands and uh and all the constructs of all those things, and I don't have time to go through them all and talk about them all, and you don't want me to talk about them all, that'll take too long. But what's happened is people have withdrawn in a lot of ways. They've stepped back in a lot of ways, and and that's created some some fears, some anxieties, some lack, some awkwardness about engaging with people and interacting with people, and so that becomes a sort of self-fulfilling prophecy where if we're awkward, then we do it less, and if we do it less, we're more awkward, and and it seems like it's really affected us as a culture. Have you seen that around? Have you noticed that? There's nothing really new about it, nothing really new about that phenomenon. It it tends to work with our human existence. And and so we see this happening. The reality is that when we close ourselves off and we withdraw into the familiar and we get comfortable in our rut, we become increasingly locked into our own small world. Life can get lonely in that world, even though there's people all around. We can feel awkward to engage because we're kind of locked into our own little world. And fears grow and anxieties grip our hearts because we're not exploring outside of that world, and we in our minds have all kinds of things that's happening outside the boundaries of our little world. And so we've seen even that an increase in fear about the future, increase in fear about uh being able to do things in our lives. And and I want to say that the answer is simple and yet sometimes difficult to break that trend. The answer is simple, but sometimes it's difficult to do. It requires action. It requires you and I to do something. And if you're a parent, it requires you to do it with your kids. It requires us to take a step, it requires us to do something active, it requires us to make ourselves engaged, it requires us to put down the device and to go outside. It takes something from us, right? It takes something that helps us to break out of our rut, break out of our repeated actions, and we're comfortable in those. And sometimes we do them because they're efficient or in what we're accomplishing, but sometimes we have to get outside of that to see some better way or some more innovative way to do what we're trying to do. If we're held into that boundary that we've constructed, then it often keeps us from growing and going forward, and and it can make our lives rather tedious at times if we're not careful. And so the answer really is to do, is to do something, is to take some kind of action. Now, I'm not a social scientist, and I'm not a psychologist and or a psychiatrist or anything of the of that nature, but I think we can all agree that we need to step out of the boundaries that are holding us. And you don't usually do that in one giant leap. You do that a little at a time. Brother Joe, I feel like I'm a little bit hot here on the microphone, and they may feel like I'm yelling at them. So it's it's really not that difficult. You can you can you can step out of that a little bit, you can move out of that a little bit. You can as simple as getting on the phone this afternoon and calling a friend you haven't talked to in a while. That's easy enough. Why don't you try a new restaurant every once in a while? Do something different, take an adventure, do something outside of your normal. Do it with the intention of I'm trying to break out of what I'm used to doing all the time because I'm getting boxed in in this small world. Volunteer to help somebody. Volunteer. Get outside of your own life for a few minutes. Get outside of your own relationships that you're comfortable with for a few minutes. Do something that changes the direction. Walk around the block. Get outside your house. Now, some of you might be more difficult than others to walk around the block because depending on what your block, it looks like. It could be long, it could be hilly, it could be whatever. You may not be able to do it just that way, but get outside. Why not go outside and walk around the block and speak to every person you pass? Say hello to them. Nod, wave, something. I I, as you know, I run and so I often run in the same path. I have a neighbor that runs around the block over and over and over and over and over and over and over again. He runs miles around the same block. I can't do that. But but I tend to have the same paths. And so a lot of times, because it's generally the same time, I see the same people. And and I felt uh uh it's been a couple of years now, I felt really uh uh bad because I've been making the same block, I've been seeing these same people, I have no idea who these people are. I don't know their names, I don't know, I just pass them by. Sometimes I nod and wave, you know, but mostly I'm looking at the ground or I'm you know, I'm focused on running. I'm not really thinking about that. I I don't know who's passing by in their vehicles, I'm not paying attention to any of that. And I felt a little bad a couple of years ago and thought, you know, these few people that I see over and over and over again, I should at least, you know, I should at least introduce myself or something. We all live in the same neighborhood. And so I did. I don't remember most of their names, to be candid with you, but but it's funny how that sort of breaks the barrier. And now they don't look the other way, you know, like you do with other Pentecostals when you're in Walmart, look the other direction. That always strikes me as funny when people do that. They see other people they should know and they turn the other direction. All right, I gotta keep preaching, y'all. And we're never gonna get there. You know, stop and smell the roses. Take the time to savor the flavor of life. Take the time to sense the taste, the touch, the smell. Take some action and break out of that small world and that small place you're in. Now, of course, I'm not trying to give you good advice today. What I'm trying to do is preach the word of God to you today. Because we can do the same thing in our relationship with God. We can come to church, we can go through the things we normally do, we can get comfortable doing the same things we've done over and over again, we can get comfortable in our rut, we can begin to feel stale, disconnected, we can feel distant from God, only relating to God on the basis of our needs. Our prayer becomes our list of needs. And the longer we stay there, the longer we persist there, the more our relationship with God becomes strained and becomes awkward, and we're not sure. And how do we how do we do this or how do we do that? And we can feel uh a fear creeping in. We can feel stuck in our place where we are, we can feel bound where we are. Some of us are so constrained to the seat we're sitting in. Does that mean you're not living for God? No. What I'm saying is we need to step out. We need to push beyond. We need to go beyond our normal. We need to step out of the out of the same thing that we're doing over and over again because it's binding us in a small world, in a small place. What I'm trying to get you to do this morning, what I'm trying to challenge you to do this morning, is to open up. Get out of yourself a little bit, open up and let God do what he wants to do in your life. This psalm, Psalm 24, is an interesting psalm, and this portion of it is an interesting portion. It's interesting, it's been preached on a lot of times. I've used it a numerous times in my own uh in my own preaching and and things. So I I know it's a familiar verse to you. But it it's really a um it's really defining an activity. It's defining what is done during an activity. It says, Lift up your heads, oh ye gates, be ye lifted up, lift everlasting doors. So it's talking about opening the gates. Open the gates, and the king of glory will come in. And then there's a response. The response is, who is this king of glory? It asks that twice. Who is this king of glory? Who is this? The Lord strong and mighty, the Lord in battle, the Lord of hosts. So there's a there's a response to it. There's a response to what is happening. So so there's a request for the king to enter. And the gate, the doorkeeper, the gatekeeper, the person responsible says, Well, who is this king of glory? And the ones with the king are responding of who the king is. Open the gates. It's the king that wants to come in. Open the gates, it's the king that wants to enter. And so when they're reading this, this is what they have in mind, this activity going on, not just words on a page, but what it looks like for this to happen. And what I want to do today is invite you to open the doors so that God can come in. Not just the doors, open the windows. Open everything. Become completely open for God to work. Now you've gotten completely quiet, and you've already determined that you're going to be here longer than you expected today. So I I want to ask for your help. I need a handful of people that can speak out loud. You can read it off the screen. And speak out loud to be the gatekeepers. Who's going to be the gatekeepers? I just need about 10 people to kind of walk in the back door. The back doors back there. About 10 of you to walk back there. It doesn't just walk back to the back doors. I need about 10 people. I don't need the whole congregation. Alright, maybe two or three more. Alright. I've got a door over there. I need somebody at a door. I need somebody at every door. It's okay, even if the door is to open to the closet. It's okay, just stand at the door. I need all the rest of you to stand. Alright, depend. Act like we're going that way. I'm gonna practice. I'm gonna practice. Alright. You may have to look. Can you put it on that screen back there? Okay. So that there's a screen above you if you can't see it. There's a screen here and a screen there, so you can see the screen anyway. Okay, those of you that are that are in the auditorium, in the audience here, let's read it together. Lift up your heads, oh ye gates, and be lifted up, you everlasting doors, and the king of glory shall come in. The question for the doorkeepers is Wait a minute, wait a minute. Wait a minute, stop. The doorkeepers, all they have to ask is who is this king of glory? Let them get it out, and then the rest of us will respond of who it is. Go. Okay, let's say it. The Lord strong and mighty, the Lord mighty in battle. Let's go to the next set of scriptures. Who is this king of glory? The Lord strong and mighty. And then the second part is let's say it again as the audience, verse number nine, lift up your heads, oh you gates, even lift them up, you everlasting doors, and the king of glory shall come in. Doorkeepers. The Lord of hosts, he is the King of glory. And what happens then? They open the doors. If you have a door open to the auditorium, open the door, prop it open. Put the little door stop down. Because what are they doing? They're opening the doors to let the King of Glory in. They're letting the King of Glory in. You know what we do? You can be seated. We'll get going here in a minute. Everybody can be seated, thank you. Keep the doors open, though. We're gonna keep the doors open. We're like modern Americans. The door gets knocked, and if we respond at all, because it's probably the delivery guy, if we respond at all, we go out to the door and look out the little peephole, or we look out the little side window, hoping they don't see us, to see who it is. And then we just barely open the door so we can peek around the corner. And that's what some of us are doing to God. We're just barely opening the doors. You know, we get a few little words of praise out, we get a few little something out, but we just barely open the door. We don't want a disruption in our life. My notes are long gone, sorry. We don't want a disruption in our life, we don't want something that's gonna like take some time. You know, I got a meal on the table ready to eat, I've got something else to do. I'm waiting to text somebody. I can hear the little bell ringing, I gotta get that done. That's more important. I'm gonna crack the door for just a minute and say, Is it you, Lord? But I don't have a lot of time here. What I'm trying to get you to do today is open the doors, the windows, everything. What I'm trying to get you, you want God to do something in your life, you want to get past the fear, you want to get past the anxiety, you want God to do something powerful in your life, you want a miracle to happen. Open up the doors, open up the doors with praise, open up the doors with rejoicing, open up the doors with worship, open up the doors and say, God, I want every door, every avenue, every window, every opening. God, come in my life. I'm here to worship you, I'm here to magnify you, I'm here to exalt you, I'm here to lift you up. God, the doors of my heart are completely open. You don't have to keep pounding, you don't have to keep asking, come on in, God, and do your work in my life. And how do you do that? You do that with worship and praise and honor to God, you do that magnifying the Lord. Yes, there's a time to repent. There's a time to repent. You won't receive what God wants to give you in salvation without repentance. You have to change, but you can't stay living in that spot, and you won't receive the Holy Ghost as long as you're begging for forgiveness. You have to start worshiping God, you have to start magnifying God, you have to start thanking God. You have been forgiven by the grace of God, and it causes you to rejoice and to give praise to God. And when you start rejoicing and praising and worshiping God, that's when God comes in. That's when God does something powerful in your life, that's when God does what he wants to in your life. That's when you get beauty for ashes, that's when you get joy for mourning, that's when you get garments of praise for spirits and heaviness. It's when you start lifting your heart and your voice to God and you start magnifying the Lord with all that you have. You're not just peeking out a little crack in the door, but you're opening up and giving all that you have to God in worship and praise and adoration to Him. He didn't do something small for you, He didn't do something that requires a Pause for a little bit of thank you. He has transformed and changed your life. You have been born again in the water and the spirit. And he deserves more than just a little token of a card or a note that somebody else wrote that all I did was sign my name to. He deserves the doors to be open. He deserves the windows to be open. God, I don't want anything, any barrier, any closing, any door, anything that I can possibly open, God. I want it open so you can do your work. In my life. Something's gotta happen in us that we can give some kind of worship, something that's somewhere close, something that's somewhere representative of how God has transformed our lives and changed us and made us and blessed us, sorry. Hallelujah. Hallelujah. It's amazing how that is. We are so blessed. And the more we're blessed, it's like our gratefulness settles down rather than rising up. We're like a spoiled child. Now none of you have spoiled children. We're like a spoiled child. The more you give them, the more they want, the more demanding they become. And then Christmas comes and all they do is stomp their feet about what they didn't get instead of what all you've done for them. And nobody likes that in a child. Nobody likes that in a child. Children, nobody likes that in a child. It's not good. It's not good. Doesn't make you want to give more, does it? But we have been so blessed, and if we're not careful, we get so, you know, formal and stuffy that we can't really worship God. Now I'm gonna tell you the truth. The truth is that how you how your what your expressions of praise are depends on the person, it depends on the culture, and it depends on the circumstances. It depends on those things. Now, every person is not as outgoing as the other. But don't sit there like you don't have any emotion, but you can get up and celebrate for the spurs. You can be excited about your grandkids. You can scream at the ball field when they're playing ball, but you don't have any emotion. Oh, yes, you do. Yes, you do, and God deserves you to push something out. What I'm trying to get you to do is push something out. Put something out, give something out of yourself. Go beyond the normal. Break out of the rut, break out of the place where you are that's constricting you into the the keeping you from the victory that God wants to give you because you won't give up anymore. Instead, I'm not just opening the doors, I'm opening the windows, I'm opening everything, I'm doing what I can. I want to give everything I have in worship and praise and honor to God. You may not, you may not dance. I don't dance either. I know I see some people worship God, they're dancing. It's like, good Lord, I trip over my own feet anyway. So you've heard me. I've told all my clumsy, not all, but I've told some of my clumsy stories because I'm just, you know, it's just all my life I've been that way, and and I'm introverted. I keep claiming it introverted, introverted, introverted. But this is God. I'm gonna tell you I don't do that for anybody else. Let me just tell you the truth. I don't do that for anybody else. Nobody else I do that for. But it's God. There's no singer gonna sing good enough to get me to shuffle my feet around. That's not gonna happen. It's not gonna happen. I'm the dud at the games, I'm the dud at the ball games, I'm dud at the other stuff, I'm the dud that just sits there and claps. Now I'll clap, I'm you know, I'm appreciative, but it's gonna, you know, I'm I'm not gonna get up and get excited and jump up and down. It's never been that, that's not my personality. It sometimes worship depends on the person. But you can still do more than you would do for anybody else. You can still give more than you would give for anybody else. You can still go outside. So I can't measure how much activity is, whether you're worshiping or not, but I can say that we gotta give more to God for what he's done. We gotta swing the doors open, swing the windows open, raise everything up and give what we have. I understand some of it depends on culture. I've been to different places, I've been to different churches, I've been to, I know some of it depends on culture. I know some of us our expressions just tend to depend on that, the way we act, the way we say things. And you know, I've been I've I go to the young people's stuff and they jump up and down the whole service, and I'm just thinking, good Lord, I'm I can run three miles or 25 miles, and I still don't do all that. Because that's their culture, that's their generation, that's what they do. And sometimes I have to make myself get up there and jump up and down with them. So that's not very spiritual. Well, it's grateful to God. And the reason why I do that is because there's no way I'm gonna sit here and say, I can't do something when I can do something. I just don't want to do it. I'm gonna give praise to God. I'm gonna give praise to God, so I'm going to do it. I've been on the mission field in foreign countries just like you have. I've seen them do line dancing and you know, train dancing and whatever all they're doing, marching around and kicking up the dust and flying everywhere. I grew up in the church where they ran and ran and ran and ran and ran, ran. They ran all the time. Some people did some goofy stuff. I don't think that was necessary for sure, but but I won't get into those things. But I understand it's a little different culture, and I understand that, you understand that. Maybe it'll look a little different when you do it, but there's still got to be some expression. Something's got to come out of you. Something that somehow you gotta open your heart to God, some somehow you gotta give praise to God. I understand there's different circumstances. I don't expect you to scream and shout and spin like a top while you're at Starbucks. I really don't, I really don't. But there is a place. There is a place when that's exactly in order. It's exactly in order to worship God with all your heart. It's exactly in order to give God praise. And I'm trying to, uh those of you that's been standing, thank you so much for standing. We're not finished yet, but I'm gonna just tell you, I I'm just I'm not just talking to you, I'm talking to everybody. I'm talking to everybody. And I don't know where you are or what your circumstances are, but I want to tell you this morning that if you don't open the door for God to do what he wants to do in your life because you're holding yourself too tightly, you're holding everything in too tightly, then you're gonna miss what God wants to do for you. And I'm doing everything I can to push you out of that. If you will open your heart, if you will give some voice of praise, if you will get past all the stuff you don't want to do, and you're afraid somebody's gonna see you, or some hair is gonna fly off in the wrong direction, or whatever it is. I don't know. People have all kinds of things. I don't know what it is. If you let that go, God wants to do something in your life, but you have to be willing to just release it. You have to release it. I don't I don't know if that means getting up and walking around or if that means, I mean, I we have elders here that, you know, can't really do what they used to do. I keep avoiding the mirror and telling myself I can. But you know, life changes, and you know, you can't do everything you wanted to do or used to do, but there's still something you can do. You can do something, you can do something, you can do something. And what I'm challenging you to do today is to get out of that. I'm I'm trying to give you a moment, think about what is it that I can do simply. I I'm not saying the earth is gonna quake when you do it. Although it's possible. I'm not saying the earth's gonna shake when you do it, that the ground on your feet somehow is gonna, you know, be an earthquake. I'm not saying that at all, but what I'm saying is somehow we have to get past ourselves enough to let God do what he wants to do. Somehow we have to take down the barriers, move it, and I know it feels awkward, I know it feels strange, I know I know it's not what you're used to, but what I'm trying to get you past is to break out of that rut a little bit and let God do something in your life. And I'm just challenging you this morning at 1220. I'll just make sure my clock was right, it's 1220. I'm just telling you to take a moment, take a moment and open the doors, the windows, everything. I'm trying to get you to beyond just opening the gates. I want you to open everything. I want to ask you to just say, God, I gotta give something. It's like a fire shut up in my bones, God. I've got to give something. I've got to offer something, I've got to raise something to you. I've got to, I've got to dance, I've got to lift my voice, I've got to shout out loud, I've got to sing, I've got to, I've got to have tears running down my face, whatever it is, God. I just gotta give you something. I've got to give some way to open the doors and the windows and everything I have. Open the doors and say, God, let your work be done. Let your glory shine. Let the King of Kings come in, let the glory of God come in my life. And I want to challenge you right now. It's 1220, so I don't want to keep you, but I'm gonna challenge you right now to lift your voice to God. We're gonna have the meat music and the singers singing in a moment, but even before they come, I want to challenge you to open the doors of your heart and say, Let the King of Glory come in. Psalmist said in Psalm thirty-four I will bless the Lord at all times, his praise shall continually be in my mouth. I made up my mind, I'm gonna swing the doors and the windows open. I will bless the Lord at all times, whether I'm feeling it or whether I'm not, his praise is gonna continually be in my mouth. Whether things are going good or whether things are going bad or whatever the circumstances look like, I made up my mind that I will praise the Lord at all times.