Doors, Gates, and Walls

Jun 11

Written By Sheryle Cruse

The Doors

Then Jesus said to them again, “Most assuredly, I say to you, I am the door of the sheep. All who ever came before Me are thieves and robbers, but the sheep did not hear them. I am the door. If anyone enters by Me, he will be saved and will go in and out and find pasture. The thief does not come except to steal, and to kill, and to destroy. I have come that they may have life, and that they may have it more abundantly.” John 10: 7-10.

This may seem to most Christians (Christ followers) a simple, yet spoken, scripture that is used over and over in sermons and in Bible studies.

Yes, we should memorize and keep this Word in our hearts.

When needed, we can draw from our spiritual well and apply this to our lives when it seems many “doors” have shut, that we hoped would open.

I have knocked on Jesus’s Door many times to find His Will for my life.

Mainly through prayer and trying to understand and discern my requests to Him.

I want to, and try to, be led by the Spirit so I do not satisfy the desires of the flesh. Galatians 5: 16-17.

Case in point.

In 1991, while living in Portland, Oregon, I was working full time as a baker for a well-known wholesale store. At this time in my life, I was living in my car, a 1978 Datsun B210 Hatchback.

I lived in this car for many reasons.

First and foremost, I was serving Jesus with all my heart, and I had to decide to stay in an unhealthy environment or live in my small hotel called a Datsun.

I chose the car.

It was more like a motel rather than a hotel. No room service or housekeeping provided.

I slept at night either by the dumpster by a real motel, or at the truck stop.

Sometimes, when I felt brave, I would sleep at night at the Interstate 5 Southbound Rest Area, next to the 18-wheelers. The sound of the purring diesel engines idling all night long helped me to fall to sleep.

Hard to do in November in Oregon when it is cold outside.

My pillow was my spare tire with a towel over it.

I stretched out my 6 foot 2-inch frame as best as I could. Mostly I lay in the fetal position for comfort's sake.

Morning arrived.

I gathered myself up and went to the truck stop pretending to be a truck driver, so I could take a shower. It worked and I did not feel weird because I was pretending to be a driver of an 18-wheeler. I had a four-wheel, rear wheel drive Datsun. Hardly qualified for a real truck.

I walked up to the counter where you check in. I put my briefcase on the counter. They asked me who I worked for, and I declared, “Costco Wholesale.”

This was the truth.

The issue of walking through this door was out of desperation and need, rather than a professional declaration of who I worked for. I did not lie. They never asked me for credentials, or where my truck was parked, or any identification proving I had a CDL commercial license.

I gave them the small fee required to wait my turn.

After a few minutes, they called my name, and I took my shower and headed to work. It was a very long shower for obvious reasons.

I also did my laundry at the same truck stop so I always had clean clothes.

Christians living in a car should stay clean. I tried.

Not once was I turned away.

This had to be God and HIS door of opportunity to, at least, look like I was not homeless. I was not without a home as long and my Datsun ran.

The spiritual DOOR in the above scripture, for me, daily, meant a symbolic door, but also a real door of opportunity to survive my current life working full time.

Symbolic how?

It was my access or entrance to God and His ability to restore my life. Jesus, believing in Him and accepting Him as my Savior and Lord caused me to enter a relationship which I had done in 1977 in prison in Texas.

By entering in the Door of Salvation back then, it did not protect me from trials in life.

It did offer some peace amid the storm that I was going through in my Datsun motel.

I was embarrassed to live like this.

I felt shame in my bad decisions that led me to this point in my Christian life.

I was guilty as charged, yet forgiven, by Jesus through His grace and repentance.

I was living out my consequences from my sin, which is now under His Blood through forgiveness.

I was a forgiven, hard worker, living in my car, and happy to have a Datsun to dwell in.

My attitude was good.

I was healthy and still working hard daily trying to believe in restoration.

My faith was weak, but my attitude was strong.

The day came as I walked through God’s door, after several months of survival mode, when He (Jesus) made a way for me to have a bigger car to live in.

It was better than trading my Datsun for a motorcycle.

Could not find a big enough umbrella to hide under in the monsoons of Portland in November.

I traded up to a 1972 Plymouth Fury with lots of leg room for sleeping.

I was in an upgrade from Motel 6 to Holiday Inn in my mind.

Hurrah!

It got terrible gas mileage with a 383 cubic inch Magnum engine.

Not quite like the little Datsun, but I could outrun, if necessary, anyone behind me tailgating me.

God was teaching me a lesson in my self-inflicted wounds from my sin.

Simply put: Trust Me?

I trusted Him in my wages from Costco being garnished weekly.

I trusted Him with the loss of over half of my income being taken to paid debts I owed.

I had to trust Him when I did not have enough for food or gas.

I had to fully, 100% at times trust and rely on His supernatural provision and good health.

This door I speak about is spiritual because I could just knock and keep on knocking on His door through repentance and humility.

I could keep pounding away with my fist of frustration on His Door made from mercy and grace and be a disgusting, disobedient son to a Heavenly Father.

I gently knocked and kept on knocking until the door opened.

It is paramount in our prayer time when we knock to realize when the door is open or shut.

No hinges to break on Jesus and His Door.

It takes time to discern the truth.

I have preached for years about this, “You and I will never hear His Yes answer to our prayer, until we obey His No answer that He has said to us over and over. Fact of life.”

It is good to be sheep to a Good Shepherd and walk through His Door of forgiveness.

Now moving on to gates.

The Gates

Psalm 100: 4-5, “Enter into His gates with thanksgiving, and into His courts with praise. Be thankful to Him and bless His name. For the Lord is good; His mercy is everlasting, and His Truth endures to all generations.”

Boy, do I have a lot to be thankful for.

Number One, not being lethally injected by the State of Texas back in 1976 for Murder One.

Had either of my two victims died, I would be gone. The death penalty was reinstated in Texas in 1976. Lethal Injection was then used, after the pause on putting convicted murderers to death.

The electric chair, named “OLD SPARKY” was done away with in 1964.

I dodged a lethal bullet only by God and His grace for me back then.

Instead of a gate leading to hell, I entered a gate called Salvation in Christ in 1977 while still in prison.

Thank God for the GATE of mercy and grace.

In the Bible, besides being part of a city’s protection against invaders, city gates were places of central activity in Biblical times.

It was at the city gates that important business transactions were made, court was convened, and public announcements were heralded.

“Sitting at the gate” was found in Proverbs 1, as wisdom is personified:

“At the head of the noisy streets when she cries out, in the gateways of the city she makes her speech.”

(Verse 21)

To spread her words to the maximum number of people, Wisdom took to the gates.”

This verse highlights that wisdom is readily available and accessible to everyone, even those who are not actively seeking it.

It’s a call to attention, like a public speaker, reminding people that the path to wisdom is open to all.

An open gate.

Living in my car, back then in Portland, required my faith to believe in an open door and an open gate in that city, to help me get on my feet spiritually, mentally, emotionally, and physically.

I needed a gate to swing wide open for me (and my Plymouth) to drive through and find peace and solace.

God did it for me, over and over, and rescued me and gave me an apartment later.

I still worked for Costco during this time of believing for an open gate; not a swing gate in a saloon, or a revolving gate in a spiritual airport, going in and going out.

My destination in this spiritual airport with its revolving door going nowhere, had no final decent, and no landing strip to land on.

It was nonexistent for me then.

I did not run from God but ran to Him with all my heart back then, and today currently, I continue to walk by faith and run in freedom to serve Him in whatever gate He opens for me.

I run, and do not hide in shame any longer.

I needed stability in my spiritual life back then, and I found it when Jesus opened His Gates. I did not have much discernment back then in the 1990s, when His gates opened wide for me.

I just knew that any gate that did not look like a physical prison that I had become accustomed to back in my real prison days in 1976, had to be better than picking cotton with chains between my legs.

I lived in my past a lot in this era, not healed from my history of insanity yet. But my day of freedom was coming.

My inmate number assigned to me in 1976 was #262066 standing for: the 262,066 “thousandth” number of inmates sentenced to a Texas prison, back when they started keeping statistics for this very reason.

Started at zero in 1849 (record keeping), until the day I was given that number; keeping track of how many men entered prison in Texas, is in the archives of Texas Penitentiary records.

120 years of keeping records, Texas lost many of these numbers over time.

The point I am making is called GROWTH and building more prisons to house criminals.

Not only in Texas, but all over America. We are still the most incarcerated nation in the world.

Today, in 2025, the number has escalated to a 7-digit number, signifying not thousands of inmates, but millions.

“But where sin abounded, grace did much more abound.”

Romans 5:20

I got out of prison through a huge gate in 1977.

I have been back preaching in the very prison I was released from.

I have been preaching at Ferguson Unit for over 20 years now.

From a gate of sorrow when I entered, to a gate of freedom inside my heart, God redeemed me through His Gates of my Thanksgiving towards Him, and Him alone does the Glory go to.

I saved the best for last.

Walls

Walls can be seen as a source of imprisonment and division.

They are often referred to as things we need to break down and overcome.

In Old Testament times, the city walls represented not only the strength of the people within that city, but also the strength of the God they served.

An Eternal Wall is best described as a metaphor of security and safety.

Isaiah 26: 1-3, “In that day this song will be sung in the land of Judah: We have a strong city; God will appoint salvation for walls and bulwarks.”

(A defensive wall built to withstand the enemies who attacked).

A wall of fortification was built around my heart in the spiritual realm.

I was worn out from abuse, addiction, incarceration, insanity, mental ward incarceration, and finally prison.

Maximum- Security Prison.

My wall was strong, impenetrable and tall as it was deep. It ran, in length, from East to West, with no end in my spirit and soul.

I built it out of fear.

I forged it brick by brick, and link by link in the chain of despair and loneliness.

My walls and bars around my heart had no key to unlock the lock and sever the bars with a hacksaw.

I needed an atomic bomb, in my mind back then, to even make a dent in my wall of insecurity.

I wanted to be healed from inside my heart, but I did not know how, when and where.

I got tired of trying to figure it out.

I did not hear God and His Voice back in the 1990s, yet I wanted to, and I desired deeply to be set free.

“Those who call upon the name of the Lord (Jesus, Yashua, Most High God, Emmanuel, the Soon Coming King, and the Redeemer, (just a few of His Names) will be SAVED.”

Another name for saved is RESCUED.

I needed rescuing from my past.

I loved Jesus back then and still do today.

I needed freedom.

I had memories of past times, dates, and events in my memory banks from a broken heart, and damaged soul.

Some people journal them or put them down in a diary, but I only left them inside my memory, without a pen and paper.

Suddenly, without any warning or insight from me or from the Lord Jesus, He showed up.

HE showed up for me.

It was in a cemetery. A GRAVEYARD.

Once a hole in the ground, six feet deep holding the bones of my mom and dad.

My graveyard of memories.

Not “garden of memories” that some funeral home/cemetery companies use to make us feel better about our loved one who died. (Ridiculous to me).

Garden?

How about the Garden of Gethsemane?

Remember that one in the Bible?

Where Jesus had to decide (being God and man at the same time) was HE going to drink from the cup of suffering or stay with a dry mouth of selfishness.

He drank until He eventually bled on a Cross.

He died.

It was not a garden of memories, though as believers in Christ, we should remember how He did die for us.

Individually and for all mankind.

He knows you by your NAME.

First, middle and last name.

For me, He knew me and you before the matrix of our mother’s womb, and He called us to be His servant.

I had to and needed to let the walls down.

I had to let my insecurities be revealed out in the open.

I had to decrease so He could increase.

He can’t increase in a vessel with walls.

The spiritual walls we build, brick by brick, allow no room for Christ the Savior.

HE wants to heal us.

He desires to set us free from addictions.

The problem is simple. We love our sin so much that we say (without saying verbally) NAH!!! I love my sin more than I love the one and only ONE who can deliver and heal and forgive my sin.

Truth is?

Whatever we do in secret, He allows it to come out in the open. We should be embarrassed and filled with remorse.

Are we really?

Do we hate our sin, or put up with our sin?

Do we take His grace for granted each time we say to our wife or husband, “I’m sorry, forgive me.”

What we are really saying is, “Hurry up, Honey, forgive me and shed a tear or two for me, so I can hurry up and go back and sin some more.”

OUCH.

It is the truth you and I understand and hear from the Holy Ghost, and the Holy Ghost alone, that will set us free.

I ought to know.

My thought life before Christ was demon- possessed.

I reaped a bunch of sorrow for my sins of attrition.

Attrition, really? Really?

What in the world does that mean?

Glad you asked, I will be glad to explain.

You got time?

Or is Columbo or American Idol too important right now?

Attrition: a military strategy focused on wearing down the enemy by causing a continuous loss of soldiers and military equipment. Body by dead body. Gun without ammunition, etc.

The goal is to eventually weaken the enemy forces to the point of collapse, and success often relies on having more resources than the opponent.

OKAY?

Do you get it yet?

How do you and I wear down Satan, the enemy of our soul?

Prayer.

Yes. Resist the devil and he will flee. I get that.

What about our flesh?

“The lusts of our flesh, and the lust of our eyes and the boastful pride of life? It is not of the Father but of this world.”

1st John 2: 16

Can’t blame our addictions on the devil, now, can we?

So, in closing, if the walls around your wicked heart that Jeremiah speaks of are real, what will you do with your walls today?

“The heart is deceitful above all things and desperately wicked: who can know it?”

Jeremiah 17:9

What are you and I to do with our heart that loves Jesus?

We really do love Him, but our flesh rules our lives?

Repent.

Once you truly turn away, 180 degrees (not halfway), and you are sorry for what you did to get caught, not sorry you got caught, then there is hope for you and me.

Doors, gates, and walls.

Let Jesus open your heart’s door.

Enter His love and mercy through His gates of repentance.

When we do, the walls go tumbling down. Like Jerico.

You will overcome.

Healing of the broken heart is not up to you, but up to Jesus.

Your role, if any, is to be willing to open all the doors to your heart.

Even the ones you locked on purpose way back when.

He has the key. You have one too.

He is the only one with the right Key.

It is like a safety deposit box in the bank.

You have a key, and the bank has one just like it. It takes two keys to open the secrets and valuables in the bank.

It will not open without both keys.

You and Jesus, working together to rid the box of junk.

Your heart, and His power.

“He that overcomes will inherit all things, and I will be his God, and he will be my son.”

Revelation 21:7.

Sheryle Cruse