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Nobleton Community Church
29084 Sentinel Street PO Box 224
Nobleton, Florida 34661
Rev. Paul V. Lehmann, Pastor
813-389-8683
Nobletoncommunitychurch.org
info@nobletoncommunitychurch.org
OUR VISION IS:
To experience SPIRIT-FILLED WORSHIP AND PRAYER
To be involved in EVANGELISM, DISCIPLINING AND TRAINING PEOPLE
To use our SPIRITUAL GIFTS
To SERVE AND REACH PEOPLE FOR CHRIST, BOTH
“ACROSS THE STREET AND ACROSS THE WORLD”
Nobleton Community Church
Date January 11, 2026
Text I Corinthians 16:1-9 (also verses 10-14)
Pastor Paul Lehmann
When we talk about “doors of opportunity,” we must realize that:
The opening of doors is all God’s responsibility. We just need to be ready to walk through them when he does it. In Acts 19:1, we read that Apollos, who had been working with Paul, had gone to Corinth. A little further from where Carol read this morning, in verse 12, we see that Paul was urging Apollos to go to Corinth, but Apollos was unwilling; Paul tells them he will go when he has the opportunity. Some have felt that Apollos was strong-willed and that he wasn’t going to go to Corinth, just because Paul told him to go. I believe, though, that there might be another reason. Apollos was willing to obey God whenever and wherever he would tell him to go. For some reason, it wasn’t in God’s timing for him to go then, but when the door was open —he went.
We read in verse 9 that “a great door for effective work has opened to me.”
The important thing to realize is that God’s timing is not ours—and when he finally opens the door, we must be ready to walk through it by being prepared, and then obey.
Jeannene and I have seen this to be true many times in our lives, but there were two significant times when God’s timing and ours didn’t seem to coincide. Yet in the long run, his timing was perfect, of course. Our first ministry in Boma, Dem. Rep of the Congo, I was principle of a high school, and taught Phys. Ed., built an outdoor basketball court and started a basketball team. We had a Bible Study in our home for these players.
At the end of our first four-year term, 34 young people had given their lives to Christ. But we were feeling led to go to the Capitol City for our next term and help with the newly started church planting efforts.
However, God had other plans, and when we came back after a year of speaking in churches in the States, we were assigned once again to Boma. I couldn’t understand how the Lord and I “got our wires crossed” so much. Nevertheless, it was all in the Lord’s timing. I led Theological Education by Extension Classes and was involved with a tent meeting outreach, which resulted in having discipleship classes for 76 converts that lived in our section of the city, and through this, a church was planted. Everything that I was involved with was what I would be doing in Kinshasa. After one year, we were able to transfer to the capital.
The second outstanding time that we saw God work in his timing was after we had spent 21 years in the Congo, and I was asked to be the Director for our Haitian Dist. on the East Coast of the U.S. We moved back to Nyack, where I had studied years before. This was a temporary assignment as the goal was to have a Haitian in this position. I had been praying about where we would go after that happened. I thought of France and the need for missionaries there. However, when I asked the Dir. Of Overseas Ministries, about this he said, “we aren’t sending missionaries to France at this time, until the National Church there puts a training program in place to train more young people to pastor churches. So I thought once again my timing wasn’t right, but God had a plan. I was asked to teach an Evangelism Course and a Church Growth Course in the last year we were in Nyack. Since they didn’t ask me to do this until two weeks before school started, I asked to look at the syllabus of those who had taught it before. I saw that almost everything they wanted me to cover, I had taught in the Congo, so I accepted. The second semester, one of the textbooks was by my friend Greg Livingston, whom I had served with on O.M. Operation Mobilization, a youth organization that distributed Bibles and Christian Literature in Europe during the summer. At that time, he asked me why I was going to the Congo. He said, “They have had the gospel for a long time, and there are Muslim countries that have never heard the gospel.” I told him that all that I can say is that God called me specifically to go to Africa. Well, things were changing, and he had served in a Muslim country for many years and had written a book, “Planting Churches in Muslim Cities.” That book was on the syllabus. As I read it and taught it, the Lord spoke to me about reaching Muslims in France. I knew that there were about 10 million in France, but I didn’t know if that was a valid possibility. I once again approached our Overseas Director and mentioned this to him. He looked at me and said; now that is a totally different possibility. I’ll get back to you on that. He did. The Alliance was planning to go into Morocco, and they wanted to develop a strategy in France, because of the interaction between these two countries
As it turned out, we were sent to France in 1996 to develop a strategy and research what could be done to reach the many Moroccans and Algerians, especially in France. In God’s timing, “a door for effective ministry was opened to us.”
God gave me a promise found in Habakkuk 1:5; “ Look at the nations and watch—and be utterly amazed. For I am going to do something in your days, that you would not believe, even if you were told.”
We prayed and researched many things, especially as to where we should work in France. The north side of Paris is where we settled. We walked the streets of Paris and prayed, asking God to show us how we should go about this seemingly impossible task. We began to talk to others who were working with Muslims. They didn’t even consider the possibility of planting a Muslim Background Believer church. Most thought that any converts would just gravitate toward the existing French churches. We felt that the solution was to have churches with the core group from Muslim backgrounds, but who were also French-speaking, and they would attract all French-speaking people, rather than the other way around. After seven months of making contacts, through Bible stands, praying, and walking the streets, we still hadn’t had a breakthrough. Then God led us to a young Algerian couple, who also felt that a Muslim background, Believers church should be planted. There was a young lady who was a worship leader in the church they were attending, so along with those three, Jeannene and I began to meet for prayer in their 2 room apartment. The Lord made it possible to begin to meet with a few others for services and prayer, and eventually to rent a building, where the church is still located.
The Lord began to give dreams to some of our contacts. Dreams about Jesus that they couldn’t ignore. This was happening all over the world since about the middle of the 1980s.
Back in (1315) Raymond Null, a missionary from Spain, felt called to go to the Northeast corner of Algeria to preach the gospel. They didn’t accept him and his message and he was stoned to death. . It was almost 7 centuries later, (about 1985)before, in God’s timing a door of opportunity was opened. Truly, “the blood of the martyrs is the seed of the Church.” It was in this part of Algeria in one section of the largest city, that God gave a dream to 300 people. The dream was about Jesus speaking to them. Some saw him at the foot of their bed, showing his nail-scarred hands. The Muslims are taught by their Imams that Jesus didn’t die on the cross but was taken directly to heaven. Can you imagine the next day when the people met each other and shared their dreams, and they were all about Isa (Jesus). At that point on, they were led to know Jesus as their Savior by the missionaries who were still in the country during the late 1980s. Fast forward to the late 90s in Paris, France, a friend of Tasadit, the pastor’s wife that we worked with, would continually invite this lady from the same region she was from in Algeria, to come to church. She politely refused. But one Saturday night, she had a dream. Jesus stood at the foot of her bed and showed her his nail-scarred hands. He said to her, “I am Isa el Messie, (Jesus the Messiah), no one comes to Allah except through me.” She had never heard this verse from John 14:6 in her life, but now she heard it in her mother tongue, Kabyle. The next day, she came to church. The room where we met doesn’t have a cross on the wall. Instead, there is a banner at the front of John 14:6 in Kabyle, her mother tongue. She couldn’t believe it . After each service we had a fellowship meal, and she stayed all afternoon and heard the gospel. She received Jesus as her Savior, later her husband came to Christ and her two children, and the whole family was baptized. This was typical of what happened when the Lord opened up the door of opportunity for his church to grow. During this 2 ½ year period 76 Muslims came to Christ. Eighty % because of dreams, the other twenty % because they finally read the Ingil (the New Testament), which they received at our Bible Stand.
We knew that only God could have opened this door.
In I Corinthians 16:9, the apostle Paul wrote about the strategic doors of opportunity that open for the Gospel and the adversaries that usually accompany them. He said, “For a great and effectual door has been opened to me, and there are many adversaries (those who oppose me” Notice Paul’s use of the words, great and effectual. These Greek words mean gigantic, powerful, and ready to be put into motion. The word door in this context simply means opportunity, and the fact that “it has opened” describes something standing wide open. The Greek Scholar and missionary to Russia, Rom Renner, that I have frequently quoted, says we could translate this as; “ A gigantic, powerful opportunity is already set in motion and standing wide open…”
Paul knew that the particular door he was referring to had never been opened to anyone else, and he stood in awe of the unprecedented opportunity. Walking through these kinds of doors is impossible without divine assistance, and Paul was fully aware of God’s role in the matter. That is why he specified that this door had been opened to him. When Paul tells us that he has opposition, adversaries that are against him, he needs wisdom to deal with those who are attempting to come against him. The word Paul uses here means something that was piled high and lying all around him. In other words, he was dealing with more than a few minor opponents; opposition was stacked high on every side!
The enemy, Satan, will try his best to keep you from stepping through the gigantic doors of opportunity God desires to open for you. Satan is afraid of what will happen when “his” territory is invaded by someone fully equipped with a full arsenal of spiritual weapons! So know this: God will open doors for you- but He needs you to make a determined decision that you will walk through them, no matter the opposition, with the help of His Holy Spirit. By opening the door, God has already done His part, which would have been impossible without his assistance. Now He beckons you to come dressed in the whole armor of God and in the power of His Word—and then proceed through that effectual door into new territory this year. It may look like enemies are everywhere, but it is simply a fact that the devil and his forces flee and collapse when they are subjected to a show of strong faith!.
Your situation may look frightful, but think about this: If God has supernaturally opened a new door for you- a door that’s never before been opened—-He is not beckoning you to walk through it so you can fail. He is with you every step of the way, and He will empower you to defeat every foe and bring Him glory in that new territory that is yours to possess in Jesus’ name!
At the last Passover Supper, Jesus knew very well how the disciples were going to feel after he was betrayed. He knew they would feel like all was lost, and that they were alone. The power that they were going to receive because of what he would accomplish on the cross would be greater than anything they had ever experienced before. That’s why He told them in I Cor. 11:23-25 that every time they eat the bread and drink from the cup— to do it in remembrance of Him.