Why Nothing Satisfies Until We Open the Door to God

When I told my husband, Troy, that I was writing a book titled Looking for God, he asked, “Are you going to use that quote about knocking on the door of a brothel?” I wasn’t familiar with the quote and was intrigued, so I looked it up. I discovered that in 1945, a Scottish writer named Bruce Marshall wrote a novel entitled The World, the Flesh and Father Smith. Within the story, the character of Father Smith says, in part, that “the young man who rings the bell at the brothel is unconsciously looking for God.”  

Father Smith was saying that a young man who does that is seeking immediate pleasure, but ultimately, he is looking for love. Ecclesiastes 3:11 says that God “has planted eternity in the human heart.” Each of us has, in our hearts, a sense of eternity, which was put there by God. But all of us also have our own “brothel” doors that we are knocking on because we’re searching for something to fill that eternity-shaped hole inside of us. Either we will fill it with God and His truth and love, or we will pound on the door of money, power, sex, sports, fame, women, men, work, education, gangs, social media, exercise, gambling, gaming, cosmetic procedures, intimacy, significance, success, knowledge, pleasure, possessions, porn, or position as we look unconsciously for God. 

You may say that you aren’t knocking on any “brothel” door, but what if you are? What if your search for love and connection in this world has left you empty because you have yet to knock on God’s door and know His real love in an unreal world? The Bible tells us that “God is love” (1 John 4:8), so shouldn’t that satisfy us? Why do we keep knocking on brothel doors?  

You Were Created on Purpose 

My friend Carmen hosts a radio program called The Reconnect with Carmen LaBerge. We were chatting one day about why we continue to knock on doors in life that ultimately will never satisfy. Carmen is one of the smartest and wisest people I know, and she said, “People can’t get their mind around the idea that God made them on purpose. They don’t believe they are created, so why look for a creator? It’s an endless cycle of folly as they continue to make and remake themselves into something else, but they can never achieve what they are imagining. It’s exhausting and makes people despair.”  

Carmen is absolutely right. Why would anyone ever knock on God’s door if they don’t believe that God loves them and that He created them? Instead, they will easily get caught up in the endless cycle of folly that leads to knocking on one “brothel” door after another. A.W. Tozer (1897–1963) said, 

…the enemy of man’s soul has mugged humanity, robbing them of their identity, men and women wander around in a spiritual and moral fog, not knowing who they are, what they are, or where they are going. People do not know why they are here…and do not know their purpose in life, why they were created, or what they are sent to do. Consequently, lives are filled with confusion, reaching out for any explanation; hence the proliferation of religions in our world. Religion only addresses man’s external condition, not his internal confusion.* 

Religion is our attempt to find God. It’s also legalistic: Do this or that, or take that action, and it is easy yet exhausting to get caught on that hamster wheel. However, when we look for a relationship with God, we are met with His grace and find hope and peace. We will not find our purpose on the hamster wheel of religion, but rather, in a true relationship with the God who loves us. 

You may be busy knocking on doors, but God Himself is knocking on yours. Charles Spurgeon (1834–1892) said that God knocks on your door for your  

immediate and endless happiness…Do not, therefore, act as if you were not at home: do not turn a deaf ear, or a careless heart. I am asking nothing of you in the name of God or man. It is not my intent to make any requirement at your hands; but I come in God’s name, to bring you a free gift, which it shall be to your present and eternal joy to receive. Open the door, and let my pleadings enter.** 

Remember Spurgeon’s plea, and don’t act as if you are not at home. Open the door to receive God’s love. 

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* A.W. Tozer, The Essential Tozer Collection, compiled and edited by James L. Snyder (Minneapolis, MN: Bethany House, 2002), 26-27. 

**Charles Spurgeon, All of Grace (Nashville, TN: B&H Publishing, 2017), 6.