Listening to God

I have asked many pastors how we know when we hear the voice of God. We are encouraged to seek him and desire him and to follow his will for our lives. Most of those who profess to be Christians want to follow his will.
Maybe I am alone in this, but often I find it difficult to differentiate between what I think may be the pulling of the Holy Spirit, and the weird food and hot sauce I just ate. Or simple mood swings. Sometimes I am told that I am just not close enough to God and that I will ‘know’.
There are times when I will admit I have felt the move of God. The actions I was lead to do and the “crazy-random-happenstance” that ensued that was more than just coincidence was evidence. I don’t discount that. However, the very next day I have moments where I am just not sure and I will never know. It could just be a gut feeling.
Generally we are encouraged as evangelicals to spend more time on our knees in prayer until we have a solid answer. To pray and listen until God moves. Usually the implication is you will just ‘know’, it sounds rather mystical to me.
I posit that God works in much more mysterious and wonderful ways than just providing a feeling. He talked to Adam and Abraham face to face, to his kinds through prophets, to his prophets… well not sure how, to Moses through a burning bush, and to Balam through an ass.
Our God is creative. He can communicate a direction or a message through a friend, a book, a thought, a prayer, or even a prophetic message. Perhaps we should expand our faith, and importantly, our view of God’s communication and creativity to include, however he wants to communicate. When you seek to hear God, remember to look for him in whatever way he chooses to show up. The Israelite’s were expecting a warrior, and he showed up humble lowly.

A Moment of Courage, I don’t usually have: Open

I used to think that close friendship with another person meant that I knew everything about them. I asked them questions. I feel their pain. I tell them what I am excited about for the future. That is it. The closeness meter is determined by how much I see them cry.

It finally occurred to me that being close to someone means that they need to see you to. As you are. Hurts, pains, and failings. It can’t be them finding out, it needs to be you telling them. Otherwise, when the dark days come, and they do come, you won’t have anyone that knows how to help you, and you won’t tell anyone.

I am deciding that the, “others need to see you” is going to become, “I am going to show myself to others.” Unfortunately the timing of it goes that when I am ready to share something, something interrupts. Or I mentally just tell them as though I am teaching a lecture. More emotionally draining is the realization that I may not be around my most committed friends, whom I believe deserve to see me, when I am ready to share. This is usually why I refrain from sharing in these moments when I so desire to be known, “This should wait for my best friend.” So I bottle it up and forget.

Today, I decide that I must speak.

I must be found.

And I pray to God that it goes well, because my other fear is that talking about my mental demons will open up for others the same chasm I fall into.

Thankfulness

In my last post, I talked about my lack of faith, and calling upon God to help me, not in some transcendental psychic communication sort of way, but by whatever means he chooses.

Long ago I shared a post with the video that is at the bottom of this one. The basic summary of the video is that we can choose our attitude. If we write down at the end of each day three things we are thankful for and describe two positive experiences we had that day, we can change the way we see the world.

I tried this for a little while. But then gave up. I wanted so badly for so long to get back to the person that I used to be. I used to be so happy all of the time. Thankful to just be alive. Constantly asking myself how I can love the next person. Then life happened, I didn’t respond well, and a few sad events later and my internal monologue now has a really bad attitude.

Furthermore is the issue of who to be thankful to. As a Christian, I should be thankful to God. But what if I can’t see God’s hand in what I am thankful for? Yes, everything that exists is because of God, but does that mean we should ascribe thanks for the fact that the toaster didn’t catch on fire this morning? Is that an act of God? It seems trite to thank him for things that he may really not have that much care in (in future posts I will talk about the little things and God’s hand).

But, as I mentioned in my last post. If God is communicating with us in any way he chooses, then should we not be thankful for each good event that happens to us? In some way shape or form, Gods hand was in that. If someone smiled, I believe that the other person is in the image of God and I can be to God for their image. Give him worship. At the very least, I can be thankful that God is helping me to be thankful for things! Or allowing me to notice.

In short, I don’t have a complicated treaties of how I know that God is in everything, and I still don’t believe he is involved in everything. But as a child can be thankful to a parent for creating the environment that he can play in, even if he bought the toys with his own money, so I can thank God for my life that I am living. Especially when that life includes answers to my prayers.