Why don’t you say something?

by Linda Macqueen

Why don’t you say something?

Ever asked that question of God? Ever stood at a crossroads, waiting desperately for God to flip the coin for you? Ever begged him to write a message in the sky or, better still, send you a personally addressed letter outlining what you should do?

The question of guidance, of discerning God’s will for our lives, is one of the most frustrating and confusing that confronts us as Christians. Why are our earnest desires to know God’s will so often met with stony silence?

Before we talk about God’s apparent silence, let’s consider all the times when we remain silent. All the times we don’t actively seek God’s guidance.

If a decision is easy, is one we are happy to make, or is one in which we have nothing to lose, we’re usually happy to leave God out of it.

And when we’re faced with temptation, the last person we usually want to consult is God.

So, with many everyday questions, it is not God who is silent – but us.

Generally, we’re only concerned with seeking God’s guidance when we’re faced with decisions we’d prefer to file in the ‘too hard’ basket: those with lifelong ramifications, those which could make us look foolish or blow up in our face if we make the wrong choice, and those where it appears we can’t win either way.

In those instances, we turn to God and implore, ‘What do I do?’, expecting him to deliver an instant sky-written response to release us from responsibility.

When we do this, we’re treating God like a cosmic Santa Claus who delivers the goods as soon as we turn on the pleading whine. And we’re treating his guidance like a possession – something he owes us.

Now don’t get this wrong. God is not backward in coming forward with guidance. God loves to guide us. In fact, he’d love it if we allowed him to guide us all the time. But so often we treat guidance like we treat the kitchen tap. We expect to turn it on when we feel thirsty and get an instant thirst-quencher; the rest of the time it just sits there unnoticed.

Guidance is not a possession to be sought every once in a while. God’s idea of guidance is not that of a tap, but a mountain stream that constantly showers us with living water. He wants us to be refreshed by it, to frolic in it so that we know nothing else but his will.

The trouble is, we restrict God to guiding us only when we decide it’s good for us. All the other times God is saying something. He’s saying, ‘I love you. I want to talk to you. I want you to talk to me. I want you to experience the very best I have to give. I want you to know my will for you every moment, every day.’

It’s just a pity that we’re so busy searching for instant answers that we fail to hear his voice.