Do you ever wonder if God is really as connected with us as we’d like to think?
There are seasons when we wonder if He forgot us (even while proclaiming loudly His faithfulness). We have whole parts of life when we only hear His voice on rare moments.
Yet God is present and He does care. Why do we feel so disconnected?
1. Stress changes our focus. When you are under a lot of stress, your brain is spending a lot of time processing what is. In these situations, you don’t naturally relax your brain to hear God speak. It is really important to schedule time to let the world fall apart if need-be, and turn off your brain. (This is called Sabbath.)
2. Emotional Exhaustion drains us. You can’t give or receive love when you are emotionally exhausted. Jesus understands when you are at the end of your rope. A quick look at the Beatitudes shows you that God is never closer to you than when you think your will lose your brain if one more person needs something.
3. Sin. Holding bitterness and anger are a sure way to shut down your God-receptors. However, sometimes God tells us to do something we don’t want to. We want to pretend it was a suggestion, and avoid discomfort. Every avoidance is a brick in the wall we build between us and God.
4. Busyness. When we are so focused on our agenda, we fail to take time to listen.
Has God spoken to you recently? What did He say? Sometimes, it isn’t earth shattering. I went an entire year where I swear God only told me “hang on and don’t freak out.” Yet, there have been seasons in life when God clearly gave me directions several times a day. It is possible that when we don’t like what we hear, we “roll again” hoping to get a better answer this time, like a giant slot machine. God speaks what we need to hear, not what we like to hear. Sometimes, like Martha, we want to cry “if only you had been here, things would have been different.” When in reality, God was at work all along.
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One Response
I have been through the entire gammet you wrote about. I have learned that you can’t just pray and leave it at that. You have to listen for God’s answer. I have had prayers answered before they were completely formed in my mind. I have answers that weren’t quite what I wanted to hear. Sometimes I have “argued” with God. I never won those arguments. I have learned to abide by God’s wisdom.