The Source of the Problem

                I don’t think I am the only Christian in the world who wishes that God would appear to them via burning bush. On most days I pray that God would come and tell me exactly what to do in my situations. At times I even become paralyzed because I am caught between two choices and I become terrified of making the wrong choice in the end. In the times of my life where I feel as though I need the most direction I find myself diving into God’s Word. I find myself watching more sermons, fasting, reading more of my Bible, journaling, and praying more often. I think most Christians would be able to truthfully say they do the same thing; when the going gets rough, we start going to God more often. I am a firm believer in saying that this does in fact work but not exactly for the reasons that one might believe that it works. We go to God in our tough situations because we want God to fix that situation; but I don’t believe that God is our own personal handy-man.

                In the times that I find myself trying to make a big decision I also find myself praying that God will grant me a sign. After I pray that God will grant me a sign I spend the whole day with my eyes peeled looking everywhere to find this sign. Soon enough I am praying for discernment to discern between signs and coincidences. Finally, I have discovered my “sign”, in which case I find myself praying to God asking Him to help me understand this “sign” so I can follow His will in my situations. It’s really stupid to actually think you can fully understand the ways of God. Who are you to think that you have that kind of intelligence? Who are you to think that your mind is on the same playing field with the creator of the universe?! I will never be able to fully understand God’s plan and asking for a sign is a desperate attempt to do exactly that, to understand. Instead of trying to understand God’s plan while it is occurring maybe it’s more valuable to our relationship with God if we just trust that He has a plan in the first place and it’s going to work. Here’s a thought,  if God wanted to tell us exactly what to do in a certain situation and He truly wanted us to know exactly what He needed from us, would He really make it that complicated? If God wanted us to do exactly what we should do maybe He would send a message in the form of some kind of burning bush.

I have also started to consider another possibility; what if God doesn’t want you to make the right decision? Not in a malicious manner or anything but perhaps God knows that there are certain lessons that you can only learn from screwing something up. God knows that sometimes you need to completely get things wrong in order to realize how to get things right the next time! If God didn’t want you to make mistakes, He wouldn’t allow it. If every mistake you made was a threat to God’s ultimate plan and His almighty design then His plan wouldn’t be that great. Sometimes I even go as far as to question my connection with God when I can’t understand these “signs” given to me. But here’s the thing, you’re not disconnected with God because you can’t seem to understand which path is right and which one is wrong. If anything, you’re a little bit disconnected with God because you’re trying to get him to fix these situations of yours and he’s trying to tell you to fix them yourself!

                Earlier I mentioned that God was not our own personal handy-man. I struggled to find just the right analogy for this however what I am trying to say is we cannot only go to God hoping he fixes our situations. There have been times when I have chosen to listen to a certain sermon because I believed the name of the sermon seemed to have some type of correlation with whatever kind of mess I was going through in my life. The whole time I watched that sermon I was comparing my situation to everything the preacher was talking about. Sometimes I noticed myself stretching the meanings of certain things that were said in a desperate attempt to relate to what the preacher was talking about. Looking back I can realize that I missed so much of the point of those sermons. I was constantly looking for one specific answer the entire time and I missed so much of the actual point! There’s a bigger picture and you’ll always miss it if you are just constantly trying to find out what kind of lens the photographer used in order to take the picture in the first place. I’m sure so many of us church goers have heard a pastor say something along the lines of,

“Stop trying to place these things on others and just focus on what God is trying to tell you right now. Look inward and examine your own heart!”

It’s so easy to dismiss the pastor in times like these and just think,

“Well he doesn’t know the situation I’m thinking about because what he is talking about totally applies to >insert name here< and it doesn’t apply to anything I’m going through at this point in my life.”

I can say beyond a shadow of a doubt that I have used that excuse, “It doesn’t apply to me and this point in my life.” But maybe one day it will, maybe God is trying to drill it into your head now so you can avoid some stupid mistake you’re going to make in your future.

                If you truly think about it, you wouldn’t want God to tell you exactly what to do. Let’s say your mom wanted a gift so she told you exactly what she wanted, she gave you the money for it, she told you when she wanted it, and where to get it. Because you’re such a good child you retrieve the gift for her and you give it to her exactly when she wanted it. How valuable is that gift to her really? If your mom gave you all the tools you needed in order to carry out a task for her then you aren’t really doing it out of love for her, you’re doing it because she told you to and you don’t want to get on her bad side. If God told us exactly what to do and gave us the means to do it that would mean nothing and it would also take away from the free will He has given us. What kind of love would we be showing to our creator if there wasn’t trust involved as well? God calls us to have faith and to trust him because those are characteristics of love.

                So if God isn’t speaking to our situations through sermons, prayer, fasting, Bible teachings, and devotionals, then what is God speaking to?  God is constantly just trying to speak to our hearts. God speaks to our beings. He speaks to our character. After God has spoken to our character, situations can come and we can make our own decisions based on our convictions, based on our personalities, and based on the person God formed us to be! Our biggest problem might be that we refuse to take responsibility for the situations that we place ourselves in. If we could just take responsibility and realize that we’re the ones that need to be change, not our situations, then we can fix the source of the problem! God does not necessarily want to cater to each of your life situations and tell you exactly what to do. He wants to speak to your character and the person that you are. Sermons, prayers, devotionals, and Bible readings are all different ways that God communicates with us not to help us in our situations but to change our hearts and mold us into who we should be as individuals in Christ. If God told us exactly what to do through the means of communication He has then that would take away from the gift of free will that He has given us. Instead God speaks to our being and we become someone new and we make life decisions based on what our newly God-infused hearts and minds tell us to do. So if you find that you're frustrated because you can't make a decision or you don't know which way to go, consider the fact that maybe you've been asking God the wrong questions. Stop asking Him what choice you should make and start asking Him how He wants to change your heart. If you're becoming frustrated because you can't figure out a certain situation, try looking at it with a different perspective. Stop asking for answers and start asking questions about yourself as an individual! We go to God in our tough situations because we want God to fix that situation; but instead we should go to God on a daily basis in hopes that He’ll fix us.