Trying to listen

Hello friends,

The Dark Night of the Soul is a concept I've written about here before on the J-Blog. It's the idea that God would simply stop speaking to you. You wouldn't hear from him for a long while, despite constantly praying and seeking and asking and searching. It is, according to many church fathers like St. John of the Cross, a blessing. If you only had a relationship with God for the sake of loving God, and not for all the things he could bless you with, would you still love him as deeply? Or is God our cosmic sugar daddy, always there to give us what we need? 

This isn't that...

I found myself in a situation this morning where I needed discernment. Sarah and I even sat down and prayed together and asked God to help us make the right decision. And as I found myself in the moment, as I was thinking through decisions and what was in front of me, I heard nothing. I didn't hear a voice from God. I didn't feel the Spirit descend like a dove. I didn't see the clouds part. I had nothing going on inside me. It was not unlike driving in a really thick fog, being pretty sure there is road underneath the wheels but having absolutely no idea where the road was taking me. 

The temptation in this moment is usually to blame God. After all, he can take it, right? The temptation is to call this a dark night of the soul, a moment in time where God abandoned me and stopped communicating. For once in my life, I saw right through the temptation right away. The problem wasn't that God wasn't speaking. It was that I wasn't asking. Sure, Sarah and I said a quick prayer that morning, but my mind was elsewhere. The prayer was half baked on my end at best. In typical fashion, my mind was on what I could do. My mind was centered on the actions that I could take. What am I going to do next? 

It's so subtle isn't it? This idea of grace vs. works. I mean sure, when it comes to salvation and eternal life we're all pretty good at seeing the difference, knowing that the correct answer on the theological test is to say that nothing we could ever do would make God love us less. We are given our free gift of salvation because of Christ's work on the cross, not ours here. Yet I don't think that the eternal ramifications are the only place this grace vs. works battle plays out. I think when we enter our prayer life focused on what we can do in a situation rather than ask God for his wisdom, it's like trying to have a conversation with someone while wearing headphones. You can't possibly listen to what the other person has to say. 

Tonight, I'm taking my headphones off. I'm hoping that I can sit quietly enough to hear what God is saying to me. The situation from this morning is well passed and resolved, but there are other situations. There are so many areas in my life where I would rather trust myself and what I can do rather than leaning back, trusting God, and listening to what he wants to speak into my life. 

My prayer for us tonight is that we would listen. That we would be still enough to hear what God is speaking into our world. That we would have the strength and the courage to take the headphones off, and listen and converse with God. What a privilege and an honor it is to have a conversation with the God of the universe, that we all to often take for granted. 

Let us pray...