Prodigal Magazine

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There are a lot of things in life that I don’t know, and each day I discover brand new reasons that I’m not as smart as I thought. However, one thing that I have learned in 30 years of life and 3 years of marriage is what a conversation looks like.

One person talks while the other listens, and then they switch places. Pretty straightforward, really.

Except when it comes to God.

I’ve discovered that when it comes to talking with God, all bets are off. In case you hadn’t picked up on it, prayer is a bit of a struggle for me. At best, I end up feeling like God’s half listening—like He’s on the line, but He’s also balancing the checkbook and making some mac-and-cheese at the same time.

As you can imagine, it doesn’t do much for my motivation to pray.

Needless to say, I have difficulty balancing these feelings with the Biblical picture of God as a loving, caring god who listens and responds. I read Psalm 13, and I’m totally on board with verses 1-4. When David says things like, “Will you forget me forever?” I’m right there with him. When he says, “How long will you hide your face from me?” I feel the pain. I know that feeling.

Yet when I get down to verses 5 and 6, David makes a turn that I’m not always prepared for.

He says, “But I trust in your unfailing love…I will sing the Lord’s praise, for he has been good to me.”

Say what?

How in the world do you go from being ticked off at God, asking if He’s going to forget you forever, to three verses later saying that God has been good to you? How do you go from feeling like God’s ignoring you to saying He’s been good to you?

My experience has been that if you are in a relationship where someone’s ignoring you, and you take that as him or her being “good to you,” then there’s some serious dysfunctional junk going on. You don’t really hear that depiction too often—“King David the Enabler.” That image doesn’t work too well for your average sermon.

So how do I understand this apparent contradiction?

By no means would I consider myself an expert in this arena, but I have learned a few lessons in the course of my struggle. To begin with, I have had to come to blunt (and often painful) terms with the fact that any sin in my life is a direct barrier to communication with God. Obviously this doesn’t mean that if I have sinned at all then God won’t talk to me—Jesus’ life and death would have been pointless in that case. Yet just as with any other relationship, if I am consistently giving in to my selfishness and desire to disobey, then there is going to be a relational breakdown.

But if it isn’t a sin issue, what then?

First, I’ve had to look at my motives. Due to my own stupidity and disobedience, I am very familiar with the feeling of being disconnected from God. But to be perfectly honest, it is really easy to take my own laziness or bad mood and label it as “God’s not listening.” I have had to ask myself, “Am I just seeking some kind of warm, fuzzy feeling and defining that as God’s presence?” In moments like these, it is entirely possible that God is challenging us out of our comfort zone, past the feelings that we have known and experienced, and into a deeper level of understanding and connection with him. However, in order for that to happen, many times He must first break our dependency on the ways that we have understood him in the past.

Second, I have also had to learn (once again—it’s an ongoing lesson) that I am not in charge. In the midst of an “always-on,” instant gratification society, I tend to want instant answers to my questions and immediate solutions to my problems. As a result, I become guilty of desiring what God can do for me rather than actually desiring God Himself. In such a mindset, unanswered prayers move beyond disappointment into a crisis of faith. Yet as I look through the Bible at the history of God’s followers, there is a long list of moments when God doesn’t seem to be paying attention or holding up his end of the deal. All too often we forget that there is much more to the picture than we can see; for many of us, even our own past history demonstrates that God is worthy of our trust. Yet this is where we often end up, raging in frustration about the silence or hardship that God is using to make us seek him.

Finally, I’ve had to learn to lean on the faith of others. Growing up in a society that prizes individuality and self-reliance has caused me to be very hesitant about being dependent on others—and I don’t think I’m alone in this. But even from the very beginning, God said that it is “not good for man to be alone.” It is particularly ironic that so many of us who are on this journey of following God end up isolated and disconnected, wondering why God has abandoned us. In spite of our feelings, He is standing there saying to us, “You came to know me initially because of the faith of someone else—why then should it surprise you that you would need the faith of others to continue this journey?” If we find ourselves experiencing silence from God, one of the easiest ways to find solace is in the encouragement of others (most of whom probably have similar experiences!).

In the end, I have started to learn that these moments of silence are not truly silences at all—they are moments where God is challenging me to a new level of faith and trust in him. It is much like our actual first steps—we challenge a young child to walk longer and longer distances as they are taking their first steps, knowing that this challenge will enable them to enjoy a richness of life that would otherwise be impossible. In the same way, God refuses to allow us to remain stationary infants; he challenges us (by whatever means necessary) to lay aside our childish conceptions of Him and our selfish demands for his intervention. Through periods of silence, He challenges us to deeper levels of maturity and relationship. He challenges us to seek him.