It happened years ago in that awkward time in Sunday school adult bible study when everyone sat in silence after the teacher asked us “Does anyone have any praise or prayer requests?”
We looked at the floor, folded the morning’s handout into a rectangle small enough to fit into our bibles, and stared at the floor some more.
“No one?” he shoved. “No one has a prayer request or a praise?”
“I do,” this one lady finally burst, taking the pressure off the rest of us instantly, like someone detuning a guitar string stretched too near snapping.
Then she revealed that she and her husband would be leaving our class, our church, our town soon. They’d been praying about whether they should take this job he’d been offered – a better paying job in a more prestigious company. They’d prayed and prayed and didn’t know for sure what to do so they decided to put their house on the market and see what happened. It sold in a week. “It’s such a God thing,” she said. “We just know this is what God wants now.”
The great American prophet Stephen King writes“…stopping a piece of work just because it’s hard, either emotionally or imaginatively, is a bad idea. Sometimes you have to go on when you don’t feel like it, and sometimes you’re doing good work when it feels like all you’re managing is to shovel **** from a sitting position.”
A “God thing”, I’m relearning is not necessarily a thing of less resistance than the thing you already know today. God’s way is not necessarily the way I feel most confident in or the most qualified to take. It’s not necessarily the quickest, smoothest, clearest, most reassuring thing. If only Stephen King sat by me in Sunday school adult bible study, and at my kitchen table on Tuesday mornings when writing is sometimes the hardest thing I’ve ever tried to do.
My strings might snap.
.
Reason 1: I give up on something because it’s become not-fun, difficult, or just downright unenjoyable.
Reason 2: I move on to a new option because it’s more fruitful, a better use of my time and energy, and allows me to better serve my family, community, and the Church as a whole.
What’s the difference? How does one know whether he’s sticking something out through thick or thin because he’s persevering adversity or if he’s casting his pearls before swine and wasting the resources God gave him?
I sometimes find myself envying those who see “God-things” with such black and white simplicity.
Good stuff!! SO true!! Thanks.
One of your best posts, Shaun. Wow! Feels like you’ve been reading our mail, so to speak.
What a theologian, that King fellow . . . hmmm . . . off to ponder some more.
jwise. yeah. me too. how do I know?
Shaun…writing. Writing makes me feel horribly inadequate. Persevering through writing…a skill I’m still learning. Thanks for the encouragement, I ordered that book. (if it’s the same one you were talking about before.)
I mean nothing you said here was revolutionary, yet for some reason I got chills while reading.
I’ve been praying over certain decisions for a long time. It’s hard to know sometimes what a “God thing” is. To separate and know the difference between a “God thing” and a “Me thing” is really hard.
Thanks to this blog entry I’m now more confused but with a stronger desire to figure this “God thing” and “Me thing” out.
http://www.vagabondrunn.wordpress.com
Okay, but I think most of us have a tendency to overspiritualize our choices and coincidences by attributing every single thing that happens to being “God’s will.” Nobody ever says it’s a “God thing” when life goes horribly wrong, or 10,000 people die in an earthquake, or when children die of HIV/AIDS.
“Okay, but” makes it sound like you’re disagreeing with someone. Are you?
On Writing. Does that book not kick serious butt?
Thought provoking post, Shaun. I especially like the honetsy in stating that writing sometimes seems so stinking hard.
Just my opinion, but I don’t think God is as simplistic as, “Our house sold, therefore, what we are doing is His will!”
I’ve had friends make similar statements, only they go along the lines of, “God knew I was miserable in my marriage, and then I met this guy at work!” Or, “I couldn’t figure out if I should go shopping today. But when I found that parking spot right up front, I knew it was God.”
There’s no easy answer to the issue. But I think God wants relationship more than He wants to be a Magic 8 Ball.
I don’t know though. I think that God is okay with about any prayer. Prayer = communication with the maker and I believe that God can turn our “silly” prayers into good ones. There are plenty of Psalms that start out with “what the heck? don’t you care God? I’m about to get my ass chumped form my enemies? You are leaving me out to dry!” and end with, “”He trusts in the LORD; let the LORD rescue him. Let him deliver him, since he delights in him.”
For me, I’d prefer a person who prays for a parking space and feels like God answered it over someone who thinks that God doesn’t give a dam* about the little things in our life. The Earth is the Lord’s and all that is in it. Therefore, he gives a darn about every detail of our lives and even small prayers of faith that seem ridiculous to other people.
I suppose I’m not above praying for a parking space. I’ve been on the other end of it and for me, that was a bitter, bitter place. Eventually, I found myself on the floor in a pool of my own choked chili, wondering if God was an absentee landlord.
I’m not sure I’d equate an affair with selling a house. One, the open door was a sin and the other was a person putting their financial future into God’s providence. God most certainly cares about our money and what we do with it. Otherwise that couple that held out on the the early church wouldn’t have dropped dead on the spot. Neither would the lord have dealt so harshly with the enthusiastic, wide-eyed rich man.
I do agree that the easiest thing is not necessarily the “God thing,” but if that’s the fleece that those folks laid out, then more power to them. I had to make some tough decisions lately on what to do with my summer, and God closed some doors and opened others and made that clear. However, in that case, walking through the open door was the hard thing to do.
Sometimes I’ve gotten neither open door or closed door and it was the inability to use my sound mind that crippled me.
I suppose that I’d have to give a Kuddos to the woman who spoke up. At least she was honest and vulnerable. I’m not so sure that God doesn’t want us to be so childlike in our faith. I’m up for praising the Lord over the smallest things, even things like the simple enjoyment of this Jell-O pop that I am enjoying as I type this. The trick comes when I can find it in my soul to rejoice while I’m on the floor choking on chili in front of half the block. If I can’t do both then the balance is skewed and something is missing.
Selling a house in the tough housing market we’re in could be definitely be seen as God’s provision.
TIA…from afar, people sometimes do say it’s a God thing when those things happen…like, God is showing wrath, etc.
I just wrote an article about “finding God’s will” for my church newsletter. I said, in part:
You may recall some time that you felt an unexplainable preference for some particular course of action. God may sometimes work that way, and when He does, we can rejoice and be grateful for it. But we shouldn’t expect that sort of experience all the time, and we shouldn’t let its absence paralyze us into inaction. Nor should we ever allow those internal urges to overrule what we know to be true from Scripture.
With most of the decisions we’ll make in life, God doesn’t give us a miraculous internal sense that’s easily distinguishable from our own thoughts. Instead, he expects us to use the means of grace he has placed in the world. 1 Thessalonians 4 describes God’s will in terms of the commands of Scripture. As we immerse ourselves in Scripture and seek accountability and prayer from other Christians, we will live more faithfully. And as we live faithfully, we become conformed to God’s likeness more, and it becomes more likely that we value what God values, and that we’ll make everyday decisions correctly. It’s not the sort of thing for which we can “cram” when an important decision looms before us. But it’s the way God has provided for the Frisbees of our hearts to be straightened out for straighter flying.
Hey Shaun,
thanks a lot for this post. Things have been tough recently with something I’ve felt God lay on my heart to do. Your post came at exactly the right time.
~Noelle
If faith and answers and success were supposed to come easily all the time, I’m not sure why God would talk about perseverance so much in the Bible.
I love it when He sends me a piece of tangible reassurance on the heels of a prayer, or lets a perfect paragraph fall right out of me and onto the page. As sweet as those are, in my experience, they’re exceptions that punctuate much longer stretches of waiting and wondering and listening and working and sometimes, failing.
A “God thing”, I’m relearning is not necessarily a thing of less resistance than the thing you already know today. God’s way is not necessarily the way I feel most confident in or the most qualified to take. It’s not necessarily the quickest, smoothest, clearest, most reassuring thing.
UGH. Thanks much for the kick in the gut. It was just what I needed.
Sometimes it’s so easy to discount the fact that God is right there in the midst of the days you’d rather spend hidden under the covers. As people often determine God’s will to be evident in ease, conversely, hardship is often viewed as being out of His will. The scripture often refutes that thought, but still, the influence of popular culture makes me wriggle in my Job moments.
I deeply appreciate the reminder.