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.

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.

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

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.

TIA…from afar, people sometimes do say it’s a God thing when those things happen…like, God is showing wrath, etc.

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.

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.