09.15.06
Conversations with God
Heidi has a ladies Bible Study on Tuesday nights. I try to get the kids out of the house, but this Tuesday the kids and I just hid in the kitchen and quietly made dinner. During dinner, somehow the kids started talking about hearing God speak to them. I mostly just listened, just kind of taking it all in.
Chloe mentioned that she always hears God talk to her. I thought she was just being silly, but the look on her face showed me she was serious. Then Lance chimed in and said that he had also heard God speak. I finally asked them what God said to them. Chloe said something like, “Well, I usually ask him how he’s doing, and he says, “Fine, how are you?”
Then she turned and told me, “Don’t worry, Dad. God said that we are going to get our permesso di soggiorno.”
This has been a big prayer need of ours for several months now, and honestly the situation has only seemed to look more and more bleak. But here my six year old was teaching me about faith and about how normal a thing it is to hear God speak when we pray.
So my question is … why does it seem so difficult for adults to have “conversations” with God? What happens to us as we “mature” that makes us more likely to explain that God doesn’t speak in an audible voice?
Shannon said,
09.15.06 at 6:10 pm
I think its definately a self-sufficiency issue. We’re adults, we’re supposed to be responsible, right? We have places to be and people to see, and distractions crowd in from the world on all sides, and somehow God gets pushed out. We try to find ways to make things happen on our own, like we’re the ones in control. I notice that sometimes even in my prayer time when I think I’m concentrating on talking to God and listening, brain chatter still gets in the way of true communication.
But kids… they’re so carefree, and they know that they’re not in control or responsible for anything. They have such amazing faith, and part of it is their complete surrender. I think that’s why Jesus said that unless we come to Him like a child, we can’t enter the kingdom of heaven. He desires that full surrender. We try to surrender, but do we ever really fully? Sometimes for a moment, but then we’re back to our old stuff as the pressures start to close in.
One thing that’s helped in my own prayer life is journaling. If I write what I’m praying, my mind is focused on first the praying, and then the actual getting it on paper, and there’s less room for distractions because my brain is multitasking. Also just journaling in general helps me go back and see where God is speaking to me in the smallest stuff that’s so easy for me to overlook.
Its when our soul is quiet and uncluttered, He speaks. For me, its in that state of half consciousness when I’m first waking up. But oh to be a child again. I remember God speaking to me when I was young…
Shannon said,
09.15.06 at 6:16 pm
Oh, one more thing. Sometimes we don’t ask Him to speak to us, or if we do, we dont fully believe that He will.
I love James 1:5-6 which says “If any of you lacks wisdom, he should ask God, who gives generously to all without fault, and it will be given to him. But when he asks, he must believe and not doubt, because he who doubts is like a wave of the sea, blown and tossed by the wind.”
Josh Furnal said,
09.16.06 at 5:36 am
in the narnia books, it gets harder for some of the children, as they grow, to get back into narnia. some of them don’t lose their memory of narnia, but others do.