Waiting for an answer

I was recently talking to a friend who is trying her best to hear God's voice in her life. This is something we all struggle with from time to time. One thing this nation does well is ask God questions, our problem lies in waiting for the answer. In the Old Testament days the Urim and Thummim (2 stones the priest carried with him) answered yes and no questions with a possible "no answer" depending on how you interpret the stones functionality.

How nice would it be to flip a coin, or roll a die and have God's answer. Right there in something we could see. Ask a yes or no question and get an answer right then and there. The problem then is what if it is not the answer you were hoping for. It is all to often that we ask a question but will only accept the answer we are looking for. Is it that God does not speak to us anymore or is it that we ask a question but we have a bad case of selective hearing when the answer is not to our liking.

God is speaking to us, He answers our questions, but often we don't want to accept it. We need to make a shift in our mentality when we ask a question. Instead of having the "correct" answer in mind we should humbly place ourselves at Jesus' feet and ask for guidance. God has given us methods of seeking his will: prayer, studying the Bible, meditation, and fasting are just a few. All three of these disciplines allow us to better listen to what God has to say. Yahweh provides for us all that we need, just not always in the way we would expect.

However sometimes we must wait for the answer, God does not always answer instantaneously like with the Urim and Thummim in the olden days. Instead we have to patiently wait for him to respond. This is hard to do in today's culture when everything is instant, we microwave food instead of baking it, we write e-mails instead of writing letters. The faster the better. But with the invention of one thing we lose another, and in this case it is our patience. Instead of being content with waiting a week or so for a response to a letter, if we don't have a replay in half an hour from an email something must be wrong.

You see not Yahweh that is ignoring us. It is us that moves on before the proper time for an answer. In Mat 14 Jesus takes himself away from the craziness of the world, to be with God. If you are asking God questions but you cant seem to hear him. Stop what you are doing, remove the distractions from the outside world, ie. cell phones, computer, TV, music. And make time to simply listen to God and only God. I'm not saying this is the sure fire way to get an answer from God but removing distractions can make God's voice a bit easier to hear.