Saying no...

I suppose I probably should have seen this coming.

What, you may ask? Well, of course ever since I posted about saying yes to God, I've been much more conscious of all the ways I say no to him.  I'm actually realizing, much to my chagrin, that between outright saying no and just not listening at all, I don't really say yes to God nearly as much as my previous post might have made it seem like.  I mean, I even boiled the whole process of life down to a few simple steps in that post... and then I found out I'm bad at doing them.

I guess this is just my personal disclaimer then.  I didn't ever mean to suggest that I have life under control, but it turns out that's kind of what I was actually thinking after all.  If that sounds prideful... it is.  Nice thing is, if you just get something like that out in the open, then God can do something with it.  What he likes to do is humbling and often painful, but that's really what progress looks like, I think.

So, I was thinking that I should amend my five-step plan to include a part where we confess and ask for repentance for all the ways we say no.  Then I was thinking, not many of us are actually bold enough to say no outright to God (although I have done that, and I don't recommend it).  Mostly we just don't ask/listen/pay attention to him.  For those of us who know that he actually speaks, this is a little bit like a kid plugging his ears and yelling lalalalala to not hear what his parents are saying.  He can try the excuse that he didn't hear, but that doesn't usually get far (note that this is a purely hypothetical kid of course, not based on personal experience at all).

The only difference between us and that kid is we've developed more sophisticated ways of plugging our ears and yelling, so to speak.  Last time I mentioned YouTube and its noise-making, distracting brethren on the web and tv.  Sometimes it can even be healthy things, like working hard, or even personal relationships.  Mostly, however we do it, we say no to God by trying to avoid the silence (physical and spiritual) in which we know he speaks.

What I'm finding is that no matter how well I think I'm doing with this stuff, I'm still much more of a mixed bag of good and bad than I wish I was.  I suspect the same is true for you, if you're honest.  Even in this, though, we have hope:

Our hope is that God pursues us.

Even when we are running away (or toward any other thing, which is the same), he comes after us.  He doesn't mind the whole mixed bag thing so much; it's really his only option for people to work with.  Check out the story of Elijah in 1 Kings 19, for example!  Elijah just had pretty much the most amazing mountaintop experience (literally) possible in the chapter before, and in chapter 19 he freaks out and runs away.  He also asks God to kill him rather than making him keep working!  Keep in mind this is the same guy that was eventually found worthy to skip the whole death thing and get carried into heaven on a chariot made of fire as well.  Was he perfect? No. But God pursued him... and he spoke to him in the silence (1 Kings 19:12).  I know the NIV says gentle whisper, but the literal translation is "thin silence."  That phrase inspired a poem for me that reflects my desire to listen and respond to the Lord, and I'll finish with that:

Elijah's Prayer


let me be found
in the thin silence

listening

let my voice
surrender and stay

quietly

for you

let my heart
be wholly at home

to whisper

resting on you
let me be lost

Amen