I ask God questions, and I don’t hear His answers. I wonder if I’m not able to understand or if I simply ask the wrong questions.
I remind myself that Jesus is Lord of the impossible. Our God is the God of miracles, so the Almighty doesn’t communicate in logistics. He declares plainly and plans perfectly; my curiosities about specifics are rarely satisfied by the language of the divine.
It’s the mystery of the promise that tells our hearts to keep seeking. And God’s silent answers tell me to surrender to seeking, to being sought, and to noticing the details God lets me discover.
When Joshua scouted the promised land, he noted the fertile soil and the abundant goodness of its fruit; he saw the overbearing physicality of the people. By his spirit, Joshua perceived it was God’s will to defeat opponents that, on the surface, appeared unbeatable.
Later God told Joshua, matter-of-factly, to meditate on His Word “day and night;”1 therefore, Joshua understood that the Word was the way to realizing God’s promise of victory and prosperity. Likewise, David prayed, “Show me Your ways, Lord, teach me Your paths. Guide me in Your truth and teach me.”2
God’s creative ingenuity does not depend on how we make sense of truth, but on what the Spirit of truth becomes in us and expresses through us. Our work is not to understand how God works or how He plans; rather, God invites us to be vessels and participants in His majestic masterpiece.
Looking for God, listening for God, and heeding His voice, Joshua led by total trust and surrender. Similarly, Jesus surrendered to what the Father wanted to reveal and when He wanted to reveal it.
“My teaching is not my own. It comes from the one who sent me,” Jesus said. “These words you hear are not my own; they belong to the Father who sent me.”3
The meekness of His humanity was His divine strength because Jesus accepted that the wisest response to the world was to rely on the Source of all wisdom. When Jesus rebuked the elders or taught in the towns, He brought forth words in the flesh by the power of the Spirit – real truth formed and spoken in real time.
What Jesus said once, God meant for always.
My questions are too complex for wisdom so pure and simple.
