Worried that God will not answer our cry for help

By John Pearring

https://bible.usccb.org/bible/readings/122422.cfm
II Samuel 7:1-5, 8-12, 14, 16
Luke 1:67-79

King David wanted to build God a temple because he had settled into a palace and the God of Israel resided in a tent. What was God’s response?

Should you build me a house to dwell in? It was I who took you from the pasture and from the care of the flock to be commander of my people Israel. I have been with you wherever you went . . .”

When we try and focus on God, really work at allowing God to speak to us, do we map out a list of things we’ve decided to do for him? Or do we listen as God told Nathan to ask of David?

We start out meaning to listen. We go quiet, and then we wait for something to happen. In no time, we are reminded of the stuff that we’ve got to get done. We try to push that away because we want to be with God. But the dribble of stuff turns into a full flow. We become engrossed in a wash of dirty laundry, lists of chores, and friends and family we should call. Before long, we’re exhausted by the expectations and urgencies of our lives. 

It’s an inevitable, continual pattern in my prayer time with God. Our lives are much too busy for God. “Dear God,” I call out. Take this all away from me. But he doesn’t do that. We figure, though, insisting we have to get all this stuff done before we’ll have more time for God. 

Should abandon our complex lives to talk to God? Is that what he asks of us?

Some disciplined few of us knuckle down to the tasks at hand, disciplined with daily practices of the essential things to do, and they tell us they’re praying all the time. Such good folks seem driven to get out of life as much as possible. The rest of us hide from our duties after just an hour or two. We distract ourselves and fall into mundane activities. And then, we find ourselves muttering under our breath that life is so difficult. 

Others seem capable of healthy spiritual lives while busy as bees. Still, “Lord, help us,” they pray. And they worry. They work hard to hide their worry, too. Everyone feels the same way! We’re all worried that God will not answer our cry for help.

So, we try again. We focus on God and ask him to speak to us amidst the bustle of life. The pressures of the exceptional ones, the slow pace of the incompetent, and the endless messes to clean up distract us. We come to God in guilt, when we realize our judgmental nature, afraid that we’re not all we’re meant to be. In no time at all we are afraid of letting God down. Afraid of being failures in the face of better examples of how to live life correctly—walk with the Spirit, follow the steps of Jesus, and know the will of the father. 

What we hear God saying to us is to get cracking, get off our butts, and vacuum the house. Put our heart into it. Whether among the lazy or the exceptional, we vacuum. The next thing we know, we’re watching TV to dull the angst. We get up and straighten the pantry. We search the internet to feed our news-hungry brains or find replacement parts for broken appliances. We tell ourselves we listened to God and vacuumed, and now we’re going to reward ourselves with some popcorn and entertainment. Maybe we reward ourselves with the best-stacked firewood in the county. We say, “Thank you, Lord. We’ll keep trying to do better. We’re just taking a break from your burdensome expectations.”

That’s an unfortunate, sad scenario. We cry louder. “Lord, Lord, help us to know your will!” Soon, though, we’re entertaining ourselves to escape from our nagging conscience, which we think is God. We stop and straighten up the world to escape from dealing with humanity like us, just a godless bunch of losers.

I believe we operate in this way because we are deceived. We believe in a crisis god. A god who is primarily there when we are desperate. A god who hangs in the balance rather than lives in our hearts. We believe we are listening to God, but we’re just listening to our poorly formed unsure conscience. 

Having a working conscience is a fine thing. It’s how to operate and function properly. It’s a living codebook that assists us in right and wrong. It isn’t a map but like the legend of a map that explains the difference between a dirt road and a highway, an intersection, and an overpass. 

Our conscience, though, is not God’s conscience. That’s what we need to consider in our relationship with God. We need to know who God is, let him into our hearts, and trust that he wants to be with us.

So, here’s another scenario.

When we sit quietly to listen to God, we should expect the oncoming dribble of tasks and folks to call, mixed in with the projects, associates, schedules, planning, budgets, formulas, recipes, conundrums, and so on. These are the things of life, after all. Consider that God cares about all of these things. Show them to him. Talk to him about them. Ask him what he thinks, and let him assist us in each little thing. Then, our call to him, “Lord, Lord,” will be wonderfully different when the BIG crisis comes.

God isn’t sitting around waiting for us to calm down and listen. Well, yes, he is. But not like we think or have been brainwashed to think. God isn’t the dentist of life. He doesn’t have a receptionist who keeps rescheduling our missed appointments with varying grimaces of disgust at our lack of proper priorities. God’s receptionist doesn’t force us to floss, weigh ourselves, go on a hike, or even examine our consciences. Those are the things we are supposed to do. That’s our formed conscience, primarily formed by us, by the way, that tell us to do those things. Those are all good things to do.

It’s our heart that God wants. God wants to be there with us when we watch TV and stack the firewood. He isn’t asking us to put our hearts into things but to open our hearts to him. From there, he can help us see the opportunities he puts in front of us—o answer the call from our family (he did that), to respond to an idea, and pick up a friend to go shopping with us (he did that), to notice the wisdom in trading some hard elm with some soft aspen with our neighbor so that two fires will burn more evenly and warm our houses better (he got us together). 

When the dribble of schedules and expectations begins to slide into our conscience, we all need to invite God to join us in attending to them. Some of us will need to write down the stuff we have to do, putting asterisks next to the ones we have to do first, and where we ask God to help make the task tolerable, the phone calls more meaningful, and the chores more fulfilling. And God will do that. Others of us will need God to put reminders in our path. We’re not so exceptional. But God will delightfully help us to get through each day. We are different, but God knows how to be with all of us. He’s already there; hoping we’ll include him.

God is not the dentist we need to see, but the one who holds our hand when we go to the dentist. He’s the one who helps the dentist to be careful. God is honest about the pain. He soothes us. He never leaves our side. The dentist is the crisis that God helps us to overcome. 

God is the foundation of our heart’s desire, the one we walk with wherever we go. God illuminates our path, adjusting the bumpy spots because he cannot only make stones cry out but also smooth them. When we allow God to be with us, we have a cemented grasp on how to walk through anything because we walk on solid ground.

“Lord, Lord,” we pray, and he nods, and we feel the firm place beneath our feet. We’ve been listening to him all day long. We’ve been hearing him and become familiar with his more perfect will. We do not need to worry if he will know us because we’ve welcomed him. He’s been with us every moment of our lives.