What Are We Expecting To Find In God

Welcome Lisa Griffin today! She has created a thought provoking blog piece that I think you will find interesting.

Our community seems to never stop wondering “where do I find God”, “will God help me”, and “how do I get to know God”, and I often come across stories of different people that tell about some difficult situations in life that push them to seek for God’s help. These stories always start the same. Something like: “I faced a difficult situation in my life and I started to scream for help…”and more often, authors of such posts say that they’ve received the assistance they were asking for. But what happens next? After some time, many people simply forget about their appeal to God; why is this happening, what are we expecting to find in God and why do we lose our faith later?

What motivates us to start talking to the Almighty?

As I said previously, almost every time it starts with some tragedy. Each one of us has to deal with certain difficulties in our lives, regardless of whether he wants it or not, and experiencing such situations we pray, we are speaking to the Lord and ask him to help us.

Moreover, many assume that God has to hear and support us. After all, we have always heard the saying “Ask - and you will be given”, but if it is so, then why then so many prayers stay unanswered?

I see only one reason that can stand behind this – many modern people may attend church and behave like Christians, but how many of them really KNOW the Lord and really keep their hearts and souls opened for Him?! Unfortunately, not as many as it may first seem.

Why don’t we devote enough time to building our relationship with Him and then, during the hard times we get confused and are wondering why He didn’t answer us? This all happens only because we don’t realize what we really need, what we expect to get from Him and then, after not getting what we wanted, we lose our faith.

Speak and you will be heard!

Where to find God? No matter how banal it may sound, the God is always next to us but turning to Him and listening to His answer are two quite different things, which we need to realize and accept. By listening to Lord, we open our minds for him and hear His will.

Unfortunately, today, many people are a little wary of this because in the modern world our turning to God is called prayer, but His appeal to us I often considered as schizophrenia. Due to the fact that the ideal was lost, our relationship with the Almighty became very difficult and if it is still present, it is often unilaterally, which means that we talk to Him, but often do not even listen to His answer. He speaks to us, and we can't hear. Any communication requires the cooperation of two people, in our case – you and your God: When we pray about something and then He listens and responds, we are supposed to listen, otherwise it would be a monolog.

Why do people lose their faith?

Anger and disappointment towards the Lord are something that has always confronted many people – both believers and unbelievers. When something tragic happens in our lives, the first thing that we do is ask Him “Why?”.  It is our natural reaction. But what we're really asking is not so much “why” but more “why me, Lord?" and this statement indicates two flaws in our thinking. First, as believers, we often live with the belief that life should be easy, and that God should prevent any tragedy in our lives. When He does not, we are angry at Him. Second, when we do not fully understand the extent of the power of God, we lose faith in His ability to control circumstances, other people and the way they affect us. We get angry at God because we think He lost control of the universe. And especially over our lives. We lose confidence in God's omnipotence because our frail human flesh is grappling with our own frustration and lack of personal control over what is happening. When all is well, we often attribute this to our own achievements and success, but when bad things happen, we rush to blame God, we are angry at Him because He did not prevent them.

Open your heart and accept His love!

Now let’s look at this from another perspective. After someone had faced a difficult situation in the life, he prayed but didn’t receive any answer – was it the Lord who didn’t want to answer or maybe we just can’t determine when he speaks to us? Maybe sometimes the answer comes, but not as quickly as we would like.

I would say that God always answers a sincere prayer, but often we can't understand His answer or simply didn’t expect to hear such answer, and therefore we don't accept it and deny the Lord’s help. Agree, if you talk with your good friend, but he's not responding or gives answers that are not relevant to the subject, and this continues for a while, you can get disappointed and this can even become a reason why your friendship might come to an end.

The same is here. When we don't hear the answer from God or the answer is not in line with our expectations, we feel frustrated and it gets very easy to lose faith just because we don’t see the purpose for our prayers. But you should always remember that God always stands by, waits for you to speak to him, and he is always ready to give you his love, the only thing that you have to do is to keep on believing and following His will!

Learn how to find Him. Learn to hear God's voice, whispering all the mysteries of the world within us, worship and love him, and then He will treat you the same way as we all are His children!

Lisa Griffin is a blogger whose lifestyle credo is “Those who cannot change their minds cannot change anything.”