I'm a few days behind on my writing.  That's because I've been struggling to "hear" God for the last week and a half.  And then I realized something: in order to learn about the deepest parts of ourselves, God will leave us to our own devices on occasion.

See, we are taught, as Christians, to give our woes to God.  I've written about this, and I've spoken out adamantly about it in recent weeks.  But the one thing we don't always realize is that part of God's way of dealing with them is to let us deal with them ourselves sometimes.  It's at these times when God goes quiet that he speaks the loudest.  It's his way of telling us we have to do the leg work sometimes.

A lot of new believers tend to think that things will suddenly get easier when they accept Jesus and and confess their transgressions.  In some ways they do, but God is not our butler.  We cannot snap our fingers and expect him to cater to our whims.  And, as I said a moment ago, sometimes he goes to the extreme of making us take the load ourselves.  He'll be right there with us along the way to make sure we don't fall flat on our faces.  But from time to time God will let us take some lumps, and will force us to answer our own questions.  I've been dealing with one of those times myself, lately.  The question in my mind was, "is what I think I'm feeling really the way I feel?"  The answer has been a resounding and emphatic "yes!" but I didn't get a study guide for the exam.  God made me take the time to focus on my emotions rather than ask a question and get an answer.  God is not a Solution Vending Machine.

So I looked deeper into myself.  I sat here for most of the last few weeks listening for God, and only hearing myself.  And what I heard in myself was a constant reinforcement that I've been right all along this fairly recent path I've been on.  And while it was even more lonely than usual in this house, that solitude and Heavenly silence has been a blessing.