So, recently, I've become somewhat abandoned to the voice of God. I've realised, that making plans and expecting God not to send me in totally the opposite direction (or even to the other end of the country), is pretty futile.
C.S. Lewis wrote "There are those who say to God: 'Thy will be done', and those to whom God says: 'Alright then, have it your way.'" I've been forced to realise, when God lets me have it my way, I generally make a bit of a pig's ear of things and have thus started to adopt the former position more readily. And I must admit, since that change has come about, things have been far more exciting. It's really made room for God to move in my life in far more noticeable ways and I've had to literally bring myself to the cross every day, and admit I don't have a clue what I'm doing, or how I'm going to do it, and thus need God to guide me through it all. And even more amazingly, He has. He has become my provider, my shelter, my peace and my strength.
Now, this is all well and good, but surely there's got to be a line somewhere? God's dragged me through the past few months, not telling me all that much about what exactly has been going on, and I have just had to trust Him, and follow His lead. But I don't think that that's how it's supposed to be all the time. I don't believe that our lives are on auto-pilot, or that the Holy Spirit is some kind of GPS system that'll warn us of speed cameras and tell us to "Turn right in 100 yards" in a novelty Homer Simpson voice (seriously, SatNavs can do that).
In fact, SatNavs generally irritate me. They often give unecessary, point out the obvious advice, and are just patronising. What annoys me more than SatNavs themselves, are SatNav dependent drivers. People who don't know where anything is past the end of their street, because they require spoken directions in order to nip to Tesco to get the milk, and refuse to use side roads, or helpful shortcuts suggested by passengers because "Glenda doesn't say so".
Recently, people in my year have been applying to university. Some of my Christian friends who have been doing so, have been totally perplexed by the whole thing. It's a pretty daunting task, and it's difficult to know where to begin, so many of them, quite rightly I suppose, have asked God to give them a sign to tell them where they should go.
I didn't do that. I have been researching for years and as only 15 unis in the UK offer my course, I had a much easier choice to make, and settled on my 5 choices fairly quickly. God however, had other ideas. Having written my personal statement, completed my UCAS form, and just waiting for final tweaks to be made before sending, He made it very clear that He wanted me to go elsewhere entirely.
On discussing what had happened with a friend who was one of said people who was praying ardently for some kind of prophecy on the matter, she began to express her longing for an insight that was as clear as the one I'd received, and to my astonishment, I found myself replying "Perhaps God doesn't care." Now, before you organise a lynch-mob to come after me, let me explain...
I believe in an Omnipotent, Omniscient, Omipresent God. Now, if we think about those qualities in ourselves (drop the omni), we know what we know, we cannot force ourselves to forget things (no matter how much we'd like to!), ergo, we cannot deny our knowledge. Wherever we are present, unless we actively leave, or cease to be, we have no control over our presence. We are where we are. However, we can decide whether or not we exercise our power, and how we do so. I recently discovered I can pick up my friend Dave. However, this does not mean that I perpetually carry him around with me. So, whilst these facets of God are perfected (in him being all-knowing, all-present, and all-powerful), the principals applying to the qualities remain the same. God is all-knowing, and all-present, which are active all the time. He is also all-powerful, but not necessarily exercising this power all the time.
Wow, that was verbose... My point being that, if God knows everything, including our future, He's the best person to guide us in our present. If God knows what decision my friend is going to make about her university, and how it'll work out, perhaps He realises that He simply doesn't need to step in and tell her, and that she'll be able to find her way on her own. I on the other hand, would have ended up in completely the wrong place, and thus Jesus felt the need to stand in front of me with a megaphone and scream in my face what to do. Other times, I think God thinks we just need to muddle through and learn from our mistakes, so we don't become SatNav dependent drivers.
I was talking to a friend last week who was saying that he thinks of his relationship with God, alot like that of his relationship with his father. Of course, his father has certain ideas about what he'd like his son to do, and he probably gets frustrated with him when he goes off and does something completely different, but he's raised him to be an independent, thinking human being; he's given him the basic teaching and knowledge he needs to be a good person, and make informed decisions; he did not however, create him to be a robot, and to have his father's own ideals forced on him and ultimately, he'll always love him, and call him his son.
Yes, sometimes we'll get lost. Yes, sometimes the car will break-down, but there'll always be signposts back; there'll always be an RAC repair man; and there'll always be an annoying Homer Simpson voice to get us back on track if needs be.
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