Questions About God

One of the most common questions around communicating with God is “Why can’t I talk to God?”

We tend to have many questions about God – and it’s to be expected really.  I mean God is so mysterious right?

If you’re experience with religion is anything like mine you were also taught to not ask questions.  Don’t question God, your minister, religion or The Bible.  Just accept it.  That’s faith right?  Well that’s what I got from my childhood religious training.

That didn’t stop me however – it just slowed me down.  I eventually got back to asking questions about God and started finding answers and boy was I surprised!  And in an awesome way!

You see, God can withstand all your questions.  Truth can withstand your questions.  Everything that is real can endure severe questioning unscathed.  There will be some casualties along the questioning quest but you soon realize that anything that can be killed with a question isn’t very substantial to start with.  Likely it’s just held in place by a bunch of unfounded assumptions anyway.  While most of those things aren’t hurting anyone, if you’re seeking distilled truth, reality, pure God and peace with God then they’re just unnecessary fluff along the path of life.

The thing about questions that makes them so interesting is that every question you ask reveals your initial position.  What I mean by this is the way in which you frame your questions indicates what you believe, or what your assumptions are about the subject of your questioning.

Let’s take the question we started with as an example.  “Why can’t I talk to God” If you turn the question into a statement it reveals the initial position or assumption behind the question.

So the assumption in this case is “I can’t talk to God”

Revealing isn’t it?  The thing is the answer to this question won’t help us achieve our goal of communicating with God!  Think about it.  Let’s assume for a minute that you get an answer to the question and it is: You don’t have enough faith.

Now you have your answer.  You can’t talk to God because you don’t have enough faith.  So now what do you do?  Ask another question? Likely it’d be “Why don’t I have enough faith?”  You’re assuming you don’t have enough and asking why again.  Now you’re working on an answer that’s one question removed from your first and no closer to communicating with God.  You can see where this is leading right?

Ok.  Let’s stop this insanity and go back to the first question.  Let’s look at that assumption to be sure we want to ask that question. Assumption is “I can’t talk to God”.  Is that true?  Just answer for yourself.  If it’s not then you don’t need to ask that question.

If you feel it is true then ask yourself how you can prove or know it’s true.

For this article we’re going to stick with “That’s not true”.  So then if we know that we CAN talk to God then what is it we’re really needing to ask?

We could ask “How is the best way for me to talk to God?”  Now that’s an interesting question.  It assumes there’s a better way to talk to God – and if you’re feeling like you can’t talk to God then you must be missing something so perhaps the assumption is true.  But do you see how the answer to that question could actually serve you?  You might actually find yourself gaining some ground in your quest for communication with God!

Another great question would be “How is God speaking to me?”  Many times we moan and ask “Why doesn’t God speak to me?”  Again we’re assuming that God isn’t speaking because we’re not hearing.  That’s a pretty big assumption.  What if we’re just unaware of how God is speaking?  Which is more likely to occur?

I vote for “unaware”.  I happen to believe that God is always speaking.  If we ask “How is God speaking to me?” then we’re making the assumption that God is speaking to us and if we get an answer we gain a message from God!

At the root of all this is a little thing called faith.  We struggle with this it seems – but really when we make assumptions it’s because of our faith or lack thereof.  It’s what we believe!  That’s why paying attention to the questions we ask is so important.

Next time you’re feeling uncertain and a question is forming in your mind, flip it into a statement.  Is that assumption true?

If it’s not then reframe your question to ask for what you really want!