The other week at the YFC day we ended the day by just standing quietly and listening to God to see if God had anything to share with us as a family of people. We do this because we firmly believe God speaks today.

I believe we had two messages from God which, although shared simply, are quite profound in their content.

The first person shared these words

‘what do you want from me?’

Too often we ask God to bless things, we ask God for protection, we ask God for this and that but sometimes we seem too scared to be specific. It’s interesting because my children are very specific. They can tell me in an instant what they would like from me. Things like: lets go fishing for a day, a pair or new football boots, to see a film at the cinema, for help me with their homework, to kick a football on the banks. Very specific requests which I can easily respond to in some way.

I wonder … sometimes do we confuse God with our reluctance to be specific in our asking!? I’ve listened to prayers and wondered at the end what the person was actually asking for! They go around and around with no apparent request … so what can God do! In my weaker and more flippant moments I picture God leaving the meeting, head in hands, saying ‘why can’t they just ask me to do something!’

But I think it goes deeper than this as well. I think often we can’t answer that question of ‘what do you want from me?’ because we just do not know. If it comes down to it, we do not know specifically what we would like God to do for us.

The second person shared:

‘what have you got in your hands?’

This was related to God asking Moses a similar question. Too often we wait for things to come our way, wish we could do this or that and all the while God is saying ‘look at what I have already given you … you need nothing else…get on and use it.’ I can relate to this, I know I can do things, I know I have certain gifts, certain abilities, yet still I think ‘before I do that I just need to be able to …’. This kind of thinking is crippling.

In some ways this thinking could be seen as setting up a barrier between us and God. In essence, if we think like this we are refusing to accept what God has given us, we are refusing to believe that he can and does believe in the person he has created us to be.

I have met so many people, particularly in the last few years, who have a clear calling on their lives from God, but they are struggling to take hold of that and accept it. They are struggling to believe that Creator God wishes to work through them. They are struggling to believe that God has chosen them and invested in them

While they struggle they seem to tie themselves in knots and actually believe that the calling they know they had was mis-heard. I hate to think how many creative people there are who are in denial of their creativity because they have allowed themselves to disregard their calling, to disbelieve themselves, to mistrust God.

It’s a sad thought but a thought of relevance.

Some how, we need to help people to re-accept who they are and re-commit to being the people that not only they were called to be, but to re-commit to being the people that they want to be themselves. I think the two are one and the same.