Two Cans and a String

I've been frustrated with God lately.

I've lamented quite a bit that I felt like God was preparing me for something, and I even had the impression that He gave me a particular scripture in Daniel that indicated a 3-year timeframe before a big change would come. Candidly, I don't know that that was God; perhaps I just had a bad slice of pizza that night. But I have been choosing to believe that it was Him -- in faith, right? -- recognizing that if I'm wrong it's my misinterpretation and not His miscommunication.

And that has been a great comfort for me from time to time, as I feel more and more that while my job of the last 9 years+ is very challenging, and while I make a comfortable living for my family ... I just don't know that I want to do this for the rest of my life. And yet, each time I've considered leaving, I've felt at the time as thought God was saying 'stay put'.

But its October, 2005, and in February of 2006 it will have been 3 years since I found that scripture in Daniel. And I don't see anything changing, at least not in the direction I inferred from the passage. I had interpreted that scripture and some other things to mean that I would end up 'working for the King'. That could still happen, if God makes it so, but in my gut I don't know how, or what that would look like ... and I'm beginning to second guess much of what I thought I heard from God.

Rewind. Some 2 years or more ago, I was spending a significant amount of my time reading science fiction novels, and I was convicted at the time that I need to cut that out, not because the books are somehow 'evil', but because my tendency is to make time for those books at the expense of time with God.

Fast forward to the present. A few weeks ago I had a business trip to take. I picked up a fiction book to read, hoping that would keep me from other temptations that hotel cable television brings. It worked (sweet!), but I didn't finish the book before the trip was over, and I found that (as before) I was totally focused on reading this book and not The Book.

How do I express the sense of guilt I have for reading that book? It's not an evil book. It's castles and swords, underdog heroes and overwhelming odds. And yet I literally lost sleep over it, because I was more interested to read that than the Word, and even while I felt that way, it broke my heart.

And that's when I got so frustrated. If this guilt (or, to use a 'church' term, call it 'conviction') came from God, if He can so easily communicate with me about what not to do, why is it that I don't seem to get even a whisper from Him about what's coming up? Neither a confirmation nor a refutation of what I thought I heard before.

Around this same time, I've been in Colossians. (I would tell you that I think God led me there, but the growing cynic in me wonders about that. Not because God can't, but because I'm not sure that I don't attribute my own thoughts to Him, at least sometimes. Put another way, I trust Him, but I don't trust me to hear Him.)

But I've been in Colossians, and I'm reading verse after verse that sure seems to say 'stay the course'. See for yourself:

• Col 1:5 - The lines of purpose in your lives never grow slack, tightly tied as they are to your future in heaven, kept taut by hope.
• 10b - As you learn more and more how God works, you will learn how to do your work.
• 11 - We pray that you'll have the strength to stick it out over the long haul -- not the grim strength of gritting your teeth [this is how I've felt for some time now] but the glory-strength God gives.
• 2:1 - I want you to realize that I continue to work as hard as I know how for you... Know that I'm on your side, right alongside you. You're not in this alone.
• 2:6 - My counsel for you is simple and straightforward: Just go ahead with what you've been given.
• 4:12 - [Epaphras has been] praying that you'll stand firm, mature and confident in everything God wants you to do.

So. I'm still frustrated. Why did God set up such a confounding system, where the 'communication' we have with Him leaves so much room for misinterpretation? Surely this is the 'two cans and a string' method of communication, when I am so longing to 'instant message' with God?

But I'm sure of one thing. His plan is better than mine. If it weren't, he wouldn't be much of a God, would he?

B