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In response to the ‘living a life’ post, HD asked: “But HOW do you listen? HOW do you find quietness to actually hear Him?”
My opinion:
How the heck should I know?
Just kidding.
I don’t really believe there is a secret here. In fact, I think the difficulty we have in accepting the answer to this question is that it seems too obvious to be true. We’d love to have some secret, some series of steps to finding God and hearing him clearly.
The truth is, listening is just listening.
It takes attention and focus. It requires reducing self-consciousness to background noise. It requires awareness of more than just words – expressions, gestures, inflections, nuances.
Real listening requires intimacy and intimacy – real intimacy, not the sex kind of intimacy, but the vulnerable, unconditional, broken-lives kind of intimacy – requires courage and patience and commitment. Above all, real intimacy requires unselfish love.
Living in a household with 11 other people, most of whom are participating in some sick, perpetual screaming contest, has taught me that the quietness necessary for listening is not found in external solitude.
I’ve been in some of the quietest places you can imagine, with nothing but my own thoughts and the sound of nature filling my head, and I’ve been entirely unable to hear anything but my own noisy confusion.
On the other hand, some of my most profound experiences in hearing from God have come in the midst of absolute external chaos.
It reminds me of what it’s like to catch a look in my wife’s eyes from across a crowded room, a look that speaks volumes without any words, undeterred by the noise between us.
Furthermore, listening requires trust. It’s necessary to trust that you’re not being manipulated or mocked. We have a real problem in our culture these days with an ever-present feeling of the need to protect ourselves.
We filter everything we hear through our mental risk-assessments and insurance polices to ensure we’re not being taken for granted. Our egos can’t tolerate the possibility we could be seen as fools, and as a result, we end up hearing “blah, blah, blah, warning” rather than “I love you; please take my hand.”
Years ago, I went through a series of questions with Renee and other friends about learning to understand God’s will for our lives, i.e. listening about important stuff. I developed a complex, yet profound formula for discerning God’s direction for our lives, and I’ll even present it as a series of steps:
Ready?
1. Remove the layers covering your heart: expose yourself to him.
2. Offer yourself to him. Sincerely.
3. Do what comes next: take the next step.
4. Repeat.
That’s it.
I know it’s ridiculous, but it makes me feel better.
Let me sum up this abstract answer with further abstraction, taken from the words of my favorite song, Drunkard’s Prayer, by Over The Rhine:
Like an ocean without waves,
You’re the movement I crave
And in that motion, I long to drown
To be lost, not to be found
Sweet intoxication, when your words wash over me
Whether or not your lips move,
You speak to me
My good friend, Nathan, asked: “What should I do with my life?”
My opinion:
How the heck should I know? Maybe you should join the circus or something. You could be an excellent trapeze artist or a juggler. Actually, you’d do really well as a carnival barker, or one of those guys that draws caricatures of little kids surfing for forty bucks a pop.
Really, though, that’s the thing about you: You’re an amazingly talented person.
You’ve got that songwriting thing happening, the musical ability, the fantastic art skills, the newspaper experience, and now, to top it all off, you have the college degree.
So, when I dig down and think of my heart’s desire for you, and really attempt to discern where your life could be headed, taking into consideration all of those talents and abilities . . . I still have to say:
How the heck should I know?
I mean, I don’t know even know what I should do with my life.
But then I think, I wonder what God intended when he put all of those ingredients, along with family and friends and other relationships and circumstances, into that guy I know as Nathan?
I don’t know the answer to that question either, but that’s not the point.
The point is that God intended something, and this is not just important for you, Nathan, but for me, too, and for every one of us who asks this question so frequently.
God intended something when he made you, and as he continues to shape your life, we have to believe he is determined to see the outcome he has intended to see. The beauty in this truth is the comfort available in knowing there is a right answer to the question.
God knows the answer. God has the answer. God made the answer . . . then he taught you the question.
The difficulty, of course, is getting him to share the answer with you. Apparently, God doesn’t write blogs, or emails, or memos for that matter. He’s hard to get on the phone, and he’s never in the office. He never sleeps, though, and as far as we know, he’s only taken one vacation day since creation. So how do you get him to spill the beans?
I don’t know the answer to that either . . . but I do have an opinion.
I believe God is always talking to each of us, individually and collectively. I think he’s speaking to you today, and he’s longing for you to be listening close enough to respond without coercion.
God is speaking to you through the circumstances, through the abilities, through the education, and through the relationships. Most importantly, and most clearly, God is providing an answer to your question – not necessarily all of it all at once, but step by step – through your own heart.
I believe there is something akin to a homing device buried in the recesses of your soul. Your relationship with Christ has activated it, and the love you have for him compels you to seek and not be satisfied with temporal alternatives.
Any answer to the question of how to spend your life which isn’t coming through him, and isn’t for him, is at best a tragic misunderstanding, and at worst, an outright lie.
He made you, and he knows you. He knows where you are, where you’ve been, and where you need to go to have all he intended you to have. He won’t give you the whole story all at once, so don’t get your hopes up. He knows how to keep an audience in suspense, and he likes that way.
Ask God. Ask him daily. Ask him without ceasing. Don’t bother asking anyone else, and don’t bother thinking selfishly about the answer. Then take the steps that you can see to take – one foot in front of the other – and before you know it, you’ll be able to look back and see the answer to your question.
Although I think the actual TV show is called Dancing With The Stars, I always want to call it Dances with Stars, which I think is a brain-cramp-induced, subconscious reference to the movie, Dances with Wolves. As far as I know, the TV show and the movie are entirely unrelated.
Maybe it’s a weird message from God suggesting Kevin Costner should be on the TV show. I don’t think he would do well.
It was a good movie, though.
The best part of Dancing With The Stars, beyond the cheesy, shallow drama of the whole thing, has to be the commercials. I’m not referring, though, to the actual commercials on TV. Rather, I’m referring to what happens in our home during the commercials.
That’s when the kids dance. Tonight, during each commercial, Madeline practiced her spins and pirouettes (whatever those are) between the show segments. She would stare into the mirror and lift and bend her legs in various contortions, throw her head back, lift her arms in the air, and spin and jump across the room.
After finishing a series of moves, she always stops to see who’s watching, especially looking for recognition from Renee and I.
Madeline has to be the most beautiful, almost-seven-year-old girl I’ve ever seen. I know, I know, all of you fathers out there would be obligated to say your daughters were the most beautiful almost-seven-year-old girls when they were almost seven.
However, if we could be honest for a moment, we could all freely admit that you were just saying that because you had a duty to defend your daughters, but we all know that Madeline is really the one. I understand why you can’t agree with me, but I just want to acknowledge the truth for a second.
Anyway, when Madeline dances, I’m pretty sure the angels stop to take a peek. I can just see them watching with glowing smiles, then turning to look over their shoulders at The Boss and giving Him the quick thumbs-up signal. “You really got it right on this one,” they offer up as part of that never-ending worship service.
Sometimes, if I’m in a generous, dancing kind of mood, I’ll grab Madeline 
by the waist and we’ll dance a few steps cheek to cheek (with her standing on my bed or the coffee-table for a boost). Before we get 10 seconds into our routine, a line of dancers forms behind her, begging for a turn.
If I’m lucky, I can catch Renee in the kitchen in a generous mood, and she’ll let me spin her around the kitchen or slow dance for a minute. Before we get 10 seconds into our routine, an audience of small people forms around the wall of the kitchen saying, “Do it again, Daddy! Do it again!” or “Oh, Daddy, you’re so weird. That’s gross!”
I’m not sure what it is about dancing that makes little kids, and especially little girls, and especially the-most-beautiful-almost-seven-year-old girl, become so giddy, but I suspect they were made with dancing ingredients included in their recipes.
I am sure, though, that whenever my little girls dance, the smile that comes across my face can’t be kept away, and the joy in my heart reminds me where the real stars are dancing and how grateful I am to be dancing with them.
Let’s make this a conversational, question-and-answer blog, at least some of the time. You leave questions in the comments. I’ll respond. Sometimes, maybe, I’ll ask questions and you can respond.
I’ve found that answering questions is thrilling for me, and this will give me an opportunity to answer the questions in my email inbox which I’ve been ignoring for weeks. Ask anything: family, God, theology, child-raising, movies, accounting, directions, math homework, whatever.
I may not answer, but I’ll consider anything, and if I answer, just remember that you are more important to me than my opinions. If you disagree, I won’t be bothered, but please don’t stop being my friend.
If you’re too chicken to put your name on the question, I’m good with that – use a fake name and this email address (leaving a comment here requires an email address): dalepratt@comcast.net
The first installment begins now with a question I received from a friend in an email today.
Question: Does God know everything?
My opinion: Yes, God knows everything. I think we’re tempted to let him off the hook and minimize his knowledge because it helps us make sense of things, but doing that really just reduces him to a superhuman rather than God – the thing God must be to really be God.
In other words, the problem is ours, not his. We don’t understand how things work, so we modify the character of God to fit into our reasoning. The problem is not God, it’s our reasoning, and more so, the misunderstandings we have about God.
I prefer a big God who is in everything and knows everything. I think that’s the biblical God. I also want him to be accountable for all of the stuff that happens.
When my sister-in-law died, for example, I struggled with blaming someone for a while and ultimately ended up pointing my finger at God. If he can’t hack it, he really isn’t all that great. The buck has to stop with him. He alone has the ultimate power over life and death.
The issue, then, is that I have to be able to trust and believe in the sovereignty of a God who has the capacity to do things that I consider evil, knowing that in his view, with all things considered, things that appear to be evil can actually be good.
A simple example is disciplining a child. I promise my kids they’ll learn certain lessons while they’re in my house. The learning process might be painful – appearing evil to them – but the ultimate outcome is desirable for both of us – it is good.
I have to believe in a God who can love me and kill me at the same time. I have to believe in a God who knows about, and is intimately involved in, the lives of people suffering in horrible conditions all over the world at this moment. I have to believe that it is in his control and authority and is redeemable and being redeemed.
A God who is less than that is really kind of pathetic.
Sometimes I sit in front of this screen with the words “Write Post” at the top, commanding me to perform, and I struggle for more than an hour to find the right thread to pull from my soul, if I can find one at all. I’ve had many of those nights recently, as you can probably tell from my lack of success in writing posts.
It’s as if my thoughts are grains of sand that fall apart at the slightest application of pressure.
Have you ever tried to build a sand castle with dry sand? All you really get is a pile of sand. To do justice to the art, you have to get down close to the water, where the waves have moistened the grains into something workable.
Without the water, the thoughts, experiences, insights, and visions, remain uninspired and disjointed, falling through my fingers without shape or form. Even with water, they are, at their best, fragile and subject to the elements.
On Sunday evening, 70 people were baptized during a potluck and worship celebration at our church, with at least ten times that many people cheering them through the water. Mothers and fathers baptized their children, sisters took turns baptizing each other, pastors baptized those they had inspired, and friends led their life-long friends through a proclamation of new life.
Grown men cried and testified of their need to follow Jesus in this way, and little children raised their dripping arms in celebration.
An hour before the celebration began, I was sitting in Starbuck’s with some friends looking for inspiration and meaning in a rapidly fading weekend. With a heavy dose of sarcasm and tongue-in-cheek, I proposed to my friends that our Christianity might be half-baked, and a habit that should be dropped if we couldn’t find true inspiration and meaningful support for our faith.
As I sat with those friends along the back wall of our church and watched the parade of people step into the cold water and then step out, sopping wet, with tears and shouts of joy, and testimonies of true inspiration and meaningful support found there in that miniature pool, my parched sand found a little moisture.
Baptism is a strange ritual in any and all of its forms. The symbolism is thick and mostly lost on rational, over-stimulated minds. It requires an emotional, and truly spiritual, perspective to meet its mark.
Our lives in Christ are not intended to be understood easily by the typical mental reference points. They require a gut check – a visceral response – that is prerequisite to understanding.
I was overwhelmed by the beauty and mystery of that expression occurring there among friends and familiar faces, and I was reminded about the truth by which all things are held together.
Thank God for a little water.
Do you remember how the geeky villain named Vizzini in The Princess Bride kept saying everything was inconceivable?
When Inigo spotted another boat catching up with them in the open sea, Vizzini said, “Inconceivable!”
When Westley was catching them as he climbed the rope on the Cliffs of Despair, Vizzini said, “Inconceivable!”
After they cut the rope and Westley continued climbing the cliffs, Vizzini said, “Inconceivable!”
Vizzini kept saying, “Inconceivable,” every other sentence, and every time he said it, the thing he thought was inconceivable happened anyway.
At one point, Inigo said to Vizzini, in that thick Spanish accent, “You keep saying that. I do not think that word means what you think it means.”
I love that line.
Whenever I think of how the Christian life that I live is not really the way a Christian life should be lived, I think of that line.
I’m not sure the word “Christian” means what we think it means.
Today, I’m thinking we live in denial of genuine Christianity most of the time. We keep using these Christian terms to describe stuff that barely, if at all, resembles what should be defined as genuine Christianity.
I’m not really intending to be terribly critical here. It’s just that I’ve been thinking of the aspects of Christianity which seem to be much deeper and more spiritual, even more radical, than anything my life resembles. I wonder if we, or maybe just I, have boiled the biblical Christianity of radical communion with Christ down to a few practical, comprehensive bullet points.
I think that we (or maybe just me) are so concerned about maintaining control in our lives and so afraid of just about everything, that we’ve gradually eliminated the life, the mysterious, the miraculous, the deep spiritual intimacy and passion, from our faith.
Is Christianity the equivalent of brushing my teeth, struggling to eat right, forcing myself to get some exercise, saying a prayer before a meal, maintaining my vehicles, demonstrating good moral values, being prudent with my finances, voting for the right candidate, and hanging on to church-initiated social activities and dead-end bible-study groups?
Inconceivable!
Can you imagine a Christianity that adequately reflects the true calling of an intimate walk with Christ?
I can imagine it. It is conceivable. I’m just having a hard time living it. You?
I’m almost sorry to bring it up, actually. I’m too exhausted from trying to hold my life together to even debate the point of what the word “Christian” means. If we could just skip all of that, and cut to the part about communing with Jesus and knowing him and being compelled by his love, I’d like that.
Today, I’m just hungry for his flesh, and thirsty for his blood; well . . . that is . . . unless that’s too radical.
Sometimes I’m just overwhelmed by the power of the way things are. Just things.
Have you ever seen a butterfly jumping from one blossom to another, drinking the nectar of each using the strange straw-like protrusion growing from the middle of its face? It’s rather amazing, really. Butterflies just do this, apparently, without instruction or training.
What’s the deal with a butterfly, anyway? A hairy little caterpillar decides to build a cocoon and tuck itself away until it grows wings? Yeah, sure. The wings are abounding with the most amazing colors, by the way, and made of some organic material that can’t be duplicated with the best of science.
Someone will say the butterfly’s wings help it move quickly between flowers and hide, as if camouflaged, among the leaves and blossoms.
The thing that nags me about such statements is the way they make it sound like such intricate details were planned by the butterfly itself.
One day, a butterfly said, “I think sucking nectar from flowers would be easier if I grew a straw in the middle of my face.” Then it happened.
Or, maybe it was this scenario: A butterfly, at some time in the prehistoric past had a short, little, stubby nose. Somehow, the butterfly’s DNA realized the short, little, stubby nose wasn’t getting the job done and began experimenting with alternatives, until it accidentally stumbled onto the straw configuration.
Humans have not even come close to creating a machine with the unique capabilities of the human eye, and I have two of them that just happened to grow in my head while I wasn’t able to see anything at all from the darkness of my mother’s womb.
And why do I have two of them? All the better to see you with, my dear: two eyes allow sharper perception.
Have you used those incredible eyes to peer at the stars lately? I understand the ones I can see are a tiny fraction of those that exist in the unfathomable reaches of the universe.
Have you looked closely at a baby’s toes recently? They come pre-wrinkled in all the right spots. How does the skin on those little toe-knuckles know that it will need to be wrinkled to allow for flexibility?
Have you read a book on quantum physics lately? You’d be amazed at the stuff that holds the universe together. It’s really incredible, and we don’t even understand the half of it. The little we do understand is beyond phenomenal and beautiful in the meticulous order of its complexity.
I’m not trying to be dogmatic, or draw any conclusions, really, so don’t get all up in my koolaid about some agenda to gain support for whatever view you want to propagate. I’m just saying . . .
Sometimes you have to just wonder at the way things are. They just are. I’m just saying . . . it’s hard to believe it just happened, even if you give it millions of years of opportunities, but you can’t deny the way things are.
“For we have not followed cunningly devised fables, when we made known unto you the power and coming of our Lord Jesus Christ, but were eyewitnesses of his majesty.” (2 Peter 1:16, KJV)
“That which was from the beginning, which we have heard, which we have seen with our eyes, which we have looked upon, and our hands have handled, of the word of life . . . That which we have seen and heard declare we unto you . . . ” (1 John 1:1,3a, KJV)
Peter and John must have had some experience with the kind of days we experience all too frequently; those days when God is abstract and potentially a figment of our imaginations.
When they wrote these defensive statements, they must have been faced with questions, both from within and without, about whether the experiences they had with a fellow named Jesus so many years before were really all they were cracked up to be.
It wouldn’t have been unimaginable that the stories were exaggerated. Things happened so fast. They were always on the move. Were they remembering real events, experienced personally, or the details of stories told, and possibly embellished, a little, by the other guys in the group?
Was it possible, even remotely, that stories, fables for the sake of personal gain, had been cunningly devised?
Years and years had gone by. All of those promises that seemed so fresh and exciting, all of the possibilities of real change, and maybe even revolutionary change, had faded over time and regular 24-hour days into toil and torture.
They were ostracized and persecuted, but worse: They lived normal lives. They ate, they grew tired, they slept, they had toothaches and rashes, colds and coughs. They were exhausted and confused. Most of their days were just as ho-hum as life on a fishing boat.
It must have been hard to believe that Jesus had been real, even though they had experienced the miraculous, they must have wondered, doubted, agonized.
That’s pretty good justification for us to be dealing with similar thoughts and issues all of these years later, when everything is abstract and seemingly so distant. I haven’t seen many miracles . . . maybe none, depending on how you label them.
Yet, I’m struck by the beauty and simplicity of their defense. For me, the buck stops at these statements. The buck stops at Jesus, and the men and women who talked with him, who touched him, who knew him in a deep and personal way.
I can allow my mind to wander and deny a lot of things about God. I have the capacity to play a decent devil’s advocate. I’d make a convincing atheist, except . . .
It happened. Jesus happened. They touched him. They spoke to him. They were eyewitnesses of his majesty.
The crazy thing is: I know that majesty. Yes, of course, it’s imaginable that it’s a figment of my imagination, but it’s not.
In a different way, and yet similar, I’ve touched him, and been touched by him. You can take away a lot, and my weary days will be happy to let you have most of it, but you can’t take Jesus away. He’s as real to me as my breath, and there are moments I’d let you have that, too, for the sake of keeping him.
I’m glad Peter and John were willing to affirm their hands-on experiences for our sakes. On the days when God seems so distant, I need to be reminded of his touch.
On the Thursday night before Easter, I arrived home after nine o’clock from dress rehearsal at the church for our Good Friday production. Since there was no way to adequately wash the costume-blood from my body at the church, I came home with it, careful not to stop or be stopped to avoid having to explain the fake injuries.
Once I arrived home, though, I was unable, as I entered our crowded kitchen to microwave some sort of dinner, to hide the red streaks on my neck and arms from my children. The smallest of the crew, Ethan and Meghan, were especially curious, and a bit worried for my health, scrunching up their noses and squinting their eyes as they tried to get a better view of my wounds.
I assured them that it was all just pretend and it was not real blood and “Daddy is not hurt; these are not really owies.”
Ethan was not so easily put off, though. He followed me around the house, and at every opportunity, he made a point of turning away in disgust and saying in his 4-year-old, slurry speech, “Daddy, dat’s gwoss.”
He caught me once again as I headed for the bathroom and a hot shower, where I would do my best to wash away my sins, not to mention the weariness and emotional drain of pretending to be Jesus. “Daddy, why do have dat on you? Dat’s gwoss.”
“It’s just pretend, son. Don’t worry. I’m going to take a shower and wash it all off now,” I replied, trying to reassure both of us. He didn’t leave, though. He just stood there with his tiny brain all in an uproar trying to comprehend why I would pretend to bleed. I couldn’t leave it alone, for his sake. Poor kid.
“Daddy’s going to be Jesus on the cross for the play, a show, at the church tomorrow night. Do you know about the story of Jesus dying on the cross? Do you remember that story?”
Ethan’s eyes grew and his face contorted for a second before his head started nodding. “Yep, dere’s a pitcher of dat story in my bible.”
He ran to find the children’s one-year bible with the cover torn-off and the pages falling out. I put him off, saying I would read the story to him after my shower, but before I got out of the bathroom, I could hear Renee’s voice reading the familiar words in the living room.
After I emerged, miraculously healed and washed clean, Ethan showed me the pictures. There it was, right there in color and black and white: those familiar words and that amazing image.
“Why are dey mad at him, Daddy?”
“I don’t know, son. It’s hard to explain.”
We had a good conversation that night – me and Ethan.
I had been wondering all week, as we rehearsed and fought through the dozens of last-minute technical, costume, and prop problems for our little production which seemed to be more a mockery of the crucifixion at times than a representation of it, whether it was all just vanity. Did it have any real value?
After the two live performances were complete, and the production had been pulled together by the herculean efforts of some talented folks, the value became quite clear.
But the night before the clearing, before we had emerged from the fog, Ethan’s inquisitive thoughts and appreciative smile became the tangible value of the cross to me.
Others were likely affected in ways I’ll never know and words can’t express, but what I do know is that, for the next four days, my youngest son wanted to read nothing else but the story of Jesus.
There’s just something about that blood.
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