Always Emily

A few months ago, I was feeling overwhelmed with the amount of things I wanted to do. I had too many projects going and not enough time or energy to do all of them at once.

I kept asking God what He wanted me to focus on:

Show me the next step. Silence.
Help me focus. Silence.
What’s the biggest priority? Silence.
Where do you want me to go next? Silence.
I want to walk in your will, but you won’t show me the way. Silence.
You said You’d be a light unto my feet, please light the way. Silence.

No matter how I phrased the prayer, the response was the same. Silence.

If you’re annoyed with me typing ‘silence,’ then you’re probably getting a taste of how I felt sitting in it.

I prayed these types of prayers for months, to the point where I was getting frustrated and angry at the lack of response.

I was waiting on a specific answer. I wanted God to tell me what project was most important, tell me to focus on Instagram, give me the name of an agent to submit to. I wanted tangible, step-by-step directions, and instead I was getting nothing.

But one thing was evident as I prayed these prayers. He was there. I could feel His presence with me. Not ignoring me, not absent. I wasn’t wondering whether He was listening, I was just waiting for a word.

He was choosing to be silent.

And then the verse 1 Thessalonians 5:16-18 kept showing up in different ways. It reads:
“Rejoice always, pray continually, give thanks in all circumstances; for this is God’s will for you in Christ Jesus.”

What if I was asking God the wrong questions? Or what if the answers didn’t matter like I thought they did?

In his book, God’s Life for My Will, Mike Donehey talks about this verse, and how God’s will for our lives is a way of living. Not a checklist of things to accomplish.

My focus had shifted so heavily to ‘what’ I was producing and doing, but He wanted to tell me ‘how’ to do it. Joyfully. Prayerfully. Thankfully. With Him, not just for Him.

How are you moving through your day-to-day rhythms? Is it as 1 Thessalonians describes? I certainly wasn’t. I was grinding away, trying to do everything at once, thinking that running faster and harder would get me to where I wanted to be quicker. But I felt like I was on a treadmill, doing the absolute most but staying in the exact same place.

God’s redirection from the ‘what’ to the ‘how’ allowed me to slow down. It made me recenter. I wanted to steamroll ahead, but what I needed was to pump the breaks and be intentional with what I already had before me.

Remember, God’s silence is not His absence. He doesn’t leave you, He doesn’t take breaks away or put you on mute. And yet He doesn’t always answer our questions in the way we expect Him to. Actually, I’d say He rarely answers our questions as we expect, but always in the way we need.

Always,

Emily