God's Presence Is The Answer

​A friend shared some good news with me recently. She'd received an answer to a prayer she'd been praying for quite some time. She said, "I never thought I'd get an answer, as it just seemed stagnant."

Boy, that hit me.

It hit me because lately I've realized how often I miss God's presence in my life when I feel like God is showing up without answers.

Translated: I too often reduce God to answers.

If ChatGPT doesn't spit out answers, the presence of ChatGPT in my life has zero value.

But God is not ChatGPT.

When we’re struggling, we tend to turn God into a solution-provider. We ask for clarity, direction, rescue, relief. None of that is wrong. But desperation has a way of narrowing our vision. We start measuring God’s faithfulness by outcomes instead of presence. We ask, “What did God say?” or “What did God fix?” rather than “Is God here?”

This didn't start with us, it's ancient.

Moses doesn’t get a roadmap, he gets “I will be with you.” The disciples don’t get certainty about tomorrow, they get “I am with you always.” Even in moments of agony, the promise isn’t explanation, it’s companionship.

God doesn’t stand at a distance shouting instructions. God steps into the room. But a God without explanations can sometimes be a God we don't feel in the room.

I don't know why that is, for many of us have experienced it. When we are going through a tough time, having someone we love sit next to us makes all the difference. We don't dismiss their presence because they've shown up without a full-proof answer to our tough time.

In parenting, especially the older our kids get, they don't stop calling us when we stop having all the answers, they stop calling when they stop feeling the beauty and peace in our connection.

From the moment we are born, as babies, we long for closeness more than we long for answers. As babies, closeness IS the answer.

But we grow up, and our brains wire to need to know everything, they need to know ALL the answers, and all the while our bodies hold onto - crave - the greatest answer we've ever had.

Being held. Held closely at birth by those who gifted us birth.

I will always believe that God chose birth as the means by which the world would be populated for a reason. Mainly so we'd always know and long for the answer that would always be found in being held.

So that even in moments when God shows up without the answers we are looking for, we'd never stop craving - and noticing - the greatest answer of all - being held by Him.

I have often experienced a God without answers. Sadly, that has too often felt like a God who is not holding me. It is good to be reminded that God has always held us first, and from there flows the answers we seek.

If you feel like you aren't getting the answers you need from God, I encourage you to sit quietly in silence, in prayerful listening, and in the silence feel yourself being deeply held, like a mama holds her baby.

I encourage this because you indeed ARE being held.

From there, I promise you, the answers will come.

God is never stagnant, he's too busy holding us for stagnation to ever enter the picture. Look for God and not the answers, and then, my friends, the answers will come.