Hearing God's Voice and Walking There

Been thinking a bit about hearing God's voice after listening to the most recent God Journey podcast. Brad and Wayne were chatting about how learning to hear God's voice and follow where he's leading is a process, like everything else, and about how there is room to get it wrong - because we certainly will get it wrong. It was a timely message for me and it gave me a bit of psychic breathing space.

I got thinking that we will probably get it wrong when we want something really badly. Pondering the strangeness of the whole experience with RTNW Man, I am left thinking that what I really, really, really, seriously thought was God's voice encouraging me to "Walk here" - well, perhaps it was really only the desires of my own heart speaking. Very. Loudly. Indeed.

But then again, perhaps it was God saying, "Walk here", but then I stuffed it up. That is another possibility, after all, do you not think? What I do regret about the whole situation was that I was so convinced of the rightness of the potentiality of this thing that I probably scared the poor guy quite a bit. I feel sad about that. I feel a bit disturbed about what this says about this part of my personality. And that leads me onto hoping that this is an area of me that is healing. My ego feels discombobulated about the whole situation. How horrid and terribly embarrassing to foist yourself on someone, how controlling - regardless of how good something is. It distresses me, because generally I am a person who really values giving others freedom. But here, I think that maybe I fell down. Because I wanted it too much. And I think I made him an object in the process.

It was like I saw this vision of what could be and then just ran with it. But still - I'm mindful of not being too hard on myself. It was a weird situation for me, beginning so dreamily and then dying, and me taking months to catch up to the reality that he couldn't do this (and neither could I; but I so wanted to, I could probably have warmed up once the ride started. It's how many a love affair starts after all, and anyway - if you wait to be entirely ready for something, you won't hardly do anything, right?) It's terrible to be left on the sidelines for months on end while your desirable Romance You Hope To Have is busy trying to get his life back on track and can't give you the answers you need because he just isn't in an emotional or mental position to be able to do that, even though he wants to be (or wanted to be, anyway). That kinda stuff does my head in. Oh, my, how that did my head in. I didn't realise I had such potentiality for paranoia, but I guess when so many of your yerk buttons are being pushed, you will tend towards the paranoid spectrum, the doubting yourself spectrum. I doubted myself so much and was so wrapped up in my own fears, I could barely focus on his.

So this feeling of intense vulnerability, of feeling like a fool, is why I've never put myself in this situation before and I sure as hell am Never. Please. God. Going. To. Do. It. Again. I don't think doing that when you are already as vulnerable as a raw onion core is good timing. But I went there, because I thought it was a God thing.

So questions for you peeps: do you think that sometimes God tells us to "go here", and it fails miserably, and you wish you hadn't gone there, and you begin wondering if it really was God saying that (even though it was such a strong tug in your spirit at the time) - do you think that sometimes God asks us to go places that we can't for the life of us see why? I do. It reminds me of the way Sarayu (the Holy Spirit in The Shack) describes the messy life we see here as a fractal when seen from the God perspective. I kinda think we don't have no idea how s/he is gonna tie everything together.

Anyway, all of that to say, I'm not interested in writing every post for the next month about the RTNW Man. My ego certainly doesn't want me to. But I just can't deny that he had a really big impact on me. I have never felt that way about anyone before. It was a rather painful experience. But putting on my Philosopher's Hat, I think I'll get a lot of learning mileage out of this. This sort of experience is good moulding clay for God. S/he finds it easier to remould those deep parts of us when they're a bit exposed and we're a bit aware of them and a bit ouchly feeling them. Dontcha think? S/he does good work, I'll say that much. And this area, the one to do with relationships, with identity issues passed down from parents - all that stuff which is all so tied up together - is one in which I keep returning to lately. I hope God is working. Because as much as I don't want to admit it, I think I need His/Her touch here.

This post is a bit scary to put out there. I didn't realise I was going to write it. I seem unable to write anything at the moment which isn't laying myself on the line. Empowering, yes. Scary, yes. Good blog post material - I'm not sure. It definitely is cheap therapy, I know that much - but sometimes it just feels so goddamned self-indulgent, you know? I apologise if that's the case :)