Latest / What We Build From Here / God I Still Have Questions
Transcript
- God I Still Have Questions Visual Episode (4): Life took a turn, but I'm still standing. Didn't see the road, but I'm still planning. Through every season, through every tear, there's still a purpose waiting here. We're moving forward, leaving fear. There's more to the story. We build from here. Real stories, real conversations, faith and purpose beyond the pivot. Welcome to what we build from here with Amanda Johnson. Have you ever started to pray and then stopped because you didn't quite know how to say what you were really thinking? You know what you're supposed to say. You know how to say God, I trust you. But there's another sentence right behind that one. I just don't understand. And maybe you feel a little guilty about that. Because you do believe in God. You are grateful. You can look at your life and recognize things He has brought you through. So then you wonder, why am I still having such a hard time with this part? That is where I want us to sit today. With the part we haven't quite figured out how to say. The question we keep coming back to when we're alone. The prayer we start, get emotional about, and decide we'll finish later. Welcome to What We Build From Here. I'm Amanda. Today we're talking about something simple to say, but sometimes difficult to admit. God, I still have questions. I'm not coming into this conversation with an explanation for everything you've experienced. I don't know why every door closes. I don't know why some answers take longer than we hoped. But I do want us to have room to talk honestly about what it feels like to love God and still be trying to understand what's happening in your life. You don't need a polished answer before we begin. Just come as you are wherever you're listening from. Let's take a breath together. God, thank you for this time. You know what each of us is carrying, even the things we haven't found words for. Help us be honest with you. Help us listen too. Give us wisdom as we talk, and keep us from putting words in your mouth just because uncertainty feels uncomfortable. Let this conversation bring us closer to you. In Jesus' name, amen. I want to start with something we can do almost without noticing. We edit ourselves. Somebody asks how we're doing and we decide how much of the answer they can handle. We say I'm good because we don't have time to explain. Or because we're not sure they really want to know. Sometimes that's just being private. Everybody doesn't need access to every part of your life. But then we can carry that same habit into prayer. We have a real feeling and we clean it up before we bring it to God. We feel disappointed, but we only talk about being thankful. We feel afraid, but we think we should sound confident. We have a question, but we're worried that asking it will make us sound ungrateful. Can we slow down right there? What is the sentence you keep editing? Maybe it sounds like God, I thought things would be different by now or I don't understand why I'm still waiting. Maybe it's even I don't know how to pray about this anymore. Those are different questions. They won't all lead to the same conversation, but they give us an honest place to start. And if we keep replacing them with what sounds better, how do we ever get to what we're actually carrying? Being honest doesn't mean every thought we have is true. It means we can bring the thought to God and ask him to help us understand it. We can say this is how it feels to me right now. Help me see what I may be missing. There is humility in that. We're admitting that we don't have the whole picture, while still acknowledging what hurts in the part we can see. Sometimes we give ourselves a choice that makes it hard to be honest. Either you're thankful or you're disappointed. Either you trust God or you're struggling. But think about an ordinary day. You can be grateful to have a job and still feel disappointed about an opportunity you didn't get. You can appreciate the people who love you and still feel lonely in a particular part of your life. You can recognize progress and wish something were moving faster. One feeling doesn't automatically erase the other. And I think it helps to get specific. Instead of deciding that your entire life is disappointing, can you name the thing you're disappointed about? The conversation that didn't happen, the decision that went another way, the expectation you had but never really said out loud. When we name it, we can talk about it. We can ask whether we need to grieve something or Change something, get more information, or give it time. We might discover we've been upset with ourselves for wanting something that mattered to us. You can care about something deeply and still surrender it to God. Caring is part of why surrender can be difficult. You have hopes attached to it. You've pictured a particular outcome. You may have made plans around that picture. So maybe your prayer begins, thank you for what is good in my life. And please help me with this disappointment because it is real too. That prayer doesn't have to end with you feeling completely different. Sometimes the first change is that you've stopped trying to hide the feeling from God. Let yourself consider that for a moment. There are times when why is the only word we can find? Why did that happen? Why hasn't this changed? Why did I put so much into something that didn't work? And then, if we sit with the question a little longer, we may hear another one underneath it. Did you hear me? Am I on my own in this? How do I move forward when I do? Don't understand. Those questions need care. They aren't all solved by somebody handing us a reason. Imagine telling someone you're overwhelmed, and they immediately explain why you shouldn't be. Their explanation might have some truth in it, but they haven't really stayed with what you said. You still need someone to hear you. Sometimes we do that to ourselves. We rush to explain the feeling before we've even acknowledged it. If you could finish this sentence privately, how would it end? God, what I really want to know is You don't have to share the answer with anybody. And if you don't have the words yet, that's okay. You might write a few down later. You might find that you need to say them slowly, one at a time. For some of us, the question will lead to a practical next step. Asking somebody for help, revisiting a decision, making a phone call we've put off. For others, There may be nothing to solve tonight. You may simply need to acknowledge that you're tired and ask God to meet you there. We don't all have to leave this conversation doing the same thing. Our questions come from different places. What matters is making room for an honest conversation instead of assuming we already know what we're supposed to feel. One reason I want to talk about this is that. Questions aren't absent from the Bible. When you read the Psalms, you find people asking God how long they have to wait. You find grief, confusion, and people reaching for him while they're distressed. We sometimes remember the part where somebody declares their confidence in God and move quickly past the part where they were crying out. But both are there. And in Mark chapter nine, There is a father asking Jesus to help his child. He expresses belief, and he also asks for help with his unbelief. That account gives us something to think about. He didn't wait until he could describe his faith as perfect before he asked for help. I'm not bringing that up to turn your question into a quick lesson. I want you to have something you can read for yourself. Take your time with it. Notice what people actually say, and notice how much of their humanity is still there. Sometimes a familiar passage lands differently when we stop rushing to get a message out of it. We can sit with it. We can ask, God. Help me understand this. We can bring a question to someone who studies scripture carefully and is willing to say when they don't know. That willingness matters to me. I would rather have an honest conversation with somebody who says let's look at that together than a confident explanation they can't really support. We don't have to make the Bible say something convenient. We can let it challenge us. Comfort us and take time to understand what we're reading. You may have tried to talk about a question before and received an answer that left you feeling even more alone. Maybe the person meant well. Maybe they reached for a familiar phrase because they didn't know what else to say. Sometimes people feel responsible for making a difficult conversation end well. They want to leave you encouraged. So they explain something they couldn't possibly know. Or they speak as though they know exactly what God is doing in your situation. That can be a lot to receive when you're already trying to find your footing. If you're the person listening, you don't have to explain somebody's whole life. You can ask, Do you want to tell me more? You can say, I don't know why this happened. I can sit with you. You can offer to pray without turning the prayer into a speech about what they should have done. And if you're the one trying to talk, it is okay to say what would help. I need you to listen for a minute. I'm not ready for advice yet. Can we pray without trying to figure it all out right now? That isn't rejecting support. You're helping the other person understand how to offer it. Of course, they may not respond the way you hoped. You can take that information seriously without deciding that nobody will ever understand. Some conversations need a different person or a different setting. Someone can love you and still lack the patience or understanding this particular conversation requires. Be thoughtful about where you bring the tender parts of your life. You can choose carefully and still remain open to being supported. After you pray, there is still a day to live. You may still have to go to work, pick someone up, finish an assignment, or figure out dinner. The question doesn't always disappear before the next responsibility arrives. What can faith look like there? Maybe it looks like asking for help sooner. Maybe it's taking care of something you've been avoiding because you felt overwhelmed. Maybe it's letting yourself rest instead of staying awake trying to think your way into an answer that isn't available tonight. There is no guarantee that doing the next ordinary thing will make everything clear. But it can help you stay connected to the life in front of you while you're waiting. You can say, God, I still don't understand this situation. Please help me be present for what I need to do today. You can ask Him to guide your decisions without claiming you know what every feeling means. I want to be careful here because sometimes we're tempted to turn every delay, every uncomfortable feeling, or every coincidence into a definite message. You are allowed to slow down. Ask questions. Look at the actual information. Seek wise counsel. You don't have to force a spiritual explanation just to make a decision feel certain. And if something requires practical support, prayer can be part of receiving that support. You can ask God for guidance and accept help from people who have the knowledge you need. Living faithfully through an unanswered question may look quieter than we imagined. It may look like an ordinary Tuesday where we keep talking to God and do what we can with what we know. There is another part of this conversation that deserves some honesty. Sometimes we had an expectation that we attached God's name to, even though we weren't sure it was something He promised us. Maybe we wanted a particular answer so badly that we began treating it as the only answer that could be good. And then, when life didn't match what we pictured, the disappointment became a question about whether God had failed us. That's worth examining gently. It doesn't make the disappointment less real. It gives us a way to ask, where did this expectation come from? What did I actually know? And what was I hoping? We can take responsibility for an assumption without blaming ourselves for everything that happened. We can also recognize that some situations involve choices other people made. We don't have to turn every painful experience into evidence that we prayed incorrectly or missed a hidden instruction. Some questions will remain complicated. That's part of why I don't want to hand you a neat explanation today. I want to leave space for you to seek God honestly, consider what is true, and let go of explanations that are only making you feel ashamed. You may need time with that. You may need a conversation with someone you trust. You may even need to say, I can't sort through all of this at once. That's an honest place to be. Take one question at a time. You aren't required to understand your entire life before you can bring today's concern to God. Before we close, I want to give you a moment. If you're driving or doing something that needs your attention, just listen. You can come back to these questions later. What have you wanted to say to God? But kept changing because you thought it sounded wrong. What kind of support would help you carry that question right now? A listening ear? Time to read and pray? A practical conversation with somebody who can help? And what can you leave unfinished tonight? What question can you acknowledge without making yourself solve it before you rest? You don't have to manufacture a breakthrough in these few minutes. Maybe one honest sentence is enough for today. Something you can bring to God without immediately correcting yourself. You might still feel emotional after you say it. You might feel relieved, or you might feel much the same. An immediate feeling doesn't have to be the measure of whether your prayer mattered. Let the conversation stay open. Make room to listen as well as speak. And when you need support, reach for someone who can handle your questions with care. God, we bring you the things we still don't understand. Some of us have been carrying the same question for a long time. Some of us are only now admitting what we feel. Please help us be honest without losing sight of you. Give us wisdom to recognize what is true, humility to reconsider our assumptions, and people who will walk beside us with care. Help us with what is ours to do today, and help us rest with what is still unfinished. Thank you for hearing us. In Jesus' name, Amen. Thank you for sitting with me in this conversation. I hope you have a little more room to speak honestly with God, even if you haven't found the words for everything yet. If you want to join the conversation, you can share a kind of support that helps when you have questions. You don't have to put your private prayer in the comments. You get to choose what you share. I'm Amanda, and this is what we build from here. Until next time, may God give you wisdom for the next step and peace as you keep walking with Him. We've turned some pages, we've weathered the rain, found a little purpose in the middle of the pain. The road keeps changing, but one thing is clear: the story isn't over. There's more to build for. There's more to build from Build from here. And that's where we'll leave it for today. Remember, you may not have chosen the chapter you're in, but you still have a say in what you build from here. Until next time, keep your faith, give yourself grace, and don't be afraid to turn the page. I'm Amanda Johnson, and this is what we build from here. We build some here.