We've all counselled people: mate, that was a bad decision, what were you thinking? I wasn't, I just wasn't. I know, I won't go there [laughs] I just wasn't thinking clearly, and a lot of guys just don't think clearly. There'll be people here today, just not thinking clearly; because what you're doing, instead of trusting God, and building into your life the path, and the journey with God, to get you where you're supposed to go, you just want to take the shortcut and get a quick answer. It doesn't work that way, so what can I do? What can I do, if God does not seem to be answering? How many in that place, you need an answer from God for something in your life right now? One or two, actually I'd say a lot of people are needing an answer from God, and sometimes He's real quick to give it, sometimes there's a bit of a delay, sometimes it's a long time.
So I want to share with you, what you can do, in the time when God is silent. I can assure you this: He will not stay silent forever. He will speak on it, even if it's not right now; and one of the things I've found frustrating is, the one thing I want Him to answer, and He's not saying anything; but He's talking about a lot of other things, the trivia [laughs] the little things in your life, the little things in relationships. He's talking about what seems to be trivia, and you've got one big main elephant sitting there, waiting to be dealt with; and it's like He's just pretending it isn't there. You know that situation? We have that, and it happens like that; so you've got to learn how to handle that, and to deal with it, otherwise you get overwhelmed. So since it's easy for us to be overwhelmed with painful emotions and feelings over that and so on, we need actually to deal with it, so here we go.
If you've got some important decision, some important thing, God's not talking; or you've got some painful thing. and God's not helping in some kind of way; it's very easy to become disappointed, so here's some things you can do. Now these are not just: hey, here's a one, two, three, four, do this, and it guarantees. Here's the first thing you've got to realise is: you can't make God to anything, you just can't. He is in control, not you. You can't make Him do anything, so this is where a lot of Christians get really disappointed. They think: well, if I just praise loud enough, then He'll do it. If I just read my Bible enough, He'll do it - and He doesn't do it. I'll pray in tongues for an hour a day, and He still doesn't do it; so you start to get into this scheming thing: how I can make God give me what I want. Until you've come to the end of all of that, you're not going to get anything. It's like He refuses to be pressured that way. I hate that when it's like that, because I've tried everything at times, then you end up just crying, then you get angry, and then you get sulky, and then you withdraw and don't pray. Then you stop reading your Bible, then you get back up again, because you've still got to get an answer; and you get connected again and start again, all over the same thing. How many know what I'm talking about? We've all had that, all been down that route. Tell someone, you know what that's about don't you? You've been there.[Laughs]
Okay then, so what could we do? What are some things that we can do? Here's a few things. The first thing you can do is, I found always: strengthen yourself in the Lord. Focus on strengthening your life with God, because negative emotions and fears or issues can surface very quickly. 1 Samuel 30:6, David was facing a major crisis, of everything gone wrong for him, and the Bible says when everyone else panicked, and become afraid, and began to blame and wanted to kill him, he strengthened himself in the Lord. So what would you do to strengthen yourself in the Lord? You need to just face, and let the emotions come out, that you've got going on there; because when you've got a lot of emotions stewing around inside, you can't build in your spirit on top of that. You've got to be honest about the feelings and struggles, pour them out before the Lord. What else you can do, start to remind yourself or remember the victories you've had in the past, where God answered you. Remember them, go back over them, how God came through for you; so you remember the track of the victories you've had. These are some simple things you can do. Meditate on the faithfulness of God. Go and take pictures of people in the Bible, and read about the crises they were in, and how God came through; and meditate on it. In other words, do some work establishing and strengthening your trust; because if you lose trust, and stop trusting God, that's when things start to really fall apart.