Question’s
Ever been asked a number of questions that make you stop and think ? We can all get stuck in a routine or set mindset in the way we do things and how we live. Recently I have noticed I am able to stop and think a little broader than I used to. When someone asks me a question as to why I am doing something in a certain way, I can indeed hear, notice and pay attention to it.
Photo by Hennie Stander on Unsplash
Yesterday, a friend gently asked me if I felt I would go to Africa again? Of course, I have every intention of going however it has left me with the thought - why would you think I would not go? Begging the question to myself is that something to take note of? I have been travelling to Uganda and Rwanda since 1997 most years right up until lockdown and then as you know we all adapted and have developed ways of continuing. For us it’s online with regular zoom teaching session amongst the leaders we invest in and the women’s outreaches through local Churches on the ground. This new way is having a great impact beyond our short-term missions trips each year. So, the question is a vital one to be held and looked at I feel.
God can move in very mysterious ways to get our attention. Our ears and eyes have to open to hear and we may not always hear through our personal prayer times. God can speak through conversations, situations, new opportunities opening up and many more ways. I once started an outreach from seeing a printed sign on the back of a lorry – it caught my attention and left an impression that wouldn’t leave me. Our openness to being led by God’s spirit is to be desired as it is right in that place we will find peace and a sense of this works well. That place produces fruitfulness.
It could be time to wake up from our sleepiness of keeping to “this is the way we do it” as God could just be nudging us into some wider spaces with different rhythms. In Acts 16 we can read that the apostle Paul and his friends had their plans changed when the Holy Spirit stopped him preaching in Asia in Acts 16 so we know that even in scripture that the course can change direction at any time. Let’s keep being open to God as much as we can and pay attention, making a note when we hear a great question asked next time; it might just be God speaking in the questions.