God Speaks

I've never hung up on a customer before at work. Honestly, I've never really wanted to. I've definitely had awkward and angry conversations that I've wanted to end, but I never thought about actually hanging up on any of them. But today all of that was thrown out the window.  I came within seconds of hanging up on this guy.

He was having a few issues with his account most of which could have been solved if he would manage his finances rather than hope they'd manage themselves.  But tons of our customers are like that and as far as his problems went, I had no issue with helping him. The problem was that he wouldn't shut up.

He would ask a question and then spend the next five minutes talking. Even when I knew what was wrong I couldn't tell him because he wouldn't be quiet long enough for me to get a word in and eventually I just gave up and went into, "uh huh" mode where I just agreed with whatever he was talking about, showing just enough interest to keep him from thinking I was just being sarcastic. It was pretty annoying. On my end, I actually did have other stuff I could have been doing. And on his end, he had problems, and he was talking to the guy who could solve them but he wouldn't shut up long enough to let me answer him.

My prayer life is a lot like this I think. Too often I have a lot of questions for God and I'll ask them and never wait on an answer. I think I've just adopted this belief that God doesn't answer questions directly. I feel like the only way He answers questions is through some mysterious method that I'll never figure out. But God isn't that complicated. And I think if I just shut up a little more often after I ask Him things, He'll answer me.

Why do I think that? Because it happened that way today. I had some good times talking to God this morning. I was pleading with God about changing my heart but I told Him that I didn't know how to do it. So I asked Him what I needed to do to make it happen. Then I went to work and about five minutes after I got there I got a text message from one of my favorite people telling me, "God told me to tell you to do this..." Freakin' blew me away because there's no way she should have known what I was praying about that morning.

God answers prayers. I hope that blows you away as much as it does me. It's humbling to know that when I talk to God, He listens.  The question is, am I going to listen when He speaks?