The 4 Questions God Asks Us

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We so often come to God asking questions, looking for answers. And that’s a smart thing to do. He has them. We need his answers, his strategies, his perspective. A heavenly paradigm shift from God changes everything.

But what about when God comes to us for answers? What?!? God knows everything!  Yes, he does. But he values conversation, relationship, and partnership with us so much that he doesn’t just tell us how it is. He asks us questions so we arrive at the answers together with him.

Look at Job

You know the story of Job. When Job lost everything and got a bit angry and uppity with God, Job’s three friends showed up. They didn’t ask him any questions. They didn’t try to understand. They just told him how it was: All the suffering in your life is punishment for something, Job. C’mon, dude, come clean. We knew your success was a scam all along. Now it’s catching up with you!

And they were completely wrong. Totally wrong. They knew nothing about the character of God like Job did.

But when God shows up and speaks to Job out of the whirlwind, God does something really strange. Really counter-intuitive. God, the one person who could tell Job how it is, doesn’t. Instead, he asks Job questions.

“I will question you, and you will answer me.” – God to Job (Job 38:3b)

Now in the questions to Job, since Job had gotten a bit snarky, God gets a bit snarky back. God meets us with what we bring to him.

But the point of this post is that God likes to ask us questions. He cherishes the dialog with us. God wants to not only talk to you, but converse with you.

In particular, there are 4 specific questions God asks us. Reflecting through these 4 questions on a regular basis, at least once a quarter, is a powerful practice. This can help you partner with God to transition into your next season.

Question 1: Where are you?

This is the first recorded question God asks in the Bible. He asked it of Adam and Eve after they ate the forbidden fruit and were hiding from God. God knew where they were. But he wanted conversation with them about what happened.

This is a great question to ask ourselves. Where am I in my life right now? We often don’t stop to even think about it. We’re just wrapped up in all the busy doing.

But stop a minute and give this a thought. Where are you?

Question 2: Do you want to be healed?

Jesus asked this question to the paralytic at the pool of Bethesda (John 5:6). I have a post all about this question here.

Now that you answered Question 1 and know where you are, what do you want Jesus to heal? Stopping a moment and naming what we want God to do in our lives is a powerful practice.

In this partnership with God, it’s important to get clear about what we need God to do, what we can’t do ourselves. What do you need God to fix?

Answering this question is powerful because it:

  1. Names the problem.
  2. Acknowledges that we need God to fix it.

Another way of asking this question is the way Jesus asked Blind Bartimaeus: “What do you want me to do for you?” (Mark 10:51) What do you want Jesus to do in your life?

What do you want Jesus to heal?

Question 3: What do you want?

Wait a minute. I’m allowed to have a want? Yes, you’re allowed to have a want.

Jesus asked this question of two disciples who started following him. Presumably Andrew and Philip, they had formerly followed John the Baptist. Jesus sees them following him, turns and asks them, “What do you want?” (John 1:38)

So often in the church, we’re taught self-sacrifice, laying aside what we want, dying to self. That’s a Christian thing, and it’s good as long as it stays in the proper balance.

Too often though, leaders building their own empires, rather than God’s Kingdom, exploit Christ’s teaching of self-sacrifice. Women, especially, are often treated like second-class citizens.

Even if it was never spoken, have you absorbed the lie that the role of a good Christian is to keep everyone else happy? And have you blended into the background of your own life in order to do that? Have you lost yourself?

Now, please don’t get me wrong. Christianity is certainly not about hedonism, self-centeredness, our pursuing our own agenda at the expense of everyone else around us. The desires from our unredeemed heart are self-destructive, eventually, and don’t please God.

But the desires of our redeemed heart were put there by God. The thing that makes your heart leap, what you’re passionate about, God put that there. It’s connected to the calling on your life.

What do you want?

Question 4: What’s in your hand?

God asked Moses this question at the burning bush (Exodus 4:2).

God was calling Moses to do something bigger than Moses – deliver Israel from Egypt. God was giving Moses Heaven’s strategy for pulling this off. Moses had a shepherd’s staff in his hand, and God showed him how to turn it into a snake and back.

God may not be calling you to lead an oppressed people group across international borders, but God’s calling on your life is bigger than you. That’s why it requires partnership with God.

And Heaven’s strategy for pulling it off starts with what’s already in your hand. What are you already doing? Ask the Holy Spirit for Heaven’s strategy to leverage what you’re already doing as the next right step into your calling.

What’s in your hand?

A Great Conversation Starter with God

Reflecting on these 4 questions is such a powerful conversation starter with God, I’ve put them on a one-page worksheet you can download free and use again and again.

Do it often; at least once a quarter. After you’ve answered all 4 questions, go back and look at your previous answers (from last quarter, or even last year), and see how much you’ve grown, how far you’ve come.

Your Turn

Does this resonate? Did these questions reveal something you didn’t expect? Tell us your story in the comments. And please share this post with everyone it will bless.

A Practical Example: How I Partner with God

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Here is an example of how I partner with God in a simple, everyday thing. It’s not anything earth-shattering or heavy-revy. But it’s making a huge difference in my life. And there’s a big takeaway here that I pray you find useful in your own life.

How I Partner with God for My Daily Wakeup Time

So I used to set my morning alarm at 4:45 AM (Monday through Friday). Here was my typical daily routine:

  • 4:45 AM: Alarm goes off, get up & go to the gym.
  • 5:45 AM: Leave gym, come home, shower, get breakfast & coffee.
  • 6:30 AM: Leave for work.
  • 7:30 AM – 5:00 PM: At work for 9.5 hours (8 hour work day).
  • 12:00 PM – 1:30 PM: Work on website during 1.5 hour lunch break.
  • 5:00 PM – 6:00 PM: Commute home.
  • After 6:00 PM: Dinner and spend the evening with Janet.

I did this for a long time, and it was fine. But usually that alarm going off at 4:45 was not a friendly sound, even though my phone’s alarm is a song I like. Sometimes I’d be ready to get up, but sometimes I’d be in a deep sleep and wake up groggy. Almost always, I’d wish I’d slept longer, but duty calls, so up we go.

Then I revamped my “official” daily schedule to this:

  • 6:45 AM: Drop-dead alarm time, shower, get breakfast & coffee.
  • 7:30 AM: Leave for work.
  • 8:30 AM – 5:00 PM: At work for 8.5 hours (8 hour work day).
  • 12:00 PM – 12:30 PM: Work on website during half-hour lunch break.
  • 5:00 PM – 6:00 PM: Commute home.
  • After 6:00 PM: Dinner and spend the evening with Janet.

I still set a “drop-dead” alarm time, so I’m not late for work. In the last 6 months since I’ve been doing this, that drop-dead alarm has gone off maybe twice.

Before going to bed, I pray, “Lord, wake me up when you know I need to get up to live the day you have planned for me tomorrow. Thank you in advance for giving my body all the sleep it needs.”

Then I wake up naturally, when my body is done sleeping. I believe that’s God keeping his side of the bargain. So my partnership with God is, “Any time after 4:00 AM that I wake up, I’ll believe that’s You, and I’ll get up.”

So How Has This Been Working for Me?

There are days when I wake up at 5:00 AM naturally, versus waking up at 4:45 AM to the alarm. And I feel so much better! I’m not groggy. I feel refreshed and rejuvenated.

And there are many ways to make-up that 15 minutes. Some days, God knows the commute will be shorter because traffic is better. Or I take 1.25 hours instead of 1.5 hours for our website at lunch. Or I leave work at 5:15 instead of 5:00. That 15 minutes really doesn’t make much of a difference to our evening.

But most of the time, I wake up before 4:45 AM! Often I wake up at 4:15 or 4:30. That gives me time to have a short devotion time with the Lord, still get to the gym, and often I get more than 1.5 hours website time at lunch, because I’m getting to work before 7:30.

And I wake up feeling great because my body got all the sleep it needed. If my body needs more sleep, it can have it. I can either skip the gym or have less website time that day. I’m still getting to the gym at least 3 times a week, and I’m getting more website time over the week than I did before.

It doesn’t make sense on paper, but partnering with God just works. So many days I’ve gotten more sleep at no cost, because traffic was lighter that day. So many times I’ve had extra website time, and needed, to the minute, exactly that much time to accomplish that day’s important website task.

The Big Takeaway: If God Doesn’t Come Through, It Doesn’t Work

But here’s the thing. A half-hour a day is not enough time to work on our website. That is not enough time to be successful. So if I wake up to my drop-dead alarm on a regular basis, our website fails.

Also, in order to stay healthy, I need to go to the gym at least 3 times a week. If I wake up to my drop-dead alarm, there’s no time for that.

So if God doesn’t come through, it doesn’t work, which is really risky. And scary. I’m risking our website. I’m risking my health.

But God does come through for me, over and over again. Every. Single. Morning.

I had to give up control. I gave up my schedule, where every day is the same & I guaranteed each activity has the time it needs. But, truth be told, that schedule was killing me, running me into the ground. I couldn’t maintain it.

Partnering with God is worth it. But you’ve got to set it up so it doesn’t work if God doesn’t come through.

Your Turn – Experiment!

This post isn’t about not setting an alarm. It won’t work for everyone, and that’s ok.

This post is about partnering with God in a practical way that matters, and setting it up so that if God doesn’t come through, it doesn’t work; something fails. And that will look different for every person. That will look different for you than it does for me.

You can still have a safety net, like I have with my drop-dead alarm. That’s not a lack of faith, that’s just being responsible. But I trust God that he will come through, and I’ll hardly ever need it. And that’s been my experience.

So experiment! What practical thing can you partner with God for? How can you set it up so that if God doesn’t come through, it doesn’t work? What practical thing does God want to partner with you for? Ask him! And then act on your next thought.

Let me know what you do and how it works; email me at dave@IdentityInWholeness.com.

So what are you going to try? Or have you done something like this before? Tell us in the comments. And please share this post if it would bless others.

How to Move from Either/Or to Both/And

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Sometimes we get in our own way, and limit what God wants to do in our lives by either/or thinking. But making the paradigm shift to both/and thinking is often the most powerful enabling shift we can make.

That changes everything.

A Real-Life Example

In one of my recent webinars about hearing God, a participant shared this (true) story:

There was a Christian school trying to hear God to discern if they should move to another city or if they should stay put. This is a big decision and one that can’t be undone once you’ve carried it out. Once you’ve moved, you obviously can’t move back to the old city; that’s just financially and logistically not possible. So they had to get this right.

The director shared all the reasons for both sides, and asked all 18 staff to fast and spend focused time in prayer about this issue. They prayed for unity around God’s will for the school.

You can probably guess what happened. 9 staff came back feeling certain God wanted them to move. And 9 staff came back feeling certain God wanted them to stay. Snap! What do you do with that?

These are the real-life tough questions. On the webinar, I didn’t have any easy answers. We like to reduce everything to formulas and frameworks. And while those can be helpful and instructive, life likes to throw us exceptions.

Time for a Paradigm Shift

So, well snap, whatever the answer was, half the staff missed what God was saying.

Or did they?

Since that webinar, I’ve spent a lot of time thinking about this. What if God’s answer to the school wasn’t either/or? What if God’s vision for the school was both/and?

What if God’s answer to, “Should we stay or should we go?” was “Yes!”??? What if God was saying keep the original campus in the old city and open up a new one in the new city?

And what if the Lord separated the staff for the Director, clearly indicating who was to stay and who was to go, by the response they brought back?

Looking at the staff responses as a both/and, rather than an either/or, it suddenly gets a lot less confusing!

How to Move into a New Paradigm

But we can’t open a new campus! We’re barely keeping our heads above water operating the one campus we have now!

The trick in moving into a new paradigm is not talking ourselves out of it before we’ve given it a fair chance. And the way we do that is by making an enabling decision: Suspend disbelief (at least for the moment).

Your Enabling Decision: Suspend Disbelief

Suspending disbelief doesn’t mean taking our rational brain off-line and living in a fantasy. To the contrary, it means letting our rational brain work out, with the Holy Spirit’s help, what this idea would look like. It means not dismissing the idea out-of-hand.

Suspending disbelief leaves that scary idea on the table. It asks the key question: What would have to be true in order for this to actually work?

Key Question: What would have to be true in order for this to work?

So suppose God’s vision for this school was to open a new campus. What would have to be true in order for this to work?

We would have to divide up the existing staff – who stays and who goes. But, if this is God’s vision for the school, he already did that by their responses. The staff who clearly heard God clearly saying to stay is supposed to stay. And the staff who clearly heard God saying to move is supposed to move. That would’ve been a major problem, but God already sorted it out.

So back to the key question: If these 9 staff are going to move and launch a new campus, what has to be true? What skills do they have? What skills do they need to hire (or develop)?

Same question for those that stay. What has to be true for the existing campus to succeed with half its staff? What would have to change?

The Power of Both/And

Do you see how a both/and solution is a powerful paradigm shift?

It can also be scary. Some things are rightfully scary because they’re stupid. But other things are scary because they’re bigger than we can imagine. Or control. Or wrap our brains around. And sometimes it’s really hard to tell the difference.

It’s ok to say to God, “If this is you, this is what I need.” And see if he provides it.

It’s ok for the Director to say, “Ok, God, if you want us to have 2 campuses, I need you to double our support base.” Then pitch the idea to the school’s donors and see what happens.

God often (ok, usually) calls us to something bigger than ourselves. It’s ok to say, “Ok God, if you want me to do that, then I need this from you.” And see if God provides.

God may meet the need sovereignly. Or he may drop a strategy in our spirits for meeting that need. And we get to see if it works. I know by experience God loves to partner with his people in this way!

It’s all over the Bible. God did this for Gideon with the fleece (Judges 6:36-40).

And God did it for Moses by sending Aaron along to speak for him (Exodus 4:14-16). And the interesting thing is, God did this for Moses even though God knew Moses didn’t really need Aaron. It’s a fascinating story. As you read it, you watch Moses gradually grow into the leader God knew he was all along, talking to Pharaoh directly.

God is not afraid of your doubts, misgivings, or questions. He will meet you in them.

What Needs to Be True?

Does this resonate? Are you trying to decide between two mutually exclusive choices? What if your choices weren’t mutually exclusive?

Yes, some choices certainly are. You can’t marry two people or be in two places at once. But sometimes we artificially limit ourselves, and what God wants to do, because of either/or thinking.

How would considering the both/and option change the game?

Tell us your thoughts & share your story in the comments. Your input helps our whole community. And please share this post if it would bless others.

How to Hear God Better by Showing Up Differently

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Many of us have trouble hearing God because we’re showing up wrong. We’ve got the wrong paradigm, and it’s interfering with (1) how well we hear God, and (2) our intimacy with him in general.

Because we’re showing up to the wrong meeting.

Too often, we show up trying to hear God like it’s a job interview, when it’s really a staff meeting.

There’s nothing wrong with the way we show up for job interviews. There’s a knack to interviewing well. After all, you’re totally being judged. You’re being evaluated. Your potential employer is making a yes-or-no hiring decision about you based on this first-impression. You want to put your best foot forward. You want the job.

The problem is, we show up in trying to hear God like it’s a job interview. But it’s not a job interview. It’s a staff meeting.

Think about it. How do you show up differently for a job interview than for a staff meeting?

[Note: I’m taking for granted we’re talking about a staff meeting at a healthy company, not a toxic work environment. We all have horror stories – that’s not what we’re talking about here. Think ideal staff meeting at a healthy company.]

Here are 6 tangible ways we hear God better by showing up like a staff meeting instead of a job interview.

(1) Nervous vs Comfortable and Safe

At a job interview, we’re nervous. And rightfully so – we’re being judged and evaluated. People who interview well channel that nervousness into focused enthusiasm. You’re carefully curating everything you say. That’s not easy, and it’s emotionally exhausting. You can’t keep it up for long.

But at a staff meeting, we feel safe. We’re not being judged. We’re in that place of already being accepted. We don’t have to fight for it or prove we belong.

Do we feel nervous coming into God’s presence, or do we feel comfortable and safe?

(2) Foreign Environment vs At Home & Familiar

In a job interview, we are on their turf, usually a place we’ve never been before. It’s a foreign environment. We’re trying to simultaneously take it all in and not be distracted by it.

But in a staff meeting, we’ve been here before. We’re familiar with this place. It’s a second home.

Does God’s presence feel foreign or familiar?

(3) Escorted & Watched vs Trusted Access

As a job interviewee, we sit in the lobby, sweating bullets. Eventually, the receptionist escorts us to the office or conference room where the interview will take place. Afterward, the interviewer escorts us back out to the lobby and makes sure we leave. We’re never left to wander the halls alone.

But in a staff meeting, we work there. We have trusted access. We can come and go as we please.

Do we show up with God like we’re being watched, or like we have trusted access into his presence?

(4) Goal to Impress vs Goal to Connect

In a job interview, our goal is to impress the interviewer and get the job. Period. Hands down. Everyone knows, the interviewer and the interviewee, that the goal is to impress.

But in a staff meeting, our goal is to connect with our employer and our fellow employees.

Do we show up trying to hear God by trying to impress him, or by trying to connect with his heart?

(5) Hiding Problems vs Solving Problems

Along those lines, we hide and minimize problems in a job interview. If there are problems or issues on our resume or in our job experience, we don’t call attention to them. That’s not going to help us get the job.

But at a staff meeting, it’s not about getting the job. It’s about doing the work. So we raise problems, we highlight them, because they’re interfering with the work. We bring up problems so we, as a group, can solve them.

In our time with God, do we hide or minimize our sin, or do we bring it up? Do we talk it out with him in order to solve it?

(6) Displaying Credentials vs Getting Help

In a job interview, we are displaying our credentials. We’ve written them down in a resume. And we plan to highlight the areas where we really shine and how qualified we are for the position.

But in a staff meeting, we raise our short-comings. We get help.

In engineering companies like mine, we call them “blockers” – things are interfering with getting our job done. It’s management’s job to remove the blockers so we can do our job. But they can only do that if we tell them the blocker is there.

It’s perfectly ok to go to God and say, “If I’m going to do what I hear you calling me to do, I need ____.” Fill in the blank. Maybe it’s provision. Maybe it’s restoration of a relationship. Maybe it’s healing (physical or emotional or both).

Do we spend our time with God displaying our credentials, how self-sufficient we are? Or do we bring the “blockers” to him and ask for help?

“Relax! You Got the Job, Already!”

Can you imagine how frustrating it would be for an employer if, at every single staff meeting, an employee was trying to prove they deserved their place in the company? Hiding where they need help and just constantly broadcasting how well-qualified they are? All that would reveal is that employee’s insecurity in their position.

Are we insecure in our position in the Kingdom?

What if God is trying to tell you, “Relax, you got the job already! Be secure in your position my son bought for you on the cross. Stop trying to win the job you already have, and let’s get down to doing the work of my Kingdom!”

How would our conversations with God change if we showed up for Kingdom staff meetings, instead of a constant job interview, insecure in our position & trying to prove ourselves? How would we show up differently if we were secure in our position, versus constantly fearful about getting fired (or not even hired in the first place)?

Your Turn

Does this resonate? Does it make you think about your time with God differently? Do you see ways you can change your thinking to show up for God in a Kingdom staff meeting, instead of a job interview? Tell us your thoughts in the comments; your story will help us all grow. And please share this post if it would bless others.