I was talking with a friend last night and I was trying to put words into what we were feeling.

I feel like so often in the American Church we have a hard time hearing God. We have so much stuff (possessions, cares, events, relationships, things) that it smothers us and makes it hard for us to hear or see God.

We become so comfortable with the way things are, the status quo, that we don’t dare change the way things are.

But if we could just break free of this, we would see God so much more clearly. God is so revolutionary and so just plain different from what the world is and what the world offers. Seeking God necessitates a break from the status quo and a departure from what may seem comfortable for us.

Even when something is so dark, like the genocide in Rwanda, and it’s so hard to see God in that, God pushes us out of our comfort zone and makes us angry or frustrated or discontent with something, causing us to search after Him, moving closer to His heart and will. Our heart begins to break for what breaks God’s heart. It’s this holy discontent with the way the world is that causes us to draw closer to God. Without the pain we would never seek after Him, seeing no need to in our own imagined self-sufficiency.

In fact, I think it’s often in those incredibly painful and hard moments that we hear God most clearly. When everything is stripped away we find just us and God.

Seize these moments. Treasure and cherish the closeness of God in them. Capture your discontent and use it to chase after the Creator of the Universe who gave it to you.