False.

No.

True.

Yes.

These were the last four words of a New York Times game I play called Connections. The game starts with 16 words, and the challenge is to find four sets of four words that are connected somehow. I usually get the first two sets pretty easily but often struggle with the third. Obviously if you solve the third set, the last set is revealed. So imagine my joy when not only did I get down to the last set, but I actually knew what the connection was!! Look again at the list. Obviously the connection is “Magic 8 Ball answers.” Right?

Nope. These are binary question options. Binary question are closed-ended questions that restrict the possible answers to two distinct, often opposing choices. I obviously spent too much time in my childhood playing Magic 8 Ball.

Do we ever use God like a Magic 8 Ball, shaking him up and turning him over to see what the answer is? Have you ever prayed about something and then flipped your Bible open and demanded the answer be on the page where it falls? Are you guilty of turning God back over again in hopes of getting a new/better/different/more acceptable answer to your problem? I think a lot of us are guilty of this. When a decision or issue confronts us, we turn to me-directed rather than God-directed solutions. I recently had to have a minor surgery that I was not looking forward to. I was sure I didn’t have the time for a two-week recovery. In the meantime, a church member has been actively dying for months now. I reasoned that if I ended up having to do the funeral on or near surgery day, that was God’s way of telling me not to have the surgery. Can you believe such nonsense? By the way, I had the surgery, and the church member is still chugging along. Foolish me! But how easy it is to slip into these kind of negotiations with ourselves.

God desires to have a deep relationship with him where we don’t have to guess about his purpose for our lives. He provides us with the Scriptures for transformation, not random information. He overrides our desire to know outcomes with an invitation to simply trust that he knows the outcome and will be with us

Proverbs 3 (New International Version)

Trust in the Lord with all your heart
    and lean not on your own understanding;
⁶ in all your ways submit to him,
    and he will make your paths straight.

Are you desperately trying to figure something out? Are you negotiating or testing God to skew the answer to your liking? You can trust him to show you the way. When we read Scripture and pray with submissive hearts, God is revealed. Try it and see.

Free Bird by Kathy Schumacher