My faith background never taught me that God would lead in explicitly specific ways; it always seemed safer to assume that he answered prayers in broad strokes. This kind of passive theology made it easy to excuse God when he didn’t seem to answer prayers as I wanted him to. But a few months ago God brought me into a season in which I longed to know God’s leading, to feel his very heartbeat and hear his voice clearly. I began praying very specifically and God began to answer very specifically. My heart was humbled before a real and powerful God who heard and tangibly answered the requests of his children.

It was in this state of spiritual richness that I went on a “vision” trip to Athens for spring break. But I unexpectedly found myself immersed in a wretched loneliness; I was staying by myself in a squalid apartment in the Athenian ghetto and was subject to an involuntary solitude. As I faced God in the painful silence I reminded him of all the ways he’d been answering my prayers and then I began to ask some hard questions regarding the future, imploring that the Lord directly tell me what he has for me. But there was no voice from heaven, no parting of the clouds, not even a neon sign. I grew frustrated and gave up asking. I left Athens with a feeling of spiritual disappointment; the direct answer that I knew God was capable of just hadn’t come when I cried out for it.

Since I’ve been back, I have wrestled with God’s lack of clarity, wondering why the same God that spoke to the Patriarchs, the Apostles, and to his Bride throughout history, hasn’t just told me what he wants me to do. I have been rejoined time and time again to the fact that God will lead me in his time and will show me how to obey him as I seek him with all my heart.

So that’s where I’m at. Waiting. If I truly believe that my life is Christ’s then why would I do anything else but trust him and delight in his timing? I will press into the Lord with expectancy and fervency, no longer making excuses for broad answers or giving up when my patience runs out. In this waiting there is a glorious rejoicing and anticipation, for I have realized that I would rather wait on the Lord and seek him daily than do anything else. Truly I can say to the Lord, “Whom have I in heaven but you? And the earth holds nothing that I desire besides you!” (Psalm 73:25).