How does God respond when we decline opportunities?

[tractor]

How does God respond to us when we decline opportunities that he presents to us? Does he get angry? Does he send us out to “wander in the desert for forty years”? About six months ago, I declined an opportunity to move back to my home state (something I had been hoping for for 20+ years) due to what I felt to be viable reasons at the time. Now I am regretting my decision and fear that I may have turned down an opportunity that God was giving me, and that I may never have such an opportunity again.

 

[Michelle_Arnold]

Even assuming this was an opportunity sent by God that you declined, God respects our free will. If the Blessed Virgin could have turned down the opportunity to be God’s Mother without sin (and she could have), then there is no sin in you declining an opportunity to move home. A priest once told me that God places us in the same situations again and again. If that’s the case, “failures” can be seen as “practice” sessions on the journey toward the situation when we will ultimately “get it right” if we remain faithful to God.