Seeking Someone to Devour

  • Thread starter Thread starter Nap66
  • Start date Start date
Status
Not open for further replies.
N

Nap66

Guest
Peter said “Be sober, be watchful! For your adversary the devil, as a roaring lion, goes about seeking someone to devour.”

I often wonder why God doesn’t do the same? Why doesn’t God roam about seeking someone to devour with goodness? Seriously. Satan seems much more active and bolder here on earth than God. Many people, including myself, continually ask God to use me as he will for his glory on earth but are met with silence. Nothing, no response from God. Imagine if I said the same to satan, there would be a response I can assure you.

Now I’m sure all the responses will be “free will!” But our free will doesn’t mean that God can’t use certain people who asked to be used by him. He could if he wanted to, but I don’t think God goes around the earth looking to use people for good. It just seems God sits back and says “nah, not interested in using you, there must be someone better than you, or if not, then we’ll just let things go as they are.” Whereas satan and demons would jump all over the chance to use someone, anyone who asks.
 
Are you for real? I’m sorry, but I can’t help being a bit exasperated by this. What about the countless saints we honor on the Church calendar? I’m thinking in particular of ones like Joan of Arc and Mother Teresa whom God used to do nothing short of changing the world. What about Abraham and Moses and the prophets? Have you ever been to World Youth Day, or a Teens Encounter Christ retreat?

God is most certainly looking for people who are open to being used to do God’s work in the world. And when He finds them, He most certainly uses them successfully.
 
Nap66 said:
Many people, including myself, continually ask God to use me as he will for his glory on earth but are met with silence.
Click to expand...
Maybe the “continual” asking is part of the problem. We have to be quiet and listen for His response. And it can take some time to learn to recognize His voice.
 
Nap66 said:
Why doesn’t God roam about seeking someone to devour with goodness?
Click to expand...
As others have asked, I think he does.
Nap66 said:
Many people, including myself, continually ask God to use me as he will for his glory on earth but are met with silence. Nothing, no response from God.
Click to expand...
God always gives you a response, it’s just some of us aren’t willing to hear it. Every time we ask He responds by saying, YES, NOT YET, or I HAVE A BETTER PLAN.

As @angel12 stated sometimes we need to listen to His response.

To expand on this sometimes we have to listen to the response He is giving us and not just listening FOR the response we want to hear.

Let me give an example from my own life. I work long hours at my office caring for patients all day long and listening to their aches and pains and trying my best to help them. At the end of my day I just want to go home and spend some time ALONE working on my farm. I raise some animals for food for my family and through the years started to get an extra animal (when I could afford it) and raise that animal for donation to our local St. Vincent DePaul. I so much enjoy doing this and feel like I am doing God’s work by feeding the poor. I have often prayed to God to help me find the resources to do this on a large scale and really make a difference in this world. I would pray over and over, for years, for guidance and could hear nothing but chirping crickets. Yep total silence. As time went on, and I’m still praying for how I want to serve God, my in-laws aren’t doing was well as they should and I have to totally gut and remodel an old house on our farm to make it handicap accessible for them. Took a year of late nights and a ton of money to get that completed. To this day I have no clue how I was able to manage my money to come up with the money to remodel the house. Moved them in three years ago and my father got really sick. So I needed to start taking car of my parents house as well. I make sure and go to check on them 3 to 4 days a week. I have to take dad to all of his doctor appointments, cut his hair, go shopping for the things he normally did that mom didn’t, etc… Father in-law passed last year so now I spend more time checking on the house now that he isn’t around.

Anyway, my point is sometimes God has a better plan. Believe me taking care of parents isn’t my first choice in how I want God to use me. I already take care of people all day long, why would I want to do it in my free time as well. But sometimes we need to be open (to what He wants, not what we want) and just go were He wants us to go.

Not saying you aren’t being open. Just saying maybe he is showing you opportunity, it’s just not your first choice so you aren’t seeing it.

God Bless
 
Nap66 said:
Many people, including myself,
continually ask God to use me - as he will
for his glory
on earth
but are met with silence.
Click to expand...
Maybe you’re not worthy, right now, in your present mindset ?
 
Seagull said:
Maybe you’re not worthy, right now, in your present mindset ?
Click to expand...
Most likely. But none of us are ever worthy, ever. That’s the thing that I philosophically think about. See, the evil one is willing to take anyone open, worthy or not, yet God needs you to be worthy. And that is why there is so much evil in the world. God passes on people willing whereas the other one does not. Just my view.
 
MT1926 said:
Not saying you aren’t being open. Just saying maybe he is showing you opportunity, it’s just not your first choice so you aren’t seeing it.
Click to expand...
Probably. Like you I’ve taken care of my severly disabled mother for 25 years. Can this be all God wants me to do? Probably. But I do have lots of other time to do other things. I can mutitask! I guess I’m doing what he wants me to do.
 
Nap66 said:
Can this be all God wants me to do?
Click to expand...
It’s entirely possible that this is what He wants you to concentrate on right now. Taking care of others can help both us, and the person being cared for, grow in holiness.
 
angel12 said:
Taking care of others can help both us, and the person being cared for, grow in holiness.
Click to expand...
LOL! I’m not laughing at you angel12, you give good advice. I’m laughing at my situation because the person I’m caring for (my mother) is the meanest, ungrateful, unholiest person I have ever met. Seriously. Sometimes I see the devil in her and it comes out quite frequently. Nothing has changed in her for 25 years, and her entire life actually. She’ll die miserable and I wouldn’t be surprised if she takes the elevator downward.

So I guess it is just me that God needs to change. I’m trying to ignore her as much as I can and just do the minimum that she needs without engaging her. I don’t know. Maybe God is happy that I take care of the most miserable person on the planet for the rest of my life.
 
Nap66 said:
So I guess it is just me that God needs to change.
Click to expand...
No matter what He’s calling us to, that is often the case. 😉 Or at least, it’s what seems most apparent to us in hindsight.

As far as your mother – sorry for what you’re going through. Mine was difficult, too, although not as much. But we never know what seeds may be planted. That’s the hard part – we naturally want to know that what we’re doing has an effect.

Someday we’ll find out.
 
Last edited:
Deep of Night

So deep of night
Is this journey
So truly deep
In a night of stars
Fading light
Upon a fading path
Where I trod
With my dissolving shadow
Behind me
Following
My dissolving self
Dissolving into that growing blackness
To become one with it
To become one with that place
Where I have always been
Yet only now remember
So deep of night is this travel
And so late the journey home
To that beginning of all beginnings
Where I know someone
Must be waiting
But it is so deep and so very late
In this night of dying stars
And my tired mind
Cannot remember who
Except for a ghostly image
A gentle face
I cannot capture to memory
Slipping away
Like the vagueness of waking
From a fleeting dream
Leaving only a hint
That someone waits ahead
Beckoning me onward
Through this darkness
Into these depths
I travel
 
I am sorry but Saint John of the Cross still holds first place.
 
It all comes down to our expectations. The stigmata? To levitate in prayer? The Lord’s loudest answer to prayer is often silence. In that silence, we must open our hearts so as to hear His tiny, subtle message. God’s subtlety can move mountains.

Are you spending time before Christ in the Blessed Sacrament? Many clear answers will be found there.
 
po18guy said:
The Lord’s loudest answer to prayer is often silence. In that silence, we must open our hearts so as to hear His tiny, subtle message. God’s subtlety can move mountains.
Click to expand...
Excellently put! ❤️
 
po18guy said:
The Lord’s loudest answer to prayer is often silence. In that silence, we must open our hearts so as to hear His tiny, subtle message. God’s subtlety can move mountains.
Click to expand...
If God is silent how does he deliver a subtle message? How does one open one’s heart?
po18guy said:
Are you spending time before Christ in the Blessed Sacrament? Many clear answers will be found there.
Click to expand...
Yes. I never have any revelations. Just silence. The only thing I can take from the silence is that my life and my actions in my life are exactly as God wants them to be.
 
Perhaps you are straining to hear what is delivered only to your heart.
  1. Do you have a spiritual director?
  2. Have you received the baptism in the Holy Spirit?
Either can make a huge difference. Combined, they can accelerate you into spirutal hyper-space.
 
Status
Not open for further replies.
Back
Top