Questions By Rev. Clint Walker

 Questions

By Rev. Clint Walker

Ministry and Mission Coach

"You will seek me and find me when you seek me with all your heart."

Jeremiah 29:13

"Be patient toward all that is unsolved in your heart and try to love the questions themselves, like locked rooms and like books that are now written in a very foreign tongue.

- Ranier Maria Rilke

My final year in seminary I did something that my field education supervisor required, and also something that I dreaded: I did an internship in the suburbs. This internship was part of a negotiation that allowed me to do another portion of my field education at Bethel Neighborhood Center, which the field education director felt was not a “traditional” enough setting for ministry training. My internship was under associate pastor Bob Southard at Prairie Baptist Church. Dr. Richard Olson was the senior pastor there. I served at the church during Lent.

Dr. Olson, who was between stints as professor of pastoral care and counseling at Central Baptist Theological Seminary, was preaching a sermon series called “We asks, He asks”. The premise was that we come to Jesus with our questions and that he accepts our questions but often responds with a question in return. I learned a lot from those sermons. I learned the most from the implied message: Jesus likes and expects us to come to him with our questions, and most of the time, Jesus doesn’t then answer those questions with simple answers.

As Americans, we are hard-wired to believe that we should have all the answers and that if we do not have the right answers, we should find them as soon as possible. This value of being correct is important for many reasons. I don’t want engineers guessing about the braking system in my vehicle, nor do I want a doctor cutting me open to perform some procedure and saying, “Oh well, that is close enough; nobody is perfect!”

Perhaps more important for our lives, though, are not the answers that we find but the questions that we ask. These questions lead us to seek the true, the right, and the just. The questions that we ask ourselves, especially when we ask healthy questions, drive us to grow, force us to confront and seek help to overcome the hidden lies that sabotage us and determine the kind of story that we will write with our days.

Our questions to God, when they are honest questions, draw us deeper into a relationship with God. They cause us to seek the Lord. In my experience, my questions challenge me to trust more deeply, hope more fervently, and relate to God more transparently and authentically (instead of performatively).

Don’t hide from the questions, but expect that many of the answers to your questions are discovered by living into the answers as we trust, turn to God, and walk in faith as we seek to understand the mystery(s) of faith. The answers, if you call them that, are found in relationship with the God who loves us, pursued us by sending Jesus who lived, died and rose again to offer hope to us, and who sends his Spirit to guide us. 

Prayer

God, help me to bring my questions, doubts, and heartaches to you, knowing that the answers to the deep things of my heart are found in knowing and trusting in you as the Way, the Truth, and the Life. Amen

By Rev. Clint Walker

Ministry and Mission Coach

American Baptist Churches of the Rocky Mountains

www.abcrm.org