I was on campus a few months ago and someone came up to me and asked, “Can I ask you a question?” First of all, as a friend of mine likes to point out, she already asked me a question. Anyway, I told her yes and she started asking me what I thought about some things. I don’t even really remember what she was talking about, but I remember wanting to ask her what the point was. What did she want from me? What was she trying to get at?

In conversations, I’m not really one to beat around the bush. I want to get down to the question at hand and skip the small talk. Some of my friends kind of make fun of me for being blunt. It’s not that I’m trying to come across as uncaring, but I like for people to just skip to the real issue when they’re talking to me, so that’s my inclination when talking to other people. (I realize this usually [always?] isn’t the best method—I’m working on it.)

When I’m talking to God, though, I feel like I do the opposite a lot of times. Instead of getting down to the real issue, I want to talk to him about other people or about symptoms of what the real problem is. I’ll be praying about the things that are stressing me out and asking God to take care of each little thing (which he is definitely willing and able to do), but what God wants to talk about is why I haven’t completely surrendered that part of my life to him. Or I’ll talk to God about how someone has let me down and everything they’re doing wrong, but God wants to talk to me about how I need to really love that person.

Hebrews 4:13 says, “Nothing in all creation is hidden from God. Everything is naked and exposed before his eyes, and he is the one to whom we are accountable.” God wants us to talk to him about everything, but he also wants to deal with the real issues with us. Although we’re sometimes able to fool ourselves by focusing on peripheral issues, we can’t fool God. And that’s a good thing! God knows us better than anyone else and can help us navigate the real issues in our lives to give us the best life possible!