3 Reasons You’re Feeling So Confused After God Spoke to You About Someone

1 Corinthians 14:33 states, “For God is not a God of confusion but of peace.” This means God is not going to cause confusion in your life when you are seeking to follow him. However, this does not mean God always prevents the confusion we experience after he speaks to us.

This is true when it comes to hearing from God about a particular person you’ve been praying about. Even after God speaks to you about someone, sometimes there is still some confusion that remains. Why?

Here are 3 possible reasons you’re feeling so confused even after God spoke to you about someone.

1. God Will Let You Feel Confused So You Are Motivated to Seek Out the Answers He Wants to Give You Through Face-to-Face Experiences

In Acts 10, God spoke to Peter about eating ceremonial unclean food. This caused Peter to be confused. Acts 10:17 states, “Now while Peter was inwardly perplexed as to what the vision that he had seen might mean, behold, the men who were sent by Cornelius, having made inquiry for Simon’s house, stood at the gate.”

Because God had just taught Peter not to call anything unclean that God has made, this prepared Peter to go and spend time with Cornelius, a Gentile. Acts 10:28-29 explains:

And [Peter] said to them, ‘You yourselves know how unlawful it is for a Jew to associate with or to visit anyone of another nation, but God has shown me that I should not call any person common or unclean. So when I was sent for, I came without objection. I ask then why you sent for me.’”

When God originally spoke to Peter, he did not answer all of his questions. Rather, he showed him just enough to give him the confidence to take the next step forward. Peter then stopped praying and went out into the natural world to seek more answers about what God was doing. Notice he asked people, not God, “why you sent for me.”

While God will speak to you in your heart about someone when you have relationship questions, he will also let you be confused enough to seek out the answers he wants to provide for you through the facts you will only gain by actually interacting more with this person face-to-face.

2. God Will Let You Feel Confused After He Speaks to You About Someone Because He Will Also Be Speaking About You to This Other Person

When you continue reading in Acts 10, it’s important to realize that God did not just speak to Peter about going to Cornelius, but he also had spoken to Cornelius about Peter. For Peter to gain the full understanding of what God was doing, he had to hear the other part of God’s message that was only shared with Cornelius. They had to come together and share what God had said to both of them to gain the full clarity of God’s message. For after Cornelius spoke, Peter then said, “Truly I understand that God shows no partiality . . .” (Acts 10:34).

What a change! Peter was confused, but after listening to what God had shown Cornelius, he could then say, “Truly I understand . . .”

This pattern of God speaking to both people involved is what will happen in romantic relationships too if God is really putting two people together. You may be confused after God speaks to you because you will need more information that can only be supplied through what God is showing this other person.

Maybe God has shown this person that you are not the one for them. Or maybe God has shown this person that you two should give each other a chance. Either way, you won’t know the full picture of what God is doing without hearing from this other person.

3. God Will Let You Feel Confused After He Speaks to You About Someone as a Way of Building a Case for Communal Agreement

As Christians, God does not want us to make isolated decisions. Sometimes we have to because we don’t always possess the healthy community we were designed to have. But ideally, God wants our confirmation to be interwoven with other people’s confirmation too (Proverbs 12:15, 15:22). We should feel good that we are making wise relationship decisions when other mature Christians also confirm that they think we are being wise too.

This is what happened to Peter as well. The other Jews were confused too when Peter, one of their leaders, was doing things that had never been done before. So Peter told them the story of how God confirmed his will by allowing the Holy Spirit to fall on the Gentiles too in a supernatural way.  Thus, Acts 11:18 explains, “When they heard these things they fell silent. And they glorified God, saying, ‘Then to the Gentiles also God has granted repentance that leads to life.’”

Likewise, as other people see you navigate your confusion and find clarity about this person through going through a wise process, they will then be able to give you even more confirmation that you are doing the right thing.

Here’s a playlist of videos I’ve done about Confusion, God, and Relationships.