Why Most People Ask for Signs Too Soon

There's a moment I've witnessed again and again in my counseling practice, in spiritual direction, and now in the work I do restoring soul sovereignty. Someone arrives eager, earnest, and a little breathless. They've heard that the Divine speaks. They've heard that signs are real, that guidance comes, that you can actually ask and receive. And so they ask.

And then they wait.

And the waiting is agony.

Not because God is silent. But because they were never actually in a posture to receive.

Here's what I've come to understand after years of walking this path myself and alongside others: most of us try to access Divine communication before we've done something far more foundational. We try to receive before we've learned to release. We ask before we've softened. We look for signs before we've genuinely made peace with not controlling the answer.

In other words, we ask for signs too soon.

The Problem Isn't the Asking

I want to be careful here, because this isn't about earning God's attention or making yourself worthy before you're allowed to pray. That's not what I mean at all.

What I mean is this: there's a difference between an invitation and a demand. And most of us, without realizing it, are making demands.

When we ask for a sign while secretly needing a specific outcome, we're not really asking. We're bargaining. We're testing. There's a white-knuckled quality underneath the spiritual language. It is a kind of "prove it" energy dressed up in faith vocabulary.

The Divine can work with a lot. But it's very hard to pour something into a vessel that's clenched shut.

What Surrender Actually Looks Like

This is where people get confused, because surrender sounds passive. It sounds like giving up, lying down, pretending you don't have needs or preferences or fears. That is not surrender. That is spiritual bypassing, and it's its own kind of problem.

Real surrender is active. It requires something of you. It means you continue to show up, continue to act, continue to care while releasing your grip on how it has to turn out. You do your part and then you genuinely, not performatively, hand the rest over.

I didn't receive the experiences that eventually became the foundation of my "Show Me" practice because I was chasing proof. The moments where the universe seemed to bend toward me with unmistakable clarity — none of that came because I demanded it. It came after years of a quieter practice. Years of sitting in the co-pilot seat. Years of saying "You go first" and meaning it.

The asking came later. The ground came first.

Where Most People Actually Are

If you're reading this and you feel stuck — like you've asked and asked and nothing seems to land — I'd gently invite you to consider not whether you're asking the right questions, but whether your nervous system is braced for disappointment before you even finish the sentence.

Because that's where most of us live. Not in rebellion against the Divine, but in a kind of protective hypervigilance. We've been let down before — by people, by outcomes we prayed for, by the gap between what we hoped for and what arrived. And so we ask, but we're already armored against the answer. We're scanning for proof while simultaneously preparing for proof not to come.

That is exhausting. And it makes genuine receptivity almost impossible.

The Shift That Changes Everything

The shift isn't dramatic. It doesn't require a mystical experience or a perfectly surrendered heart. It's smaller than that, and more honest.

It starts with noticing where you're gripping. In your body, in your expectations, in the story you're already telling yourself about how this is going to go.

It starts with being willing to soften — not collapse, not pretend, but soften — around the question of whether you can be held.

And it starts with one very quiet, very brave reorientation: moving from prove yourself to me to I am willing to be led.

That's not the whole journey. But it is the beginning of one.

If this resonates with you, I'm opening a four-week class in March called "Show Me: Discovering What Happens When You Ask." Week One is entirely about building this foundation — not the asking, but the ground beneath it. Details can be found at https://www.drthaedafranz.com/classes1.