Matt's Muzings Archive
The Power of Question
I have written this Muzing twice and this is my third attempt. I can't find clarity in my voice for what I want to say. So I ask myself a question and I am struck by a thought.
There is very little material out there on asking questions and yet it is one of the most powerful tools any person has. The mind works through the use of questions. Questions are like the engine of a car. They give it the strength to move about. The challenging part is that we never think about questioning the questions."is that the right question to ask? Where did that question come from?"
Each one of us has a question or pattern of questions that we ask. It comes to us through our upbringing, gifting and training.
In the early years of my walk with God I struggled with condemnation. I would do something or say something that I didn¹t like and before long I was feeling depressed and discouraged. As I look back, it was because of the mind-set I had that produced the questions that got me in trouble. I never looked behind the question at the mind-set. The question came to me as a voice of authority and I reacted to it.
The question I would ask subconsciously was, "What's wrong with me?" Now think about the assumption behind that question. The assumption is that something is wrong with me and I just don't know what it is yet. I need to find it but I can't. That assumption produces a question that creates a focus.
CREATING A FOCUS
Let me give you a practical example. Wherever you are, look around the room and think about where are all the blue things in this room? I trust you have at least looked up for a second, now answer this question, where are all the red things? If you took the first question seriously at all, it created a focus that limited your capacity to answer the second question.
A question is like a pair of binoculars. It brings a field of interest into clarity. It focuses on a very small area and brings it closer to view. But by definition it eliminates other potential areas of help.
Let me try and say this another way. In a sense our mind is like soil. It is the ground out of which we produce life. This is the point, you can tell the health or condition of our soil (mind) by the questions it produces (asks). The focus and fruitfulness of the questions our mind produces reveals how healthy we are. If I struggle with the question, "Is God good?" it reveals the soil (mind) is not very rich. If I struggle with the question, "How can anyone love me?", it reveals the soil (mind) is not strong enough and needs better nutrients. For we KNOW that God is good and that He loves us.
If God's first communication with man came in the form of a question, (He asked Adam, "Where are you?") it is not because he didn't know the answer, but because he wanted to model something that was extremely important. Asking questions is a vital part of leadership.
One of the greatest gifts a leader can impart to those he or she is training is the capacity to ask good questions. You can't find the right answers until you are asking the right questions.