I have given up on that question, at least for the time being, in favor of what I think is a better one - "Where do you see God at work?" I think it a better question for a number of reasons. First it is not about a person's spiritual performance - or how good a Christian he or she is. For much of my life I have made the assumption, with many others, that if my prayer and devotional life sucks either I am not trying hard enough or that there is some unconfessed sin in my life. The problem is that prayer and worship can be dry because we are trying TOO hard - trying to whip ourselves into some spiritual state of blessedness, or connectedness. Thinking that our effort can get us to God. I think the Protestant Reformation had something to say about that, if I recall...
Unconfessed sin can indeed interrupt our prayer life with God. But so can trying to find or discover some imagined offense that is keeping us from feeling the way we "used to" in devotion. Many Protestants I know have made fun of the practice of some Roman Catholics who "make up sins" so they will have something to say to the priest at confession. We might skip the middleman but we do something very much like it. Self-examination is best approached with an attitude of humility - being open to hear what God has to say - but then relying on the Holy Spirit to convict us of sin. Much of the time with ourselves and sadly with others we assume what is the Paraclete's job.
The second reason I think it is a good question is that it is not about me. It is about God and His activity in the world. Far to much of our Christian life has taken on a vague or sometimes blatant narcissism. How am I doing spiritually? What are my spiritual gifts? How am I being fed? How does this Scripture apply to me?
There is a scene in C.S. Lewis' The Great Divorce in which an angel interacts with one of the ghosts who has taken the bus trip from hell to the outskirts of heaven. After hearing her (it is the ghost of a woman) loquacious concern about how she looks and what people might think, the angel interrupts her saying, "Friend, could you, if only for a moment, fix your attention on something not yourself?" The value of the "where do you see God at work" question is that it does just that - fixes our attention on Someone not ourselves.
Third, the question makes an assumption that many of us have forgotten, if not intellectually certainly practically - that God is at work. And that is the first and most important work and movement.
It is a better question but the responses remain varied. For some, again in a season of consolation, will see and report the movement of God with joy and thankfulness. But others may feel the pressure to have a good, nay indeed a spectacular answer. We might feel the pressure to report conversions, healings, profound revelations. And why? Because it is what the asker wants to hear? Maybe. Because the failure to see God at work makes us unspiritual - like the emperor and his courtiers who insisted on seeing clothes that weren't there. That's possible. Or because we are afraid that God isn't actually at work and that would make our faith a sham.
I asked a friend this question yesterday. He had a "good" answer that was authentic and real. But he asked me the question in response - the great risk of probing into people's lives is that they may probe back. I was tempted to give the "right" answer and make something up. But I didn't. I said two things - much less succinctly than I am about to do here - that I didn't really see much of God at work right now, and that I am looking for his work and movement around me.
My failure to see God at work does not leave me feeling like I am a spiritual dwarf, nor does it make me think that God is not at work. Because he is. The mystery for me (and it is, thankfully, mystery and beyond my full understanding) is learning to see the work and movement of God in different ways than I did before. His silence is not his absence. It all reminds me that the point is God and his supernatural activity in the world he created, not my subjective experience or perception of it.
