When you can’t hear God.
Few things can be as disturbing as silence, God’s silence most of all.
I heard a stand up comedian give an account of his experiences on the road in his line of work and he explained to the audience what he was afraid of in his job, it wasn’t getting booed or groaning when he told a joke, it was dead silence after telling one.
Likewise we as Christians face a similar situation in our walk with God. When we come God with a worry a situation or a prayer we have it in mind the idea that we will see a answer either favorable or perhaps a denial that will allow us to have closure and move on.
…..But what about those times when all we hear is silence, what are we to do when all we hear in the Halls of our strong fortress in our day of trouble is our own echoed prayers?
God’s voice is an amazing force, he can raise the dead, create a world teaming with life and direct the future but it’s silence is just as powerful, seldom will you ever feel so powerless or alone as when God’s answer is silence.
These times are distressing and if your feeling disturbed by it your not alone, the men and woman of the Bible certainly faced this and seeking God in the midst of trials and silence is a common theme in the Psalms and looking here we see an example of how we should pursue God in this time.
1. Pursue Him
Sometimes I our Wilderness journey God will test us by having us pursue him and use silence to test us or to remind us that it is the giving and not the gift we must be pursuing.
We must be like Jacob when he and God wrestled, even if it seems God intends to cripple us and then leave us behind we must lay hold of God and refuse to release him until we have gotten our Father’s blessing.
This is not to say either God is so calloused as to leave us for dead as we follow him or that we can strongarm God into doing our will but it does mean God will take us to our absolute limits for us to not only show what is really in our hearts but also to Show us what is really in our hearts.
Sometimes to help us see what we have buried under our faith God will strain it so we can see through it and uncover darkness we can chip away and give more room to our faiths and without this time of silence before God answers he will let us make room for the blessing.
Isaiah 55:6: Seek the LORD while he may be found; call upon him while he is near…
2. Are you willing to wait?
In silence God may be trying to help us build patience, patience is one of the fruits of the spirit and the pain that comes from silence may just be God’s time to prune you so you may receive more then you ask.
Patience is a must and eventually all true Christians will enter into a time of building for it so they can truly follow God. We serve a being unbound by time and that means we may be asked to wait for what seems like a stupidly long amount of time to our human perception of time and space or be throat into the maelstrom with no time to prepare at all and the patient endurance of these times of silence and seeking God may go far in helping you be better prepared for these times.
Psalm 144:1: Blessed be the LORD, my rock, who trains my hands for war, and my fingers for battle…
3. God might simply be trying to reconnect with you…
Sometimes it just might be that you have run ahead of God or wandered away from him and when this happens, like any good parent, God stops what he is doing and starts calling out for you or looking to find a way to get your attention so you come back to where he is at.
God will meet you anywhere your at but this reunion requires us to first realize we are lost, some of you I am sure have been in a situation when you or someone or something you care for got lost without you realizing it right away.
Its scary and frustrating and when it happens our first instinct is usually retracing our steps and this silence is what God can use to help lead us back to him.
Zechariah 1:3 Therefore say to them, Thus declares the Lord of hosts: Return to me, says the Lord of hosts, and I will return to you, says the Lord of hosts.
In closing Pact Keeper, God is not ignoring but training you, he is seeking you actively and sometimes to test a student a teacher has to be silent to see how much they have learned and what has stuck with them from their lessons so be strong, have faith and trust that our Father’s silence does mean he isn’t there.
God bless.
Pact Comics 