What we call God’s silence may actually be our inability,

or in some cases our unwillingness, to hear Him.

The poet of the Psalms engaged in righteous self-talk

He reminisced how he should respond

in the light of God’s goodness:

Over & over he cried for help to:

Wait for the Lord;

He called for strength

To be strong & asked that God would please

Let His heart take in the courage;

To wait for the Lord!

Psalm 27:14

The call to wait on God

is an invitation to trust & hope.

It entails believing that one day

even if today is not that day

Our God will make all things right.

In times of waiting, as we seek God in prayer,

we must learn to listen to Him

we must learn to continuously talk to Him

we have to learn to shut out the clatter

we must learn to quietly wait in Jesus presence

Our Lord will unfold to us

His person,

His purposes,

His promises

His plan.

In Deserted by God?

Sinclair Ferguson discusses

“spiritual desertion”

the sense that God has forgotten us,

the agony of our Lord

seemingly leaving us

the deep feeling remonstrating in isolation

the languish of seeping into directionless-ness

We, through faith,

Have to affirm God’s loving presence,

even when He seems silent

even when we feel deserted.

God’s Spirit calls lift us

To Draw near to God & He will draw near to us

James 4:8

God promises that He won’t let us break,

Yes, despite how we feel.

Yes, even though our feelings our howling

We feel those inner screams of the soul

Think of those disciples,

They were memorializing the haunts of loss

as they walked the dusty Emmaus road

Luke 24:13–32

They were Overwhelmed by sorrow.

They were Plagued by questions.

They wondered & lamented

They screamed in there hearts

where is God

But all this emotion & all this stress

And, all along,

Jesus walks beside us.

Sometimes we just scream questions at God.

‘What are You thinking?’

‘Is this your best for us?’

‘Do you really expect us

to tell everyone how great You are?’

It’s ok Gods not surprised.

Waiting on God involves giving Him our questions.

Waiting on God means we know

there is something better than just knowing all the answers:

Waiting on God

is getting to know & trust the only One

who does know & will never forsake us

Heb. 13:5

Trusting God when we don’t hear Him

We know through past experiences

that ultimately in intimate knowing

No matter how wrung out we get
For God

That Jesus is strengthening & purifying us.

No, never is our faith based on lack of struggle

There is always howling affliction

There is never totally an absence of doubt

Yes the questions echo,

We cop a facade that we don’t want to appear

as if we’re sinking on a foundation of quick sand.

Yes, this faith is when we
have this frightening diagnosis

Yes we know we’re one shattering phone call

away from a total collapse.

We scrap we scratch to not emit

This Token faith

We cry & claw to survive the dark night of the soul.

We hate this remorse in our inner being

Where we think God is silent

or worse that He is absent,

how O please how???

We beg. We plead!!!

God, show us that our faith is not false or superficial.

We sway. We totter Upon faiths ruin,

we feel surrounded in remonstrance of inner shambles

How I yes how, will we ever learn to rebuild on God

Will we just let our Lord & Savior be our Rock,

Will we let Jesus be our only foundation?

Will we let His Spirit bear the weight of our trust?

We know, although our feelings keep acting up

God is never silent.

We know God has already spoken in His Word

We know He has spoken loudly

We know Our God became a man
We know Him, our living our loving Savior

He died for us on the cross,
He purchased our eternal salvation.

Please Lord Jesus we know You
as a man
You are touched with our weak feelings

What??? we call God’s but He’s silent

Isn’t it actually our inability,
or in some cases (certainly not all)
our unwillingness, to hear Him.

the heavens shout about God’s glory.

Psalm 19:1

clearly creation proves God’s existence.

Romans 1:20

God speaks not only through His Word,
God also yells out through His world.

When our heart is heavy,
We’re walking here in Gods beauties in nature.
We’re surrounded everywhere by life

Jill & I surround ourselves with new flowers
Aren’t we crying out for life in our staggering faith

Our bodies aren’t cooperating
like the past

We want to feel life
We want to smell life
We put our noses in the blooms
We long to cradle a baby
We surround ourselves with furry critters
We hold them in our laps
We cuddle these bundles of fur feeling their life

Still, when we can’t hear God,
we can keep showing up & opening His Word,
day after day, to look at what He has already said—

day by day, morning after morning

We lay back, we sleep and hope for some freshening

Some new feeling of life

and we contemplate
and we memorize
and we remonstrate

we long over our loved ones who have past

we commemorate until we realize

this is not silence but is God speaking to us.

Naturally, there remains a subjective sense

in which we long to hear God

in a more personal way.

God spoke to Elijah in “a low whisper”

1 Kings 19:12

The problem with low whispers is

they’re not easy to hear—

especially when all around us the wind is howling!

Why does God sometimes speak so quietly

that it’s hard to hear Him?

The answer may be to bring us

to the end of ourselves.

But how many ends of self are there?

Self just get in the way

Self prompts us to be still & seek Him.

We try again after these bouts

These nasty slug festivals where we’re pounced on

to build our faith

to eventually speak more clearly

to have Jesus heal our hearing problem.

What can we do when God seems silent?

What can we do when life is dark?

We can pray with biblical writers

We can let the echo of their feelings through ours

We hear their crying out to God:

To you, O Lord, I call;

You are my rock,

be not deaf to me, lest,

if you be silent to me,

I become like those who go down to the pit.

Psalm 28:1

O God, do not keep silence;

do not hold your peace or be still,

O God! Please

I’m so weak
I feel my hurts
I feel my aches
My organs are exploding inside of me
They drugged me over & over
They removed so many organs
No one cares
I can feel so avoided
I can feel so wretched in my complaints

Psalm 83:1

I cry to you for help
and you do not answer me;
I stand, I’m falling, I’m failing
Would you only look at me.

Job 30:20

We remember that,
however long the silence seems,
God promises it is only temporary.

Consider Zephaniah 3:17:

The Lord your God is in your midst,

A victorious warrior.

He will exult over you with joy,

He will be quiet in his love,

He will rejoice over you with shouts of joy

NASB

Just because we can’t hear God exulting

doesn’t mean He is not rejoicing over us

with shouts of joy.

A blind or deaf person may not see

Their father’s face or hear his words,

but can learn to sense his love & affection.

The blood-bought promise states

that this brief life will be followed

with an eternity in which we His children

“will see his face”

Revelation 22:4

Andrew Murray’s in his book

Waiting on God notes:

“It is God’s Spirit who has begun
the work in us of waiting on God.

He will enable us to wait. . . .
Waiting continually will be met
and rewarded by God himself
working continually.”

“For God alone my soul waits in silence . . .
my hope is from him”

Psa 62:1, 5

If we lean on Him while we wait,

God will give us the grace

to wait & to listen carefully as we pray,

go to trusted Christ-followers

for encouragement,

We have to keep opening His word

We have to just keep asking Him

to help us hear Him