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
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