WHEN GOD IS SILENT

Have you ever gone through a period of time when God is relatively silent?  When you don’t think you hear from him as often as you should?  When it seems that what you’re doing isn’t enough and is failing?  That’s me in recent weeks.  I want to jerk the reins out of God’s hands and say, let’s get on with it.  But just because a thing appears to be so doesn’t make it so.  Just because I don’t physically see his plan being worked out doesn’t mean that it isn’t.  Usually, it simply means I’m impatient.  And if I jerk those reins out and decide to travel on my own, I’m headed down a disastrous path.

Me, I’m an organizer.  I like everything to be just so, each item in its proper place, and everything neat and tidy and orderly. Good thing Dymo makes some excellent labelers – mine keeps wearing out! Nothing out of place, no surprise folders or files. I suppose that’s why I like tax law.  While it is often far more complicated than it needs to be, it does follow a certain order, or code.  It has rules and I like rules because they represent order. 

Unfortunately for me, the wild God I serve doesn’t abide by the rules of men. As a matter of fact, I don’t think man’s rules always live up to God’s expectations. We have created all kinds of rules for people to follow at church – women are only allowed to serve in the nursery or kitchen, women sit on one side of the church and men on the other, you must attend every service or you aren’t a Christian, you have to read the King James Version of the Bible or you are going to be struck by lightning and God will never forgive you, and so on and so forth.  You’re almost afraid to step inside some churches for fear you’ll break a rule you knew nothing about.

I’ve been in some services where if you made a sound or shouted amen, you were set upon by the elders and told to respect the sanctuary.  The silence is deafening and the service cold.  The Spirit has gone where there is warmth and life, leaving behind a sanctuary filled with people who are sure that feeling nothing is next to godliness. I think the people have forgotten that true worship does not come from being perfect and following all the rules.  Unless they do something to change things, the church will wither and die and be of little use to the community around it. 

It’s time to step into the next challenge, and apparently the challenge for me is to wait for God’s timing.  Time to trust God and submit to his will and stop trying to make him conform to my silly plans. To be blessed by God you have to be his – totally sold out to him.  That’s a hard thing for me sometimes.  I want to maintain a little control in case of emergencies.  I forget that real faith requires that I believe in Christ and his plan even when it looks like he doesn’t have one, or it is hard to follow the path, or I can’t see where I’m going to end up. 

I forget that it is by adversity that I may measure my blessings.  Sometimes you just have to go through stuff.  Being faithful means that I may have to go through a long period of sacrifice and endure hardship before I obtain the reward of God’s blessings.  Being blessed, says Pastor G, is the uncanny, innate ability to succeed over adversity.  I can’t do that by my own means, it takes God to step in and change the ending.  Ultimately, God overcomes.  I lose sight of that, especially when I let the world sway my thinking.

I Samuel 22:31 says: “As for God, his way is perfect:  the Word of the Lord is tried.  He is a Shield to all who trust and take refuge in him.”  If I expect to succeed I’d better be totally rested in him, else my plans turn to dust and I fall into sin.  My way certainly is not perfect.  Somehow, when God is in control, I always land on my feet.  It’s only when I depend on my own strength that I fall down and wonder what happened.

When God is silent, maybe it’s because I’m not listening and not paying attention to the Spirit’s leading.  Maybe it’s because I need to be still before God and wait for his timing.  In this world everything rushes by without stopping.  We think we have to fill every moment with things to do.  We’re so busy we’ve stopped listening for God’s still small voice and have forgotten how to slow down and take time to just be with him.  It’s hard for us humans to let go and let God take care of things.

Joyce Meyer says that faith means you have peace even when you don’t have all the answers.  I think we often equate peace with doing nothing and being lazy, when the truth is that it’s more about continuing to work for the Kingdom, remaining calm, and waiting on God. We don’t have to have all the answers.  We just have to trust in the God who does have all the answers.  When God is silent, seek him out and rest in his Word.