Our Silent God

I want to start off with some verses from the Bible quoting Jesus as saying, as follows;

“If you then, who are evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your Father who is in heaven give good things to those who ask him!” (Matthew 7:11). 

“Ask and it shall be given to you, seek and you shall find, knock and it shall be opened unto you. For everyone that asks, they shall receive and they that seek shall find and to them who knocks, it shall be opened.” (Matthew 7;7-8)

“All things whatsoever you shall ask in prayer believing, you shall receive” (Matthew 21;22)

“Whatsoever you shall ask of the Father in my name, he will give it to you”. (John 15;16)

If we don’t receive from God those things we ask him for, then why do we always make an excuse for God’s silence when our prayers go unanswered?

As believers we've all been there, or will be there. We may earnestly seek God, but in return only sense His silence. And this silence can be difficult, frustrating even excruciating.

And then there are those days when chaos careens with apparent carelessness through our lives and the world, leaving us shattered. Or an unrelenting darkness descends. Or an arid wind we don’t even understand blows across our spiritual landscape, leaving the crust of our soul cracked and parched. And we cry to God in our confused anguish and he just seems silent. He seems absent.

Daily I approached God with growing concern. "Okay, God, I'm sure you've got a plan. Show me what I'm supposed to do here. I need you now more than ever. I'm physically hurting, emotionally spent. How should I deal with this?" My prayers became more strident: "God, this is not the time to play hide-and-seek. I'm facing some serious anxiety here. Now would be an especially good time to hear from you!"

Have you ever felt as if God was giving you the silent treatment? Perhaps you or your loved one are going through a physical illness, and despite your prayers for healing, the Lord has not intervened. Or maybe you're fervently seeking His direction for a major decision, and He's just not answering.

One huge impediment to my faith is that God never communicates with me. I pray daily and ask for forgiveness daily, sometimes even hourly, but I still feel nothing but emptiness and silence from God. How is it possible to have a relationship with God if he won't at least have a conversation with me?

Jesus said; “If you then, who are evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your Father who is in heaven give good things to those who ask him!”

 

This verse tells us that God is ready to answer our prayers and supply our needs. So why are all our prayers not answered?  Why does it seem that God sometimes does not hear us?  What is going on when it seems like our prayers are not getting any higher than the ceiling?

Silence is especially painful when it is the silence of God in our lives. And it seems that when we are going through a painfully long period of silence from God, there are many people that want to tell us about how God has “spoken” to them. That tends to trouble me, because I begin to wonder why God is speaking to them and not to me. The silence that I am feeling becomes agonizing and then uncertainties begin to settle in my mind, and I pray really hard for some kind of answer, and it seems that all I get from God is silence. When God is silent we can simply become upset with God, we become confused, we start to doubt. The truth is that we just don’t know what to do with God’s silence. There is some sort of anguish in my life, I am suffering and in pain  and it seems that I have been praying to God for a very long time, to help me with my problems, and all that I am met with, is silence from God. Then I begin to question if God has given up on me or has stopped listening to me and my prayers.

I begin to wonder if my faith in his words have just been in vain and these words in the scriptures are just words some man has written and not really the words of God. How can a person continue to have faith in what is written when those promises fail to provide results?

Throughout the bible there are examples about God intervening in the lives of many people, providing results that could not be explained away, but they say were positively the actions of God. Why then would God not take an active role in our lives now which could not be disputed, but had to have come to pass as an act of God? Why does God deprive us, his children, of things that we ask for or not take an active role in our lives?

Yes it does appear that we have a silent God, but I wish it wasn’t so. I personally would prefer that God would take a more active part in my life and not be so passive. It would certainly help me to know if the things that I attempt to do right in my life was his will or not. Now some would say that if we just follow and do what the bible says, we will be doing his will. I wish it was that easy, but the way the bible is translated into English, it’s difficult to discern whether God is talking to us or the apostles. In some cases it’s a concern to me that whoever wrote the scriptures in the first place got everything right or not because of some of the errors in the bible that are so obvious. Wouldn’t it be easier if there was more active communication between us and God in order to be certain that we were getting it right. In the old bible days it was not uncommon for God to instruct the people directly and through his prophets. Well today we lack both of these means of communication because God is silent and there are no true prophets of God.

As for me, I’m not hearing God’s voice very often. And by “very often” I mean almost never. Since I’ve spent much of my life encouraging others in a relationship with God, this can be very disconcerting, and it’s made worse by the Christians I know who appear to have a direct line to God all the time. God is finding them parking spaces, telling them about apartments, practically giving them a “to do” list every week.

So how come I don’t hear Him like that? True, there have been times when I have a deep sense of God’s presence in my life. There have been times where I have also had a distinct sense of His voice in my soul, that still small voice that we believe is Him. But the times I “feel” and “hear” Him are hardly frequent enough to consider us in a relationship. If I’m only relying on those rare experiences, I find myself pretty confused and disheartened (especially when I’m around those “other people” who apparently have coffee with Jesus every morning!)

Maybe you also have wondered where God is in your life. Perhaps you have found yourself wondering why God doesn’t give you more specific direction, more often. After all, if He’s off finding your grandma a parking spot, maybe He’s too busy to deal with whatever woe is twisting your heart.

There are plenty of stories in the Bible of God being silent. Job experienced His silence. So did Abraham as he planned to sacrifice Isaac. The Bible doesn’t record God talking to Joseph in prison, nor John the Baptist before his beheading. There are more examples of God’s silence than we may be comfortable exploring. In my own life, I’ve discovered God’s silence always tempts me to doubt. But sometimes I wonder if God’s silence could be  leading us to a richer, more varied experience with Him in surprising ways that we are not aware of.

If I was qualified to give someone else any advice I would say this; My best advice regarding a silent God is, keep praying, keep writing, keep reading, keep walking the path before you. Keep doing the things that have worked in the past (and will work again in the future). Know that we’ve all gone through these times of silence. Ultimately, this too shall pass. In the meantime, “be still and know” that God is there because the bible tells us that.