God’s Silence – Then What?

Those of us in the West are uncomfortable with silence. In the East it is not unusual for long periods of silence to be honored during meetings and discussions. With us, silence is a potent tool to force the other person to talk. We abhor silence so we speak to fill it. Police Interrogators make good use of this method.

Silence has long been practiced as a spiritual exercise. For years I enjoyed an annual silent men’s retreat. One year we had a particularly popular speaker and decided to invite the women. There went the silence and eventually the annual retreat.

Silence is part of our communication with God. If we ask for something and hear nothing, we assume He has not answered. There could be other explanations. For one, we may not be hearing the answer. For another, silence may be the answer.

In our close personal relationships, we learn to interpret silence in the other. My wife and I know very well what the other’s silence means, depending on the circumstances. In an intimate relationship, speech is not always necessary. In fact, comfort with silence is a sign of the intimacy of the relationship and the level of trust between the parties.

Has God trusted you with His silence— a silence that has great meaning? God’s silences may be is answers.  Can God trust you like that, or are you still asking Him for a visible answer? When you cannot hear God, you will find that He has trusted you in the most intimate way possible— with absolute silence, not a silence of despair, but one of pleasure, because He saw that you could withstand an even bigger revelation. If God has given you a silence, then praise Him— He is bringing you into the mainstream of His purposes.

A wonderful thing about God’s silence is that His stillness is contagious— it gets into you, causing you to become perfectly confident so that you can honestly say, “I know that God has heard me.” His silence is the very proof that He has. If Jesus Christ is bringing you into the understanding that prayer is for the glorifying of His Father, then He will give you the first sign of His intimacy— silence.

Nick