This series is 31 Days
of Hearing God, but what about when God is silent? It is hard to understand and accept,
especially when some say they always hear from God. I decided to let my guest
blogger :) Oswald
Chambers, explain.
God’s Silence— Then What?
When He heard that he was
sick, He stayed two more days in the place where He was. —John 11:6
Has God trusted you with
His silence— a silence that has great meaning? God’s silences are actually His
answers. Just think of those days of absolute silence in the home at Bethany!
Is there anything comparable to those days in your life? Can God trust you like
that, or are you still asking Him for a visible answer? God will give you the
very blessings you ask if you refuse to go any further without them, but His
silence is the sign that He is bringing you into an even more wonderful understanding
of Himself.
Are you mourning before
God because you have not had an audible response? 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. The actual evidence of the answer in
time is simply a matter of God’s sovereignty. Time is nothing to God. For a
while you may have said, “I asked God to give me bread, but He gave me a stone
instead” (see Matthew 7:9). He did not give you a
stone, and today you find that He gave you the “bread of life” (John 6:35).
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. As long as you have the idea that God will always bless
you in answer to prayer, He will do it, but He will never give you the grace of
His silence. 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.
Wisdom From
Oswald Chambers
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This is Day 15 of the series 31 Days of Hearing God.
I am joining others in the October writing challenge at write31days.com. To
read more in this series click here for all the topics.
"Be still and know that I am God!" Ps. 46:10 <3
ReplyDeleteYes love that verse!
DeleteThank you! I needed to read this today because His silence has been deafening of late with regard to certain areas of my life. I had never considered that maybe He was trusting me with His silence, to be still, to know that prayers are always answered, that maybe this time of quiet and stillness is necessary before He answers.
ReplyDeleteI'm glad you liked it Shelby. I pray you will have an answer to your concern.
DeleteOh that silence is so hard, when you yearn for a lightning bolt! :) Great thoughts here.
ReplyDeleteThanks Carol
Delete