Most believers have felt God’s warm and soothing rays of light as they wash our life with joy. Of course that coin has a flip side when an ominous darkness envelopes our soul and blows a fierce wind through our hopes and dreams.
All of God’s saints have been, and will always be, led into this barren and painful desert. But spiritual silence is not real, only perceived. I think of it as the SILENCE=DEPRIVATION force.
Our response to God’s silence is often a default to feeling deprived. Continued silence raises the deprivation level and the cycle spins inexorably. If uninterrupted, a spiritual crash is imminent.
Feeling deprived doesn’t show up in a vacuum. It is produced by our culture of ever-increasing anticipation and gratification. Perception and promise over reality. Chasing over catching.
In this mindset, we focus on our own consciousness and direct experience—phenomenology—and accept how things feel versus how they are in God’s divine reality.
COUNTER ATTACKING GOD’S SILENCE
Don’t ignore the silence. Some of the biggest moves God has made in my life have come after a period of spiritual dryness when it seemed like God was silent. In fact, 5 days ago God answered a prayer I have been praying every day for 10 years coming out of the most painful event of my entire life. It was 10 years to the day.
Here are a few of my counter measures to God’s “silence”:
EXAMINATION: As God brings things to mind, I quickly ask for forgiveness.
THE BASICS: God is in control even if it’s hard to see or feel his presence.
GOD VS WORLD: He hasn’t moved, but am I drifting to the world’s allure?
STAY READY! He will make his plans known and I do not want to miss them.
I ask God to remind me that he is not obligated to speak or act on my timetable. To lead me to trust him. To know that he is in control, not me.
HOW ABOUT YOU?
Times of silence are scary to be sure but that is when we must have MORE FAITH. It may be that God is using that time for something bigger than you could have imagined and require even more trust on our part. Is that possible for you right now?
“For now we see only a reflection as in a mirror; then we shall see face to face. Now I know in part; then I shall know fully, even as I am fully known.” 1 Corinthians 13:12
