When God seems silent… – 22ndd February 2017

“For my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways,” declares the LORD.”(Isaiah 55:8).

At times we find that God can be maddeningly hard to get. We can learn from Isaiah 55:8 which says that Gods ways are NOT OUR WAYS! Sometimes we have some encounters with him where he breaks into our lives with power and answers our prayers and wins our trust and waters the garden of our faith, making it lush and green. And then there are these seasons 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 but yet again at times he just seems silent. He seems absent…

That’s why tears tend to flow when in times of despair we ardently pray to Him but yet He seems absent…silent. But when we read the bible we understand that it is not only us who cry out with no response from Him. We can learn from Job 30:20 “I cry out to you, God, but you do not answer; I stand up, but you merely look at me.”Even King David had problems of this nature as we can read from Psalm 22:1–2 “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me? Why are you so far from saving me, so far from my cries of anguish? 2 My God, I cry out by day, but you do not answer, by night, but I find no rest.”

If we share our problem of God being silent in the midst of our problem with an Atheist, he or she will tell us that the reason God seems silent is because he’s absent. “No one’s home at that address.” When we undergo the silent suffering, we can be tempted to believe it with or without the presence of an Atheist… But instead of carrying on with that foolish notion, we need to step out and take a closer look and we can see that existence of God itself is not silent. “For since the creation of the world God’s invisible qualities—his eternal power and divine nature—have been clearly seen, being understood from what has been made, so that people are without excuse.”(Romans 1:20). When evil thoughts come to our hearts, the very basic thing would be to take a look around us… because it screams God! What we simply consider the beauty that we see around, the complexity of everything cannot be “automatic” much like what is said by the Atheists. We should know that “Nothing comes from nothing; nothing ever could.”

Believing atheism is like any one of us believing in a flat earth... Yes when we look around us the world looks flat. The only reason you know the world is round is because of authoritative scientific revelation and many corroborating scientific testimonies. Similarly from certain situations in our lives, from where we stand, it doesn’t look like God is there.” But as Christians we must know that what we experience as God’s absence or distance or silence is phenomenological. It’s how we perceive it. Its how at some point it looks and feels but it isn’t how it is. Just like how we feel the world as flat when we’re walking on a huge spinning ball. In reality, God wasn’t absent or silent or indifferent at all toward Job or King David. It’s just how we feel at the time from the understanding we have!. Therefore we bear in mind that when we feel forsaken by God, we are not forsaken. He will never leave us or forsake us as we can learn from Hebrews 13:5 “Keep your lives free from the love of money and be content with what you have,

because God has said, “Never will I leave you; never will I forsake you.” Therefore as Christians we need to know that we are simply called to trust the promise more than our own perception…!

Then the question of why the Silence? Why does it need to feel that way? Why the perceived silence? Why can it seem like God is playing hard to get or like he’s just standing there looking at us when we cry to him for help? Stated simply…He is the omnipresent God and we are mere humans. We can never fully understand His actions. It may seem that He is silent in terms of our understanding but as per His promises he will never forsake us as we learn from Psalm 9:10,“Those who know your name trust in you, for you, LORD, have never forsaken those who seek you.”

Yes…when worry, anxiety and seemingly when God does NOT come to one’s rescue, he or she will feel disoriented and desperate. But as Christians we need to understand that this silence from God, or as we tend to see it as “Gods absence” is phenomenological. It is how it feels; it’s not how it is…! As Christians we need to know that we are not alone as our omnipresent God is present everyware. We can learn from Psalm 139:8-10, “If I go up to the heavens, you are there; if I make my bed in the depths, you are there. 9 If I rise on the wings of the dawn, if I settle on the far side of the sea,10 even there your hand will guide me, your right hand will hold me fast.”Therefore as a Christian one needs to know that God is with me…always and therefore:“Even though I walk through the darkest valley, I will fear no evil, for you are with me; your rod and your staff, they comfort me.”(Psalm 23:4).

We can’t claim to understand all the mysteries of Gods silence. Since we don’t fully understand this, for one we may be underestimating the resulting effects of our sin and sinful ways. He wants us to live our lives in keeping to His teachings for us. We can learn from 1 Thessalonians 4:7-8, “For God did not call us to be impure, but to live a holy life. 8 Therefore, anyone who rejects this instruction does not reject a human being but God, the very God who gives you his Holy Spirit.” Therefore we cannot live our lives disregarding God’s requirements from us…We need to discipline ourselves in order to share God’s holiness as we can learn from Hebrews 12:10, “They disciplined us for a little while as they thought best; but God disciplines us for our good, in order that we may share in his holiness.”