When God is silent

John 16 vs 33

“These things I have spoken to you, that in Me you may have peace. In the world you will have tribulation; but be of good cheer, I have overcome the world.”

Have you ever prayed and prayed and prayed, and have been met by stone cold silence? Have you wondered and given up on the promise that God can hear your prayers? We have all said prayers that have gone unanswered and we have been confronted with God’ silence, where we have not been able to hear Him, see Him or even feel His presence.

In moments like that it feels as if the world has totally turned against you, you feel alone, helpless, desperate and troubled. I am sure you have experienced this so many times, and you have not known what to make of it. A colleague of mine told me not so long ago that they totally felt let down by God.

As I listened to those words, I could understand the human emotion associated with what they were saying and I could comprehend what they were feeling. There are times when you feel so hopeless, abandoned and abused, that you curse the very day you were born. One of the most difficult things to fathom is when God appears distant and silent.

Moses wandered the wilderness for forty years, having given up his life of privilege to a life of hardship and solitude as a shepherd. Gone were the days where people fussed over him and his every move was applauded and watched. In this place he now called home, he was subjected to toil and long lonely hours in the arid wilderness tending his father in law’s flocks.

One can only imagine what may have been going through his mind as he thought back to everything he used to have and what he had become. It must have been a painful thought to think of what he been reduced to. In all the forty years not once did he hear the voice of God or see Him in any way. For all intent and purpose he was an abandoned orphan left to his own devices, I am sure he wondered on many occasion where his life was going.

However at God’s appointed time, a time only the Lord had determined, he met with the presence of God through a burning bush. He had not planned the matter but after all these years of total silence this one day would change his life forever.

The rest of the story of Moses is a story known to us, God used him in a mighty way to free and lead His people. In those forty years as a shepherd, not once did he know that he would one day be the person he would become and would hear directly from God on a constant basis.

Such is the way of our Lord that at times we think He has left us for good and His voice can not be heard or His presence felt, yet He is working in the background to help us achieve great things.

Are you at that point where you feel that God is not there? Do not look at the limited period of your life and believe that all the hardship you are enduring will never end. If His chosen one could wait forty years how many years have you had to wait? It hasn’t been that long, when you put everything into context.

He is not far from where you want Him to be. Allow Him to teach you to be patient and to define time as He does, not as you do. In His silence His will shall shine through.

Be blessed

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