God's Silence

John 6:35 (NKJV)  ³⁵ And Jesus said to them, “I am the bread of life. He who comes to Me shall never hunger, and he who believes in Me shall never thirst

One of my favorite devotions from Oswald Chambers is called “God’s Silence --- Then What?”
So many times I hear from people,  I just don’t hear God.  I pray and pray and I don’t hear Him.  I ask Him questions and I don’t get an answer.  I am in trouble please help me! I believe most of the time the problem is with you.   He is answering ………… just not the way you want.   There lies the rub.  This devo was a game changer for me.  What it did for me is show me that just because I ask the lord a question doesn’t mean I will get an audible answer in my mind every single time

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.

When I read this devo the first time it released me from thinking that I had to hear God on everything.  Knowing that if I don’t hear Him specifically that is okay, because I know He is answering my prayer anyway.  Hope this makes sense.  What gets me is when I will hear the Lord when I am not praying.  Specifically when I am getting ready to do something wrong “sin” and then I have a choice …. Listen and obey or walk in rebellion.   You know what I mean.

Walk as Son’s and Daughter’s today