Being Comfortable in God’s Silence

“Be still before the Lord; wait patiently for Him and entrust yourself to Him; Do not fret (whine, agonize) because of him who prospers in his way, because of the man who carries out wicked schemes.” (Psalm 37:7, AMP)

If you’ve been with me since the beginning of this ministry, you’ll know we’ve been doing this for a while. In fact, this August will be the 5 year anniversary of Soul Deep’s launch. Over the years, we’ve been reading and studying together every week– there was a time where we used to post twice a week, too!– which means we’ve gotten together like this through the internet somewhere around 250 times, give or take.

You’ll remember that there have been other voices that have shared what God was saying to them, but mine has probably been the most consistent. In fact, consistency is one of my disciplines– maybe at some times, to my detriment– because there have been many times where I’ll be watching TV on a Monday night and say, “I have to write a devo for tomorrow!” or , “I don’t have any ideas of what to post tomorrow.” To which my husband might say, “So take a break. You don’t have to force it. Give it a few days to see if something convicts you enough to write.”

But I’m a very strong-willed person, and letting you all wake up on Tuesday morning, excited to read and connect over God's Word only to find an empty inbox, is not something I can easily accept.

So this week, I wracked my brain, asking God to give me something He wants me to write about, only to come up empty. And eventually, it got me thinking: in this generation of Tik Tok devotionals, social media preachers, and marketable Gospel, where we constantly feel we have to have something new to say, do we conjure up half of our “fresh words from God” in our flesh simply so we have something to say? Or are we actually studying, allowing God to speak and share Himself with us, and prayerfully discerning what is for the public, and what is for only us in private?

Because I’ll be honest: This week, I haven’t read that much, if anything, in the Bible. My prayer life has been more silent, and it’s not because I’ve grown cold in my faith or stagnant in my devotion. In all honesty, I haven’t been running on all cylinders, so I’ve been mustering up just enough energy to get through my 8-hour workday, and then either going immediately to sleep or laying immobile on the couch. Thankfully, I have an amazing husband who has been gracious in picking up more cooking and cleaning and giving attention to our puppy son, Archie, but I have been essentially out of commission.

And you know what? Sometimes, that’s life. Sometimes, our physical bodies crash and need more attention that consumes our free time we’d normally spend doing other things. That’s not to say that we should treat our time with God as a satellite in our lives or a hobby, but it is to say that some seasons in our life, we shut down, and it’s no one’s fault. It’s just being realistic.

It doesn’t mean we love God any less. It doesn’t mean God turned His back on us. In fact, when I find myself in patterns like this, where God is being silent, I remind myself that it’s not necessarily a punishment or a test. I look at it like a comfortable silence between a driver and co-pilot on a long road trip. I don’t have to fill the silence with my own meaningless small talk. I don’t have to project to the world that there is this constant, spiritually deep conversation happening between God and me. 

Because what’s real is that there isn’t always a fresh revelation. There isn’t always a new impartation or an original word. What’s real, is that sometimes, God is silent and no amount of fretting from me can get Him to speak. I cannot strong-arm God into showing me something new or speaking this overly-revelatory word to me to share with you. 

The fact is, there is value in being silent before the Lord, waiting patiently on Him, and entrusting ourselves to Him, no matter what season we are in. If God is silent, it doesn’t mean He values you less. It doesn’t mean someone else who is hearing from Him is superior in their faith or deeper in spirituality. And there is nothing you can do to make Him speak. If He wanted to tell you something, He would find a way to grab your attention. To think that we have any control in forcing God to speak is to take God’s power and put it in our hands.

Yes, sometimes our silence has something to do with the temperature of our faith, but it’s not an across-the-board situation. Sometimes, God’s silence with us is simply an invitation for us to draw near and be with God; coexisting with the Creator in comfortable silence. How mature it is to be still in that silence and know that God’s presence and person is still there, and not fall into the nervous energy of having to fill that silence with our meaningless chatter.

Sometimes, there’s a lot of pressure from today’s Christian church to always be producing content or constantly be sharing something new online. But maybe, there are seasons where God is silent to show us that we are still the sheep, and He is still the Shepherd. Will we fret through our silence and conjure up our own ideas of what God is saying? Or will we sit back in the silence, and allow God to draw near to us, enjoying the place He has us in?

I feel that part of pursuing genuine gratefulness this year is being more transparent with where I am. I can’t be genuinely grateful to God for what He’s given if I’m concerned with projecting some perfect picture to the rest of the world. So that’s where I am today, learning to be content in the silence, and appreciative of the bodily rest God is calling me to in this moment, trusting that God’s silence doesn’t correlate with his distance from me. Instead, entrusting myself to God, even in the quiet; allowing God’s silence to draw me nearer and enjoy Him more deeply.