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Knowing God's Will sermon series #7 "When God is Silent"
by The Rev. Clancy Nixon
Church of the Holy Spirit
Ashburn, Virginia
May 23, 2005
Ted Turner is a famous cable television mogul, sailboat racer and former husband
of Jane Fonda. While he had a strict Christian upbringing, now he is outspokenly critical
of Christianity. At one time, he considered becoming a missionary. But he became
disenchanted with the faith when his sister got very ill. Though he prayed mightily for
her recovery, still his sister died. He never knew why. Ted Turner experienced the
silence of God, and God's "no." It was too much for Ted, and he walked away from
God, bitterly disappointed.
At some point in our lives, you and I are likely to experience the silence of God,
as well. It can be frustrating when you are expecting someone to speak, and they are
silent. It happened to King David; it happened to Jeremiah; it even happened to Jesus on
the cross, when Jesus cried out that the Father had forsaken him. How will you respond
when it happens in your life? What do you do when you ask God to guide you in an
important decision, and heaven is silent? I want to encourage you that there are godly
things you can do when that happens. Begin by remembering who God is, what his
character is.
First, remember that God is sometimes silent for a time, but He is always
listening. John 9:31 says, "God is ready to listen to those who worship Him and do his
will." Psalm 34:5 says, "God's ears are open to those who do right." Even though it can
feel like the heavens are closed to your petitions, if you love God, then God is listening to
you. One mistake people can make is to assume that when God is silent, He is acting like
some people we know when they get silent. One unhelpful tactic some husbands use with
their wives is to "give them the silent treatment" when they are angry with them. So we
might think that if God is silent, then he is angry with us, and doesn't want to hear us.
While God does get angry with us from time to time, God always wants to hear from us.
As the book of James encourages us to be, God is slow to anger, and quick to listen.
This morning, Ginger showed a video testimony of a Christian woman named
Kathy Maltz who went into a long coma, died, and her spirit was taken to heaven. Then
her spirit was sent back to her body, and she was brought back to life. That is an amazing
story that I encourage you to watch. One thing I learned is that when someone is in a
coma, that does not mean that they cannot hear what you are saying in their presence.
This woman heard and remembered what everyone said. I felt sorry for her husband,
who came often and prayed for her. The wife experienced her husband's prayers as
discouraging, because they were fretful prayers, and there was little faith in them. In a
similar way, we may think that God is not listening to us, because it appears that he is not
hearing us. Remember who God is. He is omnipresent, and omniscient. He is everywhere
and He is all-knowing. God is able to hear, he is able to speak; he is able to answer our
prayers for guidance or for rescue. God may be silent, but He is always listening.
Second, when God is silent, don't blame God; and don't always blame
yourself. Some people feel rejected by God because they have never heard his still,
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small voice. Others feel abandoned by God because they do not hear his voice often
enough. Or they might not hear God when they are faced with a difficult decision. King
David begged to hear God's voice. Remember Psalm 13, verse 1: "How long, O Lord?
Will you forget me forever? How long will you look the other way? How long must I
wrestle with my thoughts and every day have sorrow in my heart? ...Turn and answer
me, O God! David was a man after God's own heart, and still there were times when
God was silent with him. This was not just when David had sinned. Here in Psalm 13, it
was when he was suffering a prolonged illness. Jesus told us that illness is not
necessarily the direct result of anyone's sin, unless you count Adam and Eve. Remember
the man who was born blind? Jesus said that his blindness was not a result of sin, but so
that God's glory might be manifest in his healing. The same is true with God's silence.
When Jesus hung on the cross in pain, he experienced God's silence, his absence. At that
time the sins of the world were laid on Christ, and the Father cannot abide sin, so he
turned his face away.
God has his reasons for being silent in any particular situation. In one case God
was silent in order that Satan may test God's righteous servant, Job. God may be testing
you to see if you will be obedient to him even in a time of hardship. He may be testing
you to see if you will maintain your integrity, because he has more for you to do. You
may be caught in spiritual warfare, as Job was. In this oldest book of the Bible, Job was a
righteous man who lost his crops and his animals, and his children were killed by
terrorists. God was silent and would not tell Job why this was happening to him. His
wife made the mistake of blaming God for their misfortunes. Job would not blame God,
though he did curse the day he was born. His three orthodox friends, Eliphaz, Bildad and
Zophar, came to console him, and they all assured him that God was not to blame.
Unfortunately, they wrongly assumed that Job was to blame. Job was indeed blameless.
Job's misfortunes were caused by Satan, not by anything that Job had done wrong. By
the end of the book of Job, God finally speaks to him. Job passes the test, and he is
restored.
Third, when God is still silent, after you have pressed in to hear Him, then
ask God to show you if there is a hindrance or problem in your life that is blocking you
from hearing him. Look back at my sermons earlier in this series on hindrances to hearing
God for some ideas there. For example, a habitual sin pattern may well cause God to stop
speaking to you. The same is true with an unwillingness to do God's work. If you are not
about his business, why should he guide you? Examine yourself, and see if there is any
unclean way in you. But don't endlessly pursue this. Dallas Willard says, "Believe that if
a problem exists, God will make it clear to you. Share the robust confidence of Abraham
Lincoln, who said, "I am satisfied that, when the Almighty wants me to do, or not to do, a
particular thing, he finds a way of letting me know it." (Hearing God, p. 215.) Asking
your accountability partner or mentor or spiritual director is a very wise move. Willard
says to take counsel from two mature believers, "preferably not your buddies. If you find
a cause for why God's word would not come, correct it. Mercilessly. Whatever it is. Just
do it." I would add this advice. Make sure that you are obeying the last word that God
gave you. If God does not give you a fresh word, then go back and review the last few
things he gave you to do. If you have written those things down, that will not be difficult
for you to do. Often God will not give us fresh direction because we have not been
faithful with the last word he has given us.
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Fourth, if you cannot find a cause for a hindrance, then act on Biblical
principles of wisdom. Here are some good principles to use in making decisions when
God is silent. If God does not speak a Rhema word to you, in the still small voice, then
lean on the principles in his written word, the Logos, the Bible. The Great
Commandment and the Great Commission are excellent touchstones for decision making.
They form the basis for our mission statement. Ask yourself: Which path would give God
the most glory? That's loving God. Which alternative would you wish others to follow,
if they had to make your choice? That is loving your neighbor through the golden rule.
Which alternative is more likely to lead to making disciples of all nations? William
Carey, the father of the Protestant missionary movement, said this: "Attempt great things
for God and expect great things from God." Another touchstone is the peace of God.
You can often know the will of God when you sense the Lord's peace in a particular path.
This is not the peace that comes in the absence of conflict; it is the peace that comes as a
settled conviction even in the midst of conflict.
Sometimes God is silent because he wants us to grow up. Think about your own
children or your own parents. All parents want their own children to grow up and to
decide things without step by step instructions from their parents. God is a loving father,
who wants us to have confidence without a specific word from him. Hearing from God is
not a matter of saying the right prayer or incantation, nor is it a technique, nor a riddle to
solve. God isn't coy; he is not playing hide and seek with us! God is perfectly capable of
giving us very specific and detailed direction, like he often gave David in his battles
against the Philistines. In First Chronicles 13, God told David to "go out to battle when
you hear the sound of marching in the tops of the balsam trees." When God is silent,
sometimes it is because God wants us to decide things without specific guidance from
him, because God wants us to have a great part in determining our path through life.
Fifth, when you blow it, remember that God is with you. Our hearing of the
Lord's Rhema word to us is never infallible. Only the Logos word is infallible. If you
have made Jesus the Lord of your life, then have peace: the Lord is with you. You may
not know the Lord's directive word for you; but you can always know that God is
faithful. Lamentations 3:22-23 says, "His mercies never come to an end; they are new
every morning: great is your faithfulness....I will wait for Him." The prophet Jeremiah
wrote these words around 580 B.C., in a time of hopelessness and devastation. Jerusalem
had been utterly destroyed by the Babylonians, and the people of Judah were carried off
in exile. In chapter 3, verse 7, Jeremiah experienced God this way: "He has walled me in
so I cannot escape; he has weighed me down in chains." The guiding hand of God was
totally hidden from Judah and his punishing hand was raised against them. How does
Jeremiah deal with that? Verse 21, Jeremiah says "Yet this I call to mind and therefore I
have hope...His mercies never come to an end; they are new every morning: great is your
faithfulness....I will wait for Him."
Let's pray:
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