DAY 105

WHEN GOD IS SILENT

1 Samuel 27, 28 & 29 and Luke 13:1 – 22

The story of David going to be with the Philistines, and the story Saul going to a medium is very much about silence. David has stopped asking God for direction, and Saul has stopped hearing from God. I sense it is for different reasons.

I wonder if David was getting use to his success, or worn down from always being on the run. Whatever the reason, there is a notable absence from the text, that being, “David called upon the Lord…” For Saul it is because of his complete abandonment of God. Saul only calls upon God when he is desperate, after he has exhausted all his human methods, and God has removed his blessing from Saul because of it.

Divine Silence is the situation that Jesus finds Himself in the middle of; the religious of the day are no longer hearing from God. They have built up their religious practices so high and so deep that God seemingly cannot get through…He will of course, but it will take the death and resurrection of his son.

So what do we do when God is silent? There can be any number of reasons. One might be that God is asking you to “wait upon the Lord.” Anxiousness is not a fruit of the Holy Spirit; patience is. Waiting can be hard and my advice is to immerse yourself in the Psalms if that is the space you are in.

Beyond waiting you might also just check yourself. Jesus today, when asked about why bad things are happening to people, says essentially don’t think bad things are happening because of a person’s sin, but be more concerned that you are walking the wrong way…”repent” Jesus says. He also tells us that we need to realize that while we may not be seeing something big happening, remember the Kingdom of God starts small. Allow the seed of faith to grow in your life…the silence may just be a period of growing that you cannot yet see!