When God is Silent

Any disciple of Christ who has followed Jesus for some time will confess times in their journey when they felt God was nowhere to be found. For whatever reason, there was no sense of God’s presence in any of their endeavors to draw near to Him. Philip Yancey, in Prayer: Does It Make Any Difference, offers the following “survival strategies” for those times when God is silent, those times when our prayers seem not to connect. (pp. 202ff)

First, Yancey runs through a checklist of what might be blocking the communication.

1. Is there deliberate sin or callous inattention to God? If so, the channel must be cleared through confession.
2. He examines his motives. Am I seeking particular feelings? Am I pursuing God on my own terms rather than His? Perhaps I am seeking new revelation, when, instead, I should be focusing on the revelation that God has already given.
3. Have I been pursing results from my prayer, rather than companionship with God?
   

Second, if he finds no reason for God’s silence from his checklist, he begins to treat the silence in prayer the same way he treats suffering. Saying it does little good to ponder the “Why?” questions of suffering, he points out that the Bible moves the emphasis from the past to the future. The Bible, particularly the New Testament, talks of the future benefit of present suffering: character, hope, perseverance, etc. In like fashion, Yancey asks God to use this time of spiritual dryness for future growth.

A final survival strategy he uses is to rely on the faith of others. Pointing out that the Bible gives strong emphasis to the practice of praying with others, he talks about the help he has gained by praying with others who are currently not experiencing the dryness he is experiencing. “At times, when I have no words and my faith falters, I find solace in listening to the prayers of others and realizing that not everyone is sharing my sense of desolation.” The most meaningful prayer in many churches is prayer like this, prayer that happens in the context of a small group when someone takes the vulnerable step of confessing to the group a recurring failure and asking for help. Everything else is pushed to the side while the group lovingly lifts up “a friend” to the One who cares most.

When God is silent, we often assume there is fault on our end, rather than realizing there may be purpose or something else on God’s end. Yancey speaks of a pair of red foxes on the hill behind his mountain home that raises a litter of kits each spring. They have become accustomed to his roaming the hill and occasionally stopping in front of their den. Sometimes the young ones poke their faces out at him. Sometimes he can hear them scurrying around in the den. Sometimes there is only silence.

In taking a friend to see them, he reminds the friend that there is no guarantee they will see anything. “They are wild animals, you know. We’re not in charge. It’s up to them whether they make an appearance or not.” (p. 207) Weeks later his friend wrote him about that moment and how it helped him understand God. His friend had just gone through a long season of depression. Sometimes God felt very close, and at other times he had no sense of His presence at all. His friend wrote of God, “He is wild, you know. We’re not in charge.”

Personally, I believe we often want to tame God. We would never say it this way, but we act as if God were a service animal trained to perform on command. After all, it is in our sinful nature to subjugate God and raise ourselves to the position of “master of all.” When I take time to pray and intentionally enter into God’s presence, how dare He not show up in ways I expect and can understand. Yancey says, “When I am tempted to complain about God’s lack of presence, I remind myself that God has much more reason to complain about my lack of presence.” (p. 208) That sentence is self-explanatory; but in case you missed it, God never neglects us, but we often neglect Him.