Sound of Silence

Below is an excerpt from my favorite devotional , Oswald chambers "My Utmost for His Highest".

 

I am amazed at how God speaks through His word and even through this devotional. "It is just what I needed" would be an understatement. As I read the words below, I felt that these words written several decades ago, were meant exactly for me in my situation Here and Now!!

 

October 11, 2013

When He heard that he was sick, He stayed two more days in the place where He was —John 11:6

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.

 

 

Lord,

the comfort even Your silence brings,

is amazing.

 

For I know,

You are Master of my destiny,

and my times are in Your hands.

 

In this still quietness,

I find a promising peace.

 

In it I rest,

confidently, assuredly,

absolutely.

 

For I know

You are my Father, Friend

and God;

and You have already kept,

the best in You,

for me.