The Beauty of Silence

While unpacking I have come across many treasures. Some have been determined better-used by others, some have been happily placed amongst other things in the house. I came across my copy of "My Utmost for His Highest" by Oswald Chambers and decided now is as good a time as any to start reading through it again. If you're not familiar, this book is a compilation of lectures given by Chambers in the early part of the 1900s. Short, one-page entries for each day of the year, yet so much meat packed into each entry. The entry I started with today, October 11, was so completely appropriate for what the last 2 years have been that I just had to share. I felt God had totally smacked me between the eyes when I read this. I read it to David and he felt the same way. So, I want to share it with you!

"After God's Silence--What?


When he had heard therefore that he was sick, He abode two days in the same place where he was." John 11:6


Has God trusted you with a silence--as silence that is big with meaning? God's silences are His answers. Think of those days of absolute silence in the home at Bethany! Is there anything analogous to those days in your life? Can God trust you like that, or are you still asking for a visible answer? God will give you the blessings you ask if you will not go any further without them; but His silence is the sign that He is bringing you into a marvelous understanding of Himself. Are you mourning before God because you have not had an audible response? You will find that God has rusting you win the most intimate way possible, with an absolute silence, not of despair, but of pleasure, because he saw that you could sand a gibber revelation. If God has given you a silence, praise Him, He is bringing you into a great run of His purposes. The manifestation of the answer in time is a matter of God's sovereignty. Time is nothing to God. For a while you said--"I asked God to give me bread, and He gave me a stone." He did not, and today you find He gave you the bread of life. 


A wonderful thing about God's silence is that the contagion of His stillness gets into you and you become perfectly confident--"I know God has heard me." His silence is the proof that He has. As long as you have the idea that God will bless you in answer to prayer, He will do it, but He will never give you the grace of silence. If Jesus Christ is brining you into the understanding that prayer is for the glorifying of His Father, He will give you the fist sign of His intimacy--silence."