Have you ever poured your heart out in prayer, only to be met with what feels like deafening silence? It’s a tough spot to be in, especially when life throws curveballs and you crave that divine reassurance.
I recently came across a powerful graphic shared by Pastor Craig Groeschel, and it stopped me in my tracks. It laid out a simple yet profound reminder:
“Just because God is silent, doesn’t mean He is absent.
Just because you may not hear Him, doesn’t mean that He doesn’t hear you.
Just because you don’t feel Him, doesn’t mean He is not with you.”
It’s like a gentle nudge that our feelings aren’t the full story when it comes to God’s involvement in our lives. Let’s unpack this truth.
👣 1. Silence is Not Absence: He is Working Behind the Scenes
“Just because God is silent, doesn’t mean He is absent.”
Think about those moments in the Bible where God appeared to go quiet. Take Job, for instance—he endured unimaginable suffering and cried out for answers, but God didn’t respond right away. Yet, in the end, God revealed Himself, showing He’d been there all along.
This truth is anchored in Scripture. Isaiah 64:4 (NIV) says, verbatim:
“Since ancient times no one has heard, no ear has perceived, no eye has seen any God besides you, who acts on behalf of those who wait for him.”
Silence doesn’t equal abandonment; sometimes, it’s God working behind the scenes, building our faith or preparing something bigger.
👂 2. Unheard Doesn’t Mean Unhearing: Your Prayers are Heard
“Just because you may not hear Him, doesn’t mean that He doesn’t hear you.”
Your prayers are never lost in the void. God hears every whisper of your heart. The verbatim promise in 1 John 5:14 (NIV) assures us:
“This is the confidence we have in approaching God: that if we ask anything according to his will, he hears us.”
Even when the answer isn’t immediate or audible, you can have confidence that your prayers have reached the throne of heaven.
💖 3. Feelings are Fickle, But His Presence is a Promise
“Just because you don’t feel Him, doesn’t mean He is not with you.”
Feelings are fickle. One day we’re on a spiritual high, sensing God’s presence everywhere, and the next, it’s like He’s vanished. But Scripture reminds us that God’s presence isn’t dependent on our emotions.
Matthew 28:20 (NIV) gives us Jesus’s unbreakable vow, verbatim:
“And surely I am with you always, to the very end of the age.”
Remember the story of the disciples on the road to Emmaus? They walked with the resurrected Jesus but didn’t recognize Him at first (Luke 24:13-35). He was right there, even when they felt alone in their grief. Our senses might deceive us, but His promise stands firm.
💡 Why the Silence? Possible Reasons for the Quiet
Building on these ideas, it’s worth reflecting on why God might choose silence at times.
- To Deepen Our Seeking: Silence can draw us closer, encouraging us to seek Him more earnestly (Jeremiah 29:13).
- To Refine Our Faith: It teaches us to trust His character over our changing circumstances (1 Peter 1:6-7).
- To Prepare a Greater Work: Like a seed dormant in winter, God may be preparing a season of incredible growth just beneath the surface.
In my own journey, I’ve learned that these quiet seasons often lead to deeper growth.
🕯️ A Light in the Quiet: What to Do When God is Silent
If you’re in a season where God feels distant, hold on to these truths.
- Lean into Prayer: Keep talking to Him, even if it feels one-sided.
- Dive into His Word: His written promises are your anchor.
- Remember His Past Faithfulness: Recall times He has come through for you before.
- Surround Yourself with Community: Let others hold up your arms when you are weary (Exodus 17:12).
More Quotes on being Silent before God
“When we discover the secret of being inwardly at worship while outwardly at work, we find that the soul’s silence brings us to God and God to us. Silence takes us beyond the limits of consciousness and into the heart and mind and will of God.”
― Brent Bill, Holy Silence: The Gift of Quaker Spirituality
“Silence is one of the deepest disciplines of the Spirit simply because it puts the stopper on all self-justification. One of the fruits of silence is the freedom to let God be our justifier. We don’t need to straighten others out.”
― Richard J. Foster, Seeking the Kingdom: Devotions for the Daily Journey of Faith
“Silence will illuminate you in God… and deliver you from phantoms of ignorance. Silence will unite you to God…. In the beginning we have to force ourselves to be silent. But then from our very silence is born something that draws us into deeper silence. May God give you an experience of this ‘something’ that is born of silence”
― Isaac of Nenevah
“If you love truth, be a lover of silence. Silence, like the sunlight will illuminate you in God.”
― St Issac, 7th Century Hermit Monk
“I believe that God is in me as the sun is in the colour and fragrance of a flower – the Light in my darkness, the Voice in my silence.”
― Helen Keller
“The doorway into the silent land is a wound. Silence lays bare this wound. We do not journey far along the spiritual path before we get some sense of the wound of the human condition, and this is precisely why not a few abandon a contemplative practice like meditation as soon as it begins to expose this wound; they move on instead to some spiritual entertainment that will maintain distraction. Perhaps this is why the weak and wounded, who know very well the vulnerability of the human condition, often have an aptitude for discovering silence and can sense the wholeness and healing that ground this wound.
There is something seductive about the contemplative path. “I am going to seduce her and lead her into the desert and speak to her heart” (Hosea 2:14), says Yahweh to Israel. It is tempting to think it is a superior path. More often, however, the seduction is to think we can use our practice of contemplation as a way to avoid facing our woundedness: if we can just go deeply enough into contemplation, we won’t struggle any longer. It is common enough to find people taking a cosmetic view of contemplation, and then, after considerable time and dedication to contemplative practice, discover that they still have the same old warts and struggles they hoped contemplation would remove or hide. They think that somewhere they must have gone wrong.
Certainly there is deep conversion, healing, and unspeakable wholeness to be discovered along the contemplative path. The paradox, however, is that this healing is revealed when we discover that our wound and the wound of God are one wound.”
― Martin Laird, Into the Silent Land: A Guide to the Christian Practice of Contemplation
“The simplest spiritual discipline is some degree of solitude and silence. But it’s the hardest, because none of us want to be with someone we don’t love. Besides that, we invariably feel bored with ourselves, and all of our loneliness comes to the surface.
We won’t have the courage to go into that terrifying place without Love to protect us and lead us, without the light and love of God overriding our own self-doubt. Such silence is the most spacious and empowering technique in the world, yet it’s not a technique at all. It’s precisely the refusal of all technique.”
― Richard Rohr, Radical Grace: Daily Meditations by Richard Rohr
“Space is as important as content, and silence as important as singing. Our music and art should be filled with more beauty, more grace, and definitely more space. In the layer beneath the text God speaks to us; in the silence we hear God’s heartbeat;”
― Martin Smith, Delirious: My Journey with the Band, a Growing Family, and an Army of Historymakers
“There are times when solitude is better than society, and silence is wiser than speech. We should be better Christians if we were more alone, waiting upon God, and gathering through meditation on His Word spiritual strength for labour in his service. We ought to muse upon the things of God, because we thus get the real nutriment out of them. . . . Why is it that some Christians, although they hear many sermons, make but slow advances in the divine life? Because they neglect their closets, and do not thoughtfully meditate on God’s Word. They love the wheat, but they do not grind it; they would have the corn, but they will not go forth into the fields to gather it; the fruit hangs upon the tree, but they will not pluck it; the water flows at their feet, but they will not stoop to drink it. From such folly deliver us, O Lord. . . .”
― Charles H. Spurgeon
“For you, My children, I will unlock the secret treasures hidden from so many. Not one of your cries is unheard. I am, indeed, with you to help you. Live out all I have said to you, and follow every detail as I have instructed you. As you implicitly obey all that I say, success — spiritual, mental, and physical — shall be yours. Wait in silence awhile, conscious of My presence in which you must live to have rest for your souls, and power and joy and peace.”
― Lacie Stevens, God Calling: A Timeless Classic Updated in Today’s Language
“We need to find God, and he cannot be found in noise and restlessness. God is the friend of silence. See how nature – trees, flowers, grass- grows in silence; see the stars, the moon and the sun, how they move in silence… We need silence to be able to touch souls. ”
― Mother Teresa
“In the silence of the heart God speaks. If you face God in prayer and silence, God will speak to you. Then you will know that you are nothing. It is only when you realize your nothingness, your emptiness, that God can fill you with Himself. Souls of prayer are souls of great silence.”
― Mother Teresa, In the Heart of the World: Thoughts, Stories and Prayers
“We too are called to withdraw at certain intervals into deeper silence and aloneness with God, together as a community as well as personally; to be alone with Him — not with our books, thoughts, and memories but completely stripped of everything — to dwell lovingly in His presence, silent, empty, expectant, and motionless. We cannot find God in noise or agitation.”
― Mother Teresa, In the Heart of the World: Thoughts, Stories and Prayers
“But there is that certain something about wanting to do the will of God. If one is sincere and if one really wants to know what His will is, all one has to do is be quiet. Shut off the television and radio, and in that silence one will always hear that still small voice in one’s heart telling him what to do.”
― Maria von Trapp, Maria
“The Lord prepared Moses for his ministry and took eighty years to do it. He was raised as a prince in Egypt and taught all that the wise men in Egypt knew. Some scholars believe that Moses was in line to be the next Pharaoh. Yet Moses gave all this up to identify with the people of God in their suffering (Heb. 11:24–27). God gave Moses a forty-year “post-graduate course” as a shepherd in the land of Midian, a strange place for a man with all the learning of Egypt in his mind. But there were lessons to be learned in solitude and silence, and in taking care of ignorant sheep, that Moses could never have learned in the university in Egypt. God has different ways of training His servants, and each person’s training is tailor-made by the Lord.”
― Warren W. Wiersbe, Be Equipped (Deuteronomy): Acquiring the Tools for Spiritual Success
“Be much in secret prayer. Converse less with man, and more with God.”
– George Whitefield
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