Sometimes, I find that God goes silent. Usually, it coincides with my own fears mounting and me shouting for answers. But even when I’ve quieted myself and submitted my fears before Him, I find that I sometimes still do not hear Him. And personally, I find that frustrating! It hurts, truth be told, because it feels like He doesn’t care.

It’s been previously discussed, on this blog, how feelings are not a good metric of truth. In fact, they can be liars! As such, “feels” is emphasize above to draw out the reality that this feeling is not accurate. He truly does care; in point of fact, His silence, much to my vexation, is actually the evidence of His care.

Many people these days have gotten used to instant gratification. With microwaves, fast-food restaurants, delivery services for most everything, and Internet streaming of offered and on-demand content, the average American is flushed with a plethora of instant gratification. If I may be so blunt, even pornography, what often was purchased in a store and carried out in a paper sack, is now available at one’s fingertips. It is not an exaggeration to say that we are ill-acquainted with patience!

In the Bible, we find many times when God chooses to be silent to give someone the time to surrender to Him before He responds. And in our present day, one may dare contest that He is silent, sometimes, just to remind us that we are not Him and that His timing is perfect, even if it requires us to be patient before we see things fulfilled.

While we could postulate for decades, maybe even eons, as to the reasons for God’s silence at times, the conclusion we can always draw is that He does exactly what is needed, for exactly as long as needed, exactly when it is needed. In other words, His actions are perfect, even if we don’t understand them or don’t see them that way.

“So, what does that mean for me? I’m still waiting on His response!”

Aye! That is the rub. But here’s your answer: it means you can trust Him. It means that you should continue to ask, continue to pray, continue to be in His word, and trust that in His time, He will answer you. And all the while that you do these things, keep listening! Keep your ear so near to his voice that even His breath tickles your ear!

Don’t stop listening, and don’t stop being honest. In the last many decades, many of us Believers have been deceived to think that we can’t be honest with God. Some think He won’t hear how frustrated we are. Some think He doesn’t see the grief in our hearts. And some are all of the above and more. But if you read the Psalms, God shows us that we can be brilliantly and boldly honest with Him.

I’ve said, and been told, that God is a perfect gentleman, that He will never force someone to do something nor will He be abusive or anything else evil. At the same time, I’ve not always believed this; my emotions lied to me, and I believed them, and I thought being honest would get me smacked, metaphorically, by the Almighty. But He never does that! Granted, I will sometimes characterize things as a “smack in the head” or “with a 2×4”, but that is only because of how powerfully a realization hit me. He has never been so harsh with me. He will get stern, though; His tone changes, it’s as if His face has gone slack, and He will set me back in my place as a human talking to the God of all creation. But even that is done so lovingly, it would be hard to characterize it as harsh.

Consequently, we can come before God and tell Him, “I’m angry with You for being silent.” We can boldly say, “I feel like you’ve left me alone because You’ve gone silent!” And we can throw ourselves on Him and beg Him, “I need you to show up! Please, please say SOMETHING! Anything!”

Yet, no matter what we do, we do it with the attitude of a child to his/her parent. Now, some had bad parents, but even those with bad parents know how their parents should have responded. So, imagine your perfect parent, and make your requests, let out your frustrations, and listen for your Heavenly Father respond.

He is there, and He has a response for you, be it “yes”, “no”, or “please wait.” He has a response for you, when it’s time for you to hear it. So, keep praying, keep spending time in the Bible, and above all, LISTEN!

“And he said, “Go out and stand on the mount before the Lord.” And behold, the Lord passed by, and a great and strong wind tore the mountains and broke in pieces the rocks before the Lord, but the Lord was not in the wind. And after the wind an earthquake, but the Lord was not in the earthquake. And after the earthquake a fire, but the Lord was not in the fire. And after the fire the sound of a low whisper.”

1 Kings‬ ‭19:11-12‬ ‭ESV‬‬