Listening to God…Is He There? (re:listening 3)

The past few days I’ve been posting on the topic of listening.

What about when we’re listening to God – we come with open ears and hearts to Him – and we’re not hearing anything. Is God listening to us? Is He there?

Probably all of us have times when we feel like God isn’t speaking when we’re trying to listen. We’re not alone in this. We can see it in the life of David, who wrote these words of prayer: “Answer me, Lord, out of the goodness of Your love; in Your great mercy turn to me. Do not hide Your face from Your servant; answer me quickly, for I am in trouble” (Psalm 69:16-17).

Even Jesus seemed to experience God’s silence at times. Just take a look at His words from the cross: “My God, My God, why have You forsaken me?”

What do we do when it seems like God is not speaking?

Let’s start at a basic thought: God is a personal God who relates with us as relational people. So, when we ask why it seems like God isn’t speaking, we need to recognize that in general God does speak to us.

Sometimes, our problem is that we are listening for only one thing. We ask God for direction about what our major for studies should be, or who we should ask out on a date. We want to hear that He wants us to study Kinesiology but we give lip-service to being open-minded. We want to hear that He wants us to ask Jack or Jill out on a date, and so we’re not listening for some other name . . . or something else entirely.

Paul experienced this. He asked God to remove a ‘thorn’ in his flesh three times, but God wanted Paul to live with it to show forth His power (2 Corinthians 12:7-8). We need to come with open hands to our Father in prayer, willing to hear His voice and not just our own desires spoken back.

Other times, our problem is that we are unwilling to be silent with God. He is not necessarily absent, but He wants to take us deeper with Him. Paul Tournier, a Swiss doctor and counselor, said: “Modern people lack silence. They no longer lead their own lives; they are dragged along by events.”

To get beyond the flow of our incessantly busy lives overflowing with activity and noise like a sponge over-soaked with water, God often needs to interrupt us with silence and stillness. He wants to wean us away from the flurry of sound and activity, to a place of abundant life.

But to get there, we have to go in His way, not our own. He needs to un-train us. He needs to knock our legs out from under us so that we can sit down for a bit. So, when we come with our flurry of requests and words to Him, oftentimes He brings us into a way of communication that runs contrary to everything in us. He starts it with silence.

So, what do we do when it seems like God isn’t speaking? Perhaps the best thing we can do is to enter the silence with Him. We can be still and know that He is God. We can ask Him if we’re asking the wrong sort of questions. We can shut our mouths and get untrained so that we can enter His way for abundant life.