Sometimes God is silent. Sometimes my prayers go unanswered and after a while it seems they are maybe unheard. I have been in this dark and uneasy quietness for a while. At first I tried harder to go back to the way our relationship worked in the past. Scripture times and getting up early to pray, Max Lucado and Beth Moore books. Nothing. Even going to church has become drudgery and just going through the motions. And most painful of all, attending my beloved ladies small group has left me empty. I love these women, very much. I wondered if I was loosing my faith…but I’ve had too many experiences of Him to ever abandon faith. I have seen and experienced miracles!
Then someone very dear to me suffered a miscarriage. I couldn’t wait to hold and love this baby. I knew this baby was blessed because my friend was the finest model of Christian motherhood. I often wish I could be more like her. She is a blessing and a joy to be around and doesn’t mind when I ask hard questions. I cried for days.
Then anger. Anger toward God who could allow something so horrible to happen to someone so undeserving. My anger took me by suprise but I let it roll out of me. I told God everything I was angry about. Look at what we humans do to each other. Why would you allow all of this suffering and pain? Why the Holocaust? Child abuse? Rape? Torture? I think everyone asks this of God at some point in their life. There isn’t an easy answer, if one at all. How can all of this be worth the horrible pain of the Cross. Then I didn’t speak to God at all for a while. I could give Him the silent treatment too you know.
This morning I open my Bible. I read in Matthew about Jesus’ baptism and the temptation. And I see something I’ve never noticed. First, the Father affirmed Jesus before the miracles…before His ministry began. The second thing I notice is that Jesus was led by the Spirit into the wilderness or desert. It is the word “led” that grabbed my attention and I didn’t read past this word. Jesus was led. We know the story about what happened. He fasted fourty days and nights and then while in this vulnerable state He was tempted by the Devil to sin. Jesus did not sin. He did not turn the stone to bread and eat.
Following God does not always lead us into nice and neat happy places. Even Jesus was led by the Spirit to the place where He would have to face the Devil. Jesus went into the wilderness with His Father’s affirmation. I never picked up the connection between these two events before. I guess because one part of the story is in chapter three and the other is in chapter four. Some days I think it would be nice to have a Bible without all of these verse numbers and chapters to distract me from the connectedness of the whole book.
The Father loved Jesus for who He is not because of any thing He had done up until His baptism. Jesus went to face the Devil with the Father’s affirmation. I think the Devil wanted Jesus to doubt what God had just spoken to Him. Maybe we fall into sin because we do not fully understand our affirmation from God. We forget our identity in Jesus. Identity in Jesus is hard to understand. That depth of love is hard for me to grasp. It is other…
Jesus taught me something with these passages this morning and I am still struggling to understand the message fully. But silence is not absence.
in pursuit of wild things 
June 15, 2012 at 5:38 pm
So appreciate your honesty and sharing your feelings. I am not good at that or being bold in my faith, afraid of what my family will say, from past experience, slowly I am becoming stronger and more bold, because of my faith and God. I have been asking a lot of the why’s lately with everything going on around me too (miscarriage, accidents, death, children with cancer…). Then when I read in the book we are studying “Asking why isn’t unspiritual. However, if asking this question pushes us further from God rather then drawing us closer to Him, it is the wrong question.” “So if asking the why questions doesn’t offer hope, what will? The what questions. In other words: Now that his has happened, what am I suppose to do with it?”
Remember, God always brings good out of all circumstances.
Thanks for sharing that passage in a different light, never saw that either. Isn’t it amazing how we can read something over and over and then one day, God speaks to us in a different way!
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July 16, 2012 at 3:27 pm
I don’t know, I think sometimes He may want us to ask why to the point that it Does push us away…the Psalmists do so (though not often), and they always come back to end with praise (except one, but I can’t find it right now). God seems to want honesty from us…doesn’t He? He wants to hear Job’s cries of outrage as well as the praises and thanks because he wants ALL of you…not just the “good” parts.
The silence is hard. It’s heartbreaking, unbalancing, infuriating, and may finally provoke a passionate dialogue that, in the end, would never have happened without that period in the desert. It sounds trite, but the silence, while devastating and painful, really can become something redemptive. My prayers for you. Thank you for this post. I love this, “silence is not absence.”
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July 16, 2012 at 6:00 pm
You hit the nail on the head Girdie Fae! (I LOOOVE your name) I know that I always want to show God my best parts and try to hide away the real stuff. We all do that with each other…best face forward and all. But when I started this “get real” chapter in my life…it is hard. I want a real and honest relationship with my God and I was so confused and hurt over the silence. Here I am trying to be honest, be a real Christian seven days a week and this is what happens!!! But, over time I see the value in the silence. And it is humbling that you mention the Psalms because it is in these songs that I went to and found comfort and expression. That was how I realized that He is not absent from me like I first feared. Thank you for your prayers and the drop of water for this desert dweller.
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