Editor’s Note:  The author of this article, Josh Havens, is co-founder and co-director of the online discipleship ministry, Daily Growth Discipleship, a ministry whose mission is perfectly described in its name.  He serves at Global University, a worldwide distance learning pioneer, integrates education and service in 150 countries. He is also a senior member of Journey Pastoral Coaching, and represents Journey to ministers and ministries across the country.  

Silence is an interesting experience…  

Imagine you’ve traveled a long way to hear your favorite preacher or teacher speak to you personally. The time comes for him or her to open with a profound statement that will change your life, but instead, they stare at you for minutes on end in complete silence and then walk out of the room. 

You would feel a little curious, confused, frustrated, or even a little embarrassed. Or somehow it would make you curious about what they were going to do, drawing you in even more. 

We don’t have a problem with an experience like this if we know it’s coming. The real problem we have is unplanned silence. When we don’t know what’s happening or if anything is expected of us. We begin to think that something is supposed to be happening right now, but it isn’t. We start to experience feelings that remind us that we aren’t in control. And we start to crave the thing that’s going to happen next even more. 

If you were told ahead of time that your mentor was going to stare at you for 10 minutes in silence, leave for two minutes, and then return to speak, you’d be alright and wouldn’t think much of it. Sure, you might get a bit fidgety at times, but we all do! It’s not this planned silence that causes us problems. It’s the silence when we feel out of control that drives us crazy.  

It’s one thing to experience those feelings for 10 minutes in private. It’s another thing entirely when God is silent in your life for weeks or months on end. When everyone around you expects you to hear from God, but you secretly fear he’s abandoned you forever. 

Some of us are so afraid of a negative confession that we have closed ourselves off to reality. We don’t want to admit God isn’t speaking because we think it somehow demonstrates our lack of faith. We get so accustomed to feeling good or to hearing God speak that when we don’t feel good or when he doesn’t speak, we think, “There’s no way this can be real. I must be doing something wrong or just not hearing him.” 

You’re Not Alone 

I know this has been a long couple of years for many of you. I know some of your stories; the world and life have not been kind to you lately. I want to let you know God is here with you. He knows your pain. He may be silent right now, but he is not absent. 

In Psalm 22 we find a heart-wrenching song of David. Of all the Old Testament writers, I don’t think anyone engages the deep feelings of their heart more than this man (take a moment to read it now).  

You know David’s life story. The least of his brothers, ignored by his father when it came time to anoint the next king, hunted by Saul, plagued by wars, adulterer, murderer, dysfunctional relationships with his children, and the list goes on. This same David was called twice in Scripture a man after God’s own heart. And it’s this same David who lays out his heart in the middle of God’s silence and says, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” 

It’s these same words, that Jesus quoted in his deepest pain. This psalm is often called one of the messianic psalms because it so closely follows the things that happened to Jesus during the crucifixion and what would happen because of his resurrection. I find this a powerful demonstration of who God is both in David’s life and especially in the life of Jesus. 

In addition to this, throughout history, we have examples of men and women of God who experienced this kind of silence from their father. In the 16^th century, a Spanish Carmelite monk, John of the Cross, led a counter-reformation within the Carmelite order, urging people to desire God alone and to devote themselves to prayer and contemplation. As a result, he was locked in a 6’x10’ cell for nine months with nothing but bread, water, and salted fish to eat. It was during this imprisonment for teaching others to pursue God that God went silent, leading John of the Cross to describe it as the Dark Night of the Soul. 

We read passages throughout Scripture where God answers prayers and promises to be there. Jesus even told us all we had to do was ask and we would receive. So, what do we do when the prayers we pray and the tears we cry seem to go unanswered? When our pain is excruciating and it feels like God doesn’t care? What do we do when our loved ones continue to get sick and die? What do we do when it feels like God doesn’t exist anymore? What do we do when God goes silent…? 

I want to present four opportunities we have when God goes silent. In Psalm 22, David does an excellent job walking through each of these opportunities and responding well. Some of these can be painful, but they can all be fruitful. If we can learn to accept the pain of God’s silence, we can begin the work that can happen only in that silence. 

In the Screwtape Letters, C.S. Lewis describes this work like this: 

He will set them off with communications of His presence which, though faint, seem great to them, with emotional sweetness, and easy conquest over temptation. But He never allows this state of affairs to last long. Sooner or later He withdraws, if not in fact, at least from their conscious experience, all those supports and incentives. He leaves the creature to stand up on its own legs—to carry out from the will alone duties which have lost all relish. It is during such trough periods, much more than during the peak periods, that it is growing into the sort of creature He wants it to be. Hence, the prayers offered in the state of dryness are those which please Him best… He wants them to learn to walk and must therefore take away His hand; and if only the will to walk is really there He is pleased even with their stumbles. 

These four opportunities that we’re going to look at are your chance to learn to walk in a fallen world where bad things happen to good people. And they allow the silence to take on purpose and meaning if you accept the silence and God’s decision to take away his hand for the moment. He wants you to learn to walk. 

1. SILENCE TRIGGERS MEMORY 

In Psalm 22:1-5, David, in the middle of his pain, cries out for help but gets no answers. Then in verse 3, he begins with a one-word twist: “Yet…” And he immediately brought back to his thinking all the times in the past God answered his ancestors. He reminded himself who God is. He didn’t deny the reality of God’s silence, but he also didn’t deny the reality of God’s past answers. “You are holy… you delivered them… you rescued them…” 

And it’s in this same context that Jesus quoted these words as he hung on the cross. He was saying, “I feel the pain, and it feels like God is absent… Yet… God is holy, God delivers, God rescues.” 

When things don’t go the way we expect them to, one of our first responses is frustration (which we’ll get to in a second). But quickly following that, we ask an important question: “Why?”  

Here’s what’s great about this question. It can seem like we’re questioning God and doubting him. Some would even want to tell us we don’t have enough faith; we just have to trust God more. But let’s flip the paradigm here. Sometimes we ask the why question because our experience contradicts what we think we know to be true. 

At any given point today, you probably haven’t given gravity a second thought. It’s there, and you take it for granted that when you put one foot in front of the other that your foot will be pulled toward the ground. If suddenly you were to take a step and your foot didn’t do that, you’d start wondering why that happened. In other words, the absence of gravity reminded you of the way gravity behaved in the past. 

When God goes silent, you begin to ask, “Why?” If you want to find purpose in God’s silence, use these why questions as an opportunity to remind yourself who God is and what he’s done in the past. 

2. SILENCE EXPOSES FLAWS 

This opportunity is the most painful one. It’s also consequently the opportunity we least look for when God is silent. In Psalm 22:6-8, David was sucked back into negative thoughts and the opinions of others around him: “I am a worm and not a man… I’m scorned, despised, mocked… The God in whom I trust isn’t coming to my rescue…” David was becoming aware of his weakness and inability to control the situation. And it’s at that moment he had an opportunity to do something with those weaknesses. 

When God is silent you can take advantage of this opportunity as well by examining the ugly things that come out of your heart. John of the Cross described it like this: 

With respect also to spiritual sloth, beginners are apt to be irked by the things that are most spiritual, from which they flee because these things are incompatible with sensible pleasure. For, as they are so much accustomed to sweetness in spiritual things, they are wearied by things in which they find no sweetness. If once they failed to find in prayer the satisfaction which their taste required (and after all it is well that God should take it from them to prove them), they would prefer not to return to it: sometimes they leave it; at other times they continue it unwillingly. And thus because of this sloth they abandon the way of perfection (which is the way of the negation of their will and pleasure for God’s sake) for the pleasure and sweetness of their own will, which they aim at satisfying in this way rather than the will of God. 

And many of these would have God will that which they themselves will, and are fretful at having to will that which He wills, and find it repugnant to accommodate their will to that of God. Hence it happens to them that oftentimes they think that that wherein they find not their own will and pleasure is not the will of God; and that, on the other hand, when they themselves find satisfaction, God is satisfied. Thus, they measure God by themselves and not themselves by God, acting quite contrarily to that which He Himself taught in the Gospel, saying: That he who should lose his will for His sake, the same should gain it; and he who should desire to gain it, the same should lose it. 

There’s nothing quite like the experience of God’s silence to expose your flaws. When things are good, we think God is good. When things are bad, we get frustrated and feel our will and our ambition thwarted. But hear me out… this is a good thing. When God goes silent, use this opportunity to examine your flaws that come to the surface. All the anger and frustration you feel reveal part of you that still hasn’t fully surrendered to God’s will. And that revelation is a good thing. Don’t let it depress you. He’s shaping you and forming you during this time. Celebrate that! 

3. SILENCE CREATES DESIRE 

This opportunity makes the most sense to me. At least, it’s the easiest for me to understand. In Psalm 22:9-21, David responded to God’s silence with a prayer to be close. With all the problems and threats in his life, he ran back to God and prayed, “Be not far from me… I am poured out like water, but do not be far off… Deliver me… Save me…” 

It’s a terribly old cliché, but absence does make the heart grow fonder. And in this case, when God goes silent, we have the opportunity to realize just how much we do rely on him. When things are going well, when we’re in those peak periods of life, our outlook on life is great and we don’t recognize our need for God all the time. It’s like breathing. We don’t consciously think about the breath, and we take it for granted. Take that breath away, though, and we remember immediately just how much we need it. 

We nurture our desire for God by reminding ourselves of who he is and by continuing in prayer. This is difficult when we feel numb, hopeless, and broken. But it’s in these periods of dryness and numbness that our prayers change us more so than our prayers in the periods of happiness. 

I’ve found using liturgy and pre-written prayers in these situations to be helpful. When I’m dry and going through a dark night, I don’t know what to say. I may not even have anything to say at all. But if the prayer is already written down, and all I need to do is read it and think about the words I’m saying, those prayers serve as a reminder of who God is. They’re like a crutch for me to use when my prayer legs don’t function. As we saw in the last opportunity, maybe I’ve even been relying on my ability to pray as a sign of my spiritual maturity. 

When God goes silent, use this opportunity to meditate on how necessary God is for your life, for every breath, every heartbeat. You had no say in your creation, and you have no say in your mortality. He sustains all of it. Let that craving for him in the periods of his silence grow. Foster and nurture that craving. It’s the one craving in life you can indulge in freely and limitlessly. 

4. SILENCE MOTIVATES WITNESS 

This final opportunity comes because of God’s silence, often after it’s ended. And it’s where we’re faced with a choice. How are we going to respond to God’s silence? In Psalm 22:22-31, David chooses to respond by turning outward in witness. He says, “I will tell of your name to my brothers… I will praise you… God hasn’t hidden his face from me… He heard me when I cried out to him… Let everyone see how great God is!” 

When we experience God’s silence, it’s really an opportunity for growth into the kind of creature he wants us to be. Though it doesn’t feel like it now, that’s a good thing. Our growth is something to be celebrated. We don’t have to deny the reality of the pain that comes along with it. But neither should we deny the growth that’s taking place. 

To deny that growth would be to deny God’s work in your life. It would be an assertion that your will was greater than God’s will. Again, silence exposes our flaws. Instead, when God goes silent, take advantage of the opportunity, and rejoice in the growth he’s producing in your life. Tell others about it. Celebrate the joy of becoming more like him. 

This response isn’t natural for us though. We want to deal with our pain. We want to focus on that problem and remove it. We don’t want others to know that God isn’t speaking to us, so we hide our pain and our fear. And so, when God goes silent, we’re faced with a choice. 

Conclusion: You Choose How to Respond 

There are three responses to the silence of God. These three responses mirror the three types of Christians who develop after a lifetime of following Jesus.  

First is the bitter. These are those Christians who sit in the 7^th row of church and carry a basket of lemons with them everywhere they go. It’s the only way they can keep the constant puckered look that gives off that pious vibe they think they’re giving off. When God goes silent, these Christians ignore him; they turn their back on the situation and deny reality. All the while bitterness against God begins to grow in their hearts. They start to resent God because he isn’t talking to them. After all, they don’t “feel” the good things anymore. They also start to resent the people around them who do hear God speak. You’ll see the same reaction from your kids or grandkids if you give one of them a bag of candy and the other just a single tootsie roll. The bitter Christians want nothing more than to hear God’s voice again and to feel good, but they want that for the wrong reasons. Their goal is to feel good about themselves and their holiness again, not necessarily to spend time with their father. 

You might be on the path to becoming bitter if you go to church and spend most of your time thinking about how everyone else could improve. You know the right songs to play, the spiritual disciplines to practice, and all the right clothes to wear on a Sunday morning. You might even find yourself bristling a bit as I describe those patterns. The ultimate form of a bitter person is the Pharisee who was praying in the temple and said, “Lord, I thank you that I’m not like that tax collector.” 

Then there are the cruisers. These have experienced God’s silence and been thoroughly frustrated by it. But, unlike the bitter, this group decides to accept the reality that God hasn’t spoken. It could be something they’ve done or just that God’s given up on them. Now they’ve decided to hit the cruise control and just lie back to let life take them wherever it takes them. They’ve tried all they can, and they’re just done.  

You might be a cruiser if you find yourself just numb to everything in life. You’ve given up and there’s no attempt to even try anymore. Sure, you may go through the routine of praying and reading your Bible, but that’s all it is, routine. You’re waiting out the clock, just waiting for your race to be over. 

Finally, some go deeper. They become an endless supply of rich and meaningful life. It overflows from them into everyone they meet, and you just know they’ve been with Jesus. 

You might be going deeper if you’ve experienced the silence of God, but it didn’t drive you away. It didn’t leave you in a state of denial or with a sense that God is never going to come back. Instead, it was like catching a glimpse of your lover in a crowd only to have them disappear. It’s left you with a desire in your heart that pulls you forward into a pursuit. You don’t know where you’re going, but there’s something out there that you can’t explain. 

It’s like when Jesus asks the disciples, “Do you want to leave me too?” and they answer, “Where would we go? You alone have the words of eternal life.” It’s as though there’s something in his absence and silence that has captured your heart and pulled you toward him even more. 

Which of these three responses will you have when God goes silent? Maybe God is silent in your life right now and has been for some time. If you’re feeling bitter toward God because he’s not there, take that to him. Take it to another believer you trust. You need to deal with that bitterness honestly if you want it to heal. Pastoral coaching, especially here at Journey, is a great place for this to happen. 

If you find yourself on cruise control, I want to encourage you to dive back into the painful moments. It could be that you’ve ignored one of the four opportunities we’ve looked at this morning. This isn’t an easy or pleasant thing to do, so I would encourage you to talk with a coach you trust (which, by the way, all of us need a coach).  

If you’re in the sweet and deep group, please make sure you’re sharing your story and giving God the credit he deserves. We, the body of Christ, need to hear more from you. Don’t hold back. It could be that you need to start coaching others. You know the pitfalls and temptations when God goes silent. Your wisdom can help others when they take a similar journey. 

Finally, if you’re not sure which of these three you might be leaning toward now, you’re just in the middle of pain and don’t even know what to do. I want you to know you’re not alone, this isn’t a strange experience for those following Jesus. I know sometimes part of the struggle is even being able to describe the struggle with words.  

I’ll leave you with the words of a song that did just that for me by Andrew Peterson called The Silence of God. 

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“Of all vocations, surely the gospel ministry is the one whose paradigm is most radically formed by the dynamics of godly mentorship.” 

Stephen Baldwin