GOD'S SILENCE— THEN WHAT?

     "I got this from Osward Chamber's Devotionals at utmost.org. It is something on time, and appropriate for someone like me, who has been on the rocks with her relationship with God. I can't take it in by just a big gulp. I need to take time chewing it, tasting it, and finally, by His grace, digest it down to my inmost self. I hope, His Spirit will remind me about this along the way, if ever I walk away from here again."

Has God trusted you with His silence— a silence that has great meaning? God’s silences are actually His answers. Just think of those days of absolute silence in the home at Bethany! Is there anything comparable to those days in your life? Can God trust you like that, or are you still asking Him for a visible answer? God will give you the very blessings you ask if you refuse to go any further without them, but His silence is the sign that He is bringing you into an even more wonderful understanding of Himself. Are you mourning before God because you have not had an audible response? When you cannot hear God, you will find that He has trusted you in the most intimate way possible— with absolute silence, not a silence of despair, but one of pleasure, because He saw that you could withstand an even bigger revelation. If God has given you a silence, then praise Him— He is bringing you into the mainstream of His purposes. The actual evidence of the answer in time is simply a matter of God’s sovereignty. Time is nothing to God. For a while you may have said, “I asked God to give me bread, but He gave me a stone instead” (see Matthew 7:9). He did not give you a stone, and today you find that He gave you the “bread of life” (John 6:35).

A wonderful thing about God’s silence is that His stillness is contagious— it gets into you, causing you to become perfectly confident so that you can honestly say, “I know that God has heard me.” His silence is the very proof that He has. As long as you have the idea that God will always bless you in answer to prayer, He will do it, but He will never give you the grace of His silence. If Jesus Christ is bringing you into the understanding that prayer is for the glorifying of His Father, then He will give you the first sign of His intimacy— silence.

PLAYING GOD?

Isn't it interesting to be God just for once?-- whatever your image of God is. Being God means being able to control everything. It means having the freedom from the boundaries of space and time. Yes it is interesting, but it can be interestingly dangerous as well. 

Humans have such inclination, whether we are conscious about it or not. We all want to become the gods of our own lives sometimes. We aim to do much in a lesser time, so we tend to overdo a lot of things. Life then,  becomes a race instead of a stroll, which we can slow down and marvel at what life offers us. We want to become "all people" to accomplish much. 

Life is like a drama on a stage. Everyone has his own role to play. The show might mess up if we keep on trying to act on the roles of others-- especially if that role is God's. It is wise to learn our finite parts since we can only do what we can do. The rest is up to God's omnipotence to allow others work on what is not yours to play. 

Most of all, we have to learn to step back to allow God to step in, so that He can do His stuff. Besides, it will please Him if we say,  "...not as I will, but as You will." [Matthew 26:39]