What Do You Do When God Is Silent?
This morning, I was pleasantly surprised to discover an unexpected email from one of America’s most prominent and respected ministers and biblical scholars, Rev. Dr. Renita J. Weems. During the first half of the 1990’s, I was introduced to the power of this wise woman’s words during an extended series of sunny-side-down days when all appeared lost and I feared that my worst nightmare had already come true.
After my great fall, I endured a time, a season, when God’s voice vanished absent any warning whatsoever. It didn’t take long before I found myself feeling hopelessly lost in a darkness so thick that it made me too sick to care whether I lived or died. I doubted myself. When God was silent, I questioned God’s love for me because church folk chastised me and accused me of not having enough faith, for failing to pay the price required for God to bless me? Have you ever been there, done that?
Because of the personal relationship I had established with Jesus Christ, I trusted God even when I didn’t understand the reasons for the prolonged periods of silence. Because of God promise to never leave, nor forsake me, I waited on God despite how uncomfortable it felt to do so. It was definitely a struggle to endure the silence that initially frightened me.
I started writing poetic essays about what God was teaching me to prepare me for an emerging career as a writer and public speaker. Keeping a journal became a necessity because I learned so much during my spiritual crisis that my fears exacerbated when God remained silent. For years, I began writing on anything and everything I could get my hands on. Now, I blog.
I learned how to love me even when my peers hated me, betrayed me, and abandoned me to avoid being seen with someone popular people perceived as a failure. I learned how to listen to what God was speaking to the heart of my soul through the series of books I began writing. I learned how to be still long enough to know that God is still God. During God’s silence, I learned more about myself and God than I ever did during the Sunday morning sermons I listened to.
How many of you are currently experiencing a spiritual crisis because of God’s unexpected silence? When God is silent, what do you expect to learn? What are you learning about yourself right now? Are you beginning to feel secure enough about your intimate, healthy relationship with God to wait upon the Lord, to be still when you want to run away and hide from the truth about yourself?
When God is silent, what do you hear? Whose voice do you hear? Has your faith in God been tested so severely that you can comfortably stand in the face of Adversity without fainting? When God is silent, you will discover whether or not you have the character, confidence, and courage to stand alone when your friends choose to ignore you?
During those spiritual disconnects with God that we all experience, what do you do? Do you start praying vain, repetitious prayers just to avoid the deafening silence that enables you to hear a pin drop? Do you get panicky, become desperate, feel discouraged, or do you keep pretending that all is well with your personal relationship with God?
Who do you run to while trying to escape the discomfort we often feel whenever God leaves us alone to deal with our deepest fears? What do you hear in your inner ear when God’s silence forces you to listen longer than you’d like to your thoughts about you, your life, your calling, your purpose for living?
Who do you choose to listen to when God is silent? What does God’s prolonged silence mean to you? Do you begin wondering whether or not you’re “good enough“? Do you begin pondering the possibility that God doesn’t love you anymore, that you’re not worthy to experience the intimate fellowship you once shared with the Master?
When God is silent, does your soul get filled with doubts about God’s eternal promise to meet your unmet needs? Do you stop acting like the eternally optimistic person you once were and start behaving like your pessimistic peers who question God eternal existence? Do you start thinking nothing but negative thoughts? Does your soul become filled with fear, anger, bitterness, and resentment towards God during the silence that you believe is a betrayal?
Can it be that God is speaking to you by using the silence to get your undivided attention because you kept ignoring the still, small voice you heard when you didn’t like God’s answer to your prayers? If you still doubt that God can speak to you through His silence and still refuse to believe that God can witness to you without words, you haven’t met Rev. Dr. Renita J. Weems.
Listening For God: A Minister’s Journey Through Silence and Doubt, is the title of one of the many insightful books Rev. Dr. Weems penned that I’m adding to our Bookstore under the new category, “Books By And About Women.” The following is a brief excerpt from this courageous, thought-provoking author’s book Listening For God.
“Journal writing is for me a form of prayer. For more than twenty years now it has been my principal way to talk to God. When it began to hurt too much to pray, I started journaling as a substitute. Talking to paper was the only way I knew how to talk to God, and it proved to be an ideal form of prayer because it gave me a way to see what was going on in my heart.”
–Renita J. Weems
Reading Listening For God inspired, encouraged, and empowered me when I needed to hear from God after my great fall. Because Jesus treated all people equally, it didn’t bother me that God had chosen a woman to minister to my cast down soul. In my weakened condition, it didn’t matter how God redeemed, renewed, and restored my socially ostracized soul.
After the fall, I already felt marginalized, diminished and devalued by the sting of the resulting ridicule, rejection, and humiliation my psyche endured due to my personal, financial, and professional failures. When God was silent, I experienced a spiritual crisis that was partly responsible for changing the way I felt about female ministers. I learned to respect the “power of a wise woman’s words.”
It didn’t matter to me that a manifestation of God’s love, grace, and mercy showed up dressed as a woman because my critically ill soul was strengthened by the power of a wise woman’s words. For those of you who have never heard this eloquent orator speak as she teaches and preaches God’s word, I can assure you that you will walk away from your unforgettable experience a changed person.
If you don’t know her inspirational story, you will enjoying reading about what this extraordinary woman did when God was silent. “Something Within” is the name of Rev. Dr. Renita J. Weems’ blog. For reasons now known, it is indeed an honor to introduce this phenomenal woman to all the culturally diverse members of our blended, extended family.
As a sign of respect, let’s tip our hats, extend our hands in peace, and welcome our distinguished guest. May this gifted writer’s inspiring words of wisdom comfort you and keep you from doubting God’s love during His silence.
Copyright 2007 by Roderick O. Solomon. All Rights Reserved.
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4 comments May 25th, 2007
