Hey everyone. Welcome to today's word of encouragement. Today I want to talk about something that we will all go through at one point or another in our walk with God, and that's silence. So I guess we could begin by asking the question, what does it mean to you to walk with Jesus?
What does it really mean to live by faith? I want to guarantee you today that God is active in our lives through His Holy Spirit in every detail. But walking with Jesus is not always going to produce an endless series of miracles and burning bush moments. It's not always going to give us goosebumps or a constant feeling of peace.
Many times you're going to have to walk through valleys, dark valleys, with no sense of God's presence. But you know what? That's probably where we grow the most as believers. So have you ever felt that?
Have you ever felt distant from God? If you haven't yet, then you will. There will be days when you can't feel God's closeness. Every believer has times in which they go through where they feel God is distant and absent.
So why is it that Chris Christians we assume that silence from heaven means something has gone wrong, that God has abandoned us somehow. Why do we interpret silence as loneliness all the time? The Bible tells us that God's apparent silence is an important part of how he works in our lives and how we can grow to be the man or woman of faith that he wants us to be. I want to encourage you today to continue to trust in God even during the moments of silence.
David Wilkerson in his book It Is Finished says He is asking us. In other words, God is asking us for two simple things. Denial of all self dependency and uncomplicated devotion. There's going to be times in your life just like there was in the times of the greatest prophets and saints in the Bible.
They felt the absence of God as well. One example is Gideon in Judges 6:13. He says, if the Lord is with us, were all his wonderful deeds that our fathers told us about. In other words, Gideon says, I hear people talking about it, but I haven't experienced it for myself.
What happened with God's promises of provision and blessing? Maybe you felt this way. The prophet Isaiah says something similar in Isaiah 64. 3.
He says, when you came down long ago, you did awesome deeds beyond our highest expectations. And oh, how the mountains quaked. Do you feel like that? Maybe you feel like the last time God showed up in your life was long ago.
Just like the prophet Isaiah. Isaiah is saying, God, where are youe? Where are Your powerful, awe inspiring works. In my day, both Isaiah and Gideon had both heard of the mighty things God did in the past.
And they are in a moment in their life where they find themselves asking God, where are you now? The experience of feeling like God is absent or silent is nothing new. So why does God give us feeling that way sometimes? And what should we do during those times?
I want to show you that Christianity is not based only on stories of the past. God is and continues to be with us today. Let me give you some examples. God exiled Moses into the wilderness for 40 years to hurt sheep before leading Israel out of slavery.
But God did finally appear to him in a burning bush. Another very well known character in the Bible was King David. After being anointed as future king of Israel by Samuel, he didn't go straight to the palace. He didn't go immediately to confront and fight Goliath.
1 Samuel 16 tells us that he went straight back to herding sheep for many, many years before he was able to sit on the throne of Israel. Listen, there's going to be a time between the call of God and the fulfillment of the dream. I'm sure David at times might have felt confused. But David somehow learned to make the most of the time that he had.
He turned that time of loneliness into a time of devotion where he learned how to wait on God. Are you in that waiting room of life right now? Waiting is usually the hardest part of life to endure. Waiting can be different for many people.
Some of you are waiting during things like silence. Waiting can mean singleness. Waiting can mean sickness. Waiting can even be unfulfilled promises or unmet expectations.
Being the person God wants you to be is going to take time. Another example is Abraham. God called him when he was 75, promised him many descendants. But it took 25 years for he and his wife to have one child and not many.
So God spent over 100 years preparing Abraham for that one act of faith where he asked him to sacrifice his son Isaac in that one act of faith that he was prepared for 100 years for would define the rest of his life. Sometimes it feels like God isn't moving. But know this. The way God tests your faith could be preparation for that one defining moment in your life that is going to change absolutely everything.
So why does God leave us sometimes feeling alone, deserted, humiliated and abandoned? Like he doesn't care? I don't know the full answer to that, but I know that part, the of. Part of it has to do with the fact that he wants us to walk by faith and not by sight.
And walking by faith means sometimes pressing on when we can't feel or see Him. Shame, loneliness, suffering. All of it has a purpose. I can't tell you exactly why you feel the way you do, but I can tell you first that you're not alone during difficult times.
Walking by faith means exactly that. Believing that we are not alone when we can't feel God's presence. God allows moments of despair and loneliness because it drives us to ask one important question. Why do we want to be close to God?
Is it because of what he gives us? Or is it simply because of the pleasure of knowing him and having communion with Him? What's more valuable to you, God or His blessings? God will sometimes withhold things from us in order to make us ask ourselves, is God enough for me?
And that's the question we should ask ourselves today. Crazy enough. I'd like to quote David Wilkerson again. He says you must experience the cross before you can understand it.
I'll finish this podcast by asking a very important question, one that the survival of your faith depends on. Can you walk by faith in God's promises alone, even when you can't see or feel anything? Until next time You've been listening to the daily 5. Apply the word and make today count.