Heaven is Silent

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A few years ago I was in a really difficult season of life. I was struggling with a few situations at work and was wearing out quickly. I had already started looking for another job but nothing came through. I felt more than stuck—I felt trapped. So I decided to do what many do—I prayed. I asked God to open another door. Didn’t happen. I asked God to move someone else on. Didn’t happen. I asked God over and over again to engage…and heaven was silent.

Have you ever felt that way? Maybe for you it was something much more serious, an addiction or illness.

My spiritual barometer like most others was so entwined in my socioeconomic health that I defined my spiritual health by it. If I was doing well at work, home, even physically healthy, God was blessing! If I wasn’t doing well in these areas, I needed divine intervention from God to fix it! Even the definition of “health” is subjective.

As we pursue spiritual formation we cannot forget that the purpose is the development of what is eternal. There is a heart that is to be formed. Ultimate blessing isn’t about getting rich or living to be 100 years old. We cannot let our material, physical or social status be a direct reflection of our spiritual progress. The discipline must be pervasive enough to transcend our circumstances.

So hear me out. If you are going through a tough time and it causes you to pray, it could be good, or the silence of heaven that causes patience may be a part of the forming process too. Sometimes the searching appears to point in the wrong direction for a few years. Who’s to say God isn’t using that? Formation by nature isn’t easy, and usually isn’t quick.

Maybe the difficulty you are facing now has the potential to produce something good in you, if you will let it. The loss of temporal things, social status, even health could be forming something eternal in you and this could be your greatest blessing.

How do you learn patience without being in situations that force you to wait?

How do you learn sacrificial love unless you are in situations that require difficult love?

How do you learn the practice of joy unless you are in situations where joy is tough?

How do you learn the practice of peace unless you are in situations where peace seems elusive?

How do you learn the meaning and power of the covenants in marriage until it is difficult to hold to them?

Just maybe sometimes the silence is actually speaking something. Listen closely.


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