Heart Tracks - The Voice Of Silence

     Writer and speaker Alicia Britt Chloe says, "Silence forces us to come face to face with ourselves."  Unsaid was that it will also bring us face to face with Him.  We don't like silence, at least not in large or long doses.  We want activity, a sense of movement.....noise.  It's one of the great reasons personal devotions can be so difficult for us.  This reality is definitely seen in our corporate worship.  For proof, we need only look at the "average" worship service in the western church.  We do a great deal, most, of the talking.  The worship team leads us as we sing, the pastor, or some other person leads us as we pray.  The pastor or whoever is preaching that day speaks to us as we listen....or at least try to.  There may be an invitation to act on what has been preached, and the invitation may be received and people come to pray, usually as there is some kind of music played in the background.  Then the service closes, hopefully not too much past noon, and we either spend some time mingling with others, or we head directly to our cars and drive home.  We have said much for the Lord, much to the Lord, but what have we really heard from the Lord?  Who has done most of the talking?

     I was blessed to hear Chloe speak this past weekend.  She didn't disappoint, and she did something I don't recall seeing much of in our corporate worship.  A number of times during her message, she just stopped and invited people to silently reflect on just what the Lord had been saying through her.  She'd told us she was going to do this, saying that, "Some of you will love this, and some of you will love this a lot less."  Which category do you and I fall into?  Many of us can be very uncomfortable when the movement, activity, and.....noise, are taken away.  All that's left is ourselves, and God.  We so often don't know what to do with that situation.  Silence is something we fear, especially if we feel it's God who's being silent.  Yet, is He really?  Could it be that we're so unused to silence that we're unable to hear His voice in its midst because our spiritual ears have been so clogged with the activity, movement, and noise of the world?  One translation renders I Kings 19:12, which finds Elijah in a cave listening to God, "And after the earthquake a fire, but the Lord was not in the fire; and after the fire, the sound of sheer silence."  But silence doesn't have a sound...or does it?  For Elijah, and for us, the sound in the sheer silence is the voice of God.  Can we hear it?  Have we ever heard it?  We say that God is being silent, and sometimes He is, but could it be that in that silence, He's seeking to rid our minds and hearts of all the noise we've grown so used to that He may then speak all that He has longed to say if only He could get our attention?  Seeking to get the ears of our hearts attuned to Him, so we may listen in the silence, and hear Him?
     Chloe said that the last and greatest foe to be conquered in the life of a believer is self-deception.  That foe is only overcome in the silence, where we come face to face with ourselves, and Him.  Until that happens, we'll continue living in varying states of self-deception.  T.S. Eliot wrote in a poem that we have, "Knowledge of speech, but not of silence.  Knowledge of words, and ignorance of the Word."  Eugene Peterson says we live in an "age of mass communication and minimal communion."  Especially with God.  When we do talk with Him, do we speak of what interests us, or what interests Him?  We "mass communicate" our interests to Him, but He has minimal communion with us as to what HIs interests are.  In the silence, we'll learn differently.  If we'll, in the words of Simon and Garfunkel's song, "listen to the sound of silence," we'll hear Him.  In that place devoid of movement, activity and noise, we'll find Him and truly come to know Him.  Have we found that place?

Blessings,

Pastor O

   
   

---