Heart Tracks - Intimacy Of Silence

"Although Jesus loved Martha, Mary, and Lazurus, He stayed where He was for the next two days and did not go to them." John 11:5-6...."If Jesus Christ is bringing you into the understanding that prayer is for the glorifying of His Father, He will give you the first sign of His intimacy; silence." Oswald Chambers

"Jesus loves me this I know, for the Bible tells me so." Growing up, my family would sporadically try to be regular church goers. It never lasted long, but I remember some of the things that I was taught in the Sunday School I went to as a child. One of the foremost was the lyric from the above song. I can remember singing it when I was no more than 5 or 6 years old. I never realized then, or even in my first days of walking with Him, how I would need to trust in its truth...and many times over.

We tend to give the message in the western church that Jesus has dedicated Himself to making our lives "good." He brings about desired outcomes, comes running to our cries, and like so many of our favorite TV programs, clears up our deep crisis situations in a neat 1 hour package. A silent Jesus is not One we know of. A Jesus who seems to look on while our chaos spirals ever more out of control isn't either. A Jesus who sees our deep need, our pain, sorrow, and hurt, yet does nothing, or seemingly so, is not a Jesus we care to know. Yet it is Jesus as He really is. He will take us into periods of silence, sometimes long ones, saying nothing, while the pain, the need, only deepens. Chambers asks, can He trust us with His silence? Can He trust you?

When Jesus got word that Lazarus was desperately ill, a situation He already knew of before the message came, He did nothing...or seemingly so. He waited two days, and in those two days, Lazarus died. The sisters Mary and Martha believed He'd failed them. The disciples did too. Jesus said that in His silence was a pathway to behold the glory of God, and it was so. He raised Lazarus from the dead. He had given the sisters the intimacy of His silence, but they missed it. How often do we as well. Are we missing it now?

I heard someone say recently that His silence causes us to run into ourselves, who we really are. I know there is truth in that, but even more, His silence will cause us, if we go there, to run right into Him. His silence is an invitation to go deeper into His Life, deeper into knowing who He is. Deeper into discovering that the One who says He loves us, really does, and more deeply than we could have imagined. He has told us He loves us, promised us that He would never leave or forsake us. In His silence, we are faced with whether we will believe that, trust that. If we will, we'll run right into Him, and the result will be a deeper intimacy than we've ever had....and all of it for the glory of God. All the pain the sisters experienced vanished with the raising of Lazarus. The pain had been real. Jesus and His work and life was more real. It will be so for us as well....when we prove His trust in us in the time of His silence.

Where is He silent in your life right now? Where have you been crying out? How do you respond? Anger, accusation, rejection? I have learned, and continue to learn to trust Him in the silence. There is pain in that....and glory. He waits, sometimes for great lengths of time, but He is never late. Not by His reckoning of timing. He will bring life out of death. He will bring glory to the Father, and good to us. Likely nothing will take place as we had hoped for or expected, but we will, in the end, know anew that He is good. In the silence, trust Him, and discover in Him, a Jesus you never knew, but now do.

Blessings,
Pastor O