When I was in college, I took a class on Spiritual Disciplines and was fascinated to learn more about some of the disciplines that are out there as well as get to practice some of them. These disciplines included fasting, simplicity, meditation, etc. The one I found the most interesting though is the Spiritual Discipline of Silence.
The purpose of these spiritual disciplines is all for the purpose of glorifying God, or hearing from God! You would think that it would be easy to hear from God in practicing silence. I thought the same thing, but it took me some work. As an introvert silence is easy for me! I love being in silence and not having any noise to disrupt me. In fact, I sometimes get annoyed when noise disrupts my silence.
Think about silence for a second though. How often do you just sit in silence? Are you okay with sitting in silence? One of the things I find so fascinating about silence is that silence can be amplified when we’re among other people! When a room of 100 people get silent, the silence almost seems to be so loud!
There’s enough noise in the world to distract us from many things, but especially God’s voice. What happens if we let the silence distract us from God’s voice? It’s easy to miss the whispers that God gives us when there is noise, but I think it’s even easier to miss His whispers when we are in silence. UNLESS, we are being intentional about hearing from God. Praying that God would whisper and break the silence. He can and He will!
Look at Genesis 1:2-3, “The earth was formless and empty, and darkness covered the deep waters. And the spirit of God was hovering over the surface of the waters. [SILENCE] Then God said, “Let there be light,” and there was light.”
God broke the silence and nothing was the same after that.
What if we are simply just in seasons of silence. Formless and empty like the earth. What if instead of letting the silence consume us, we allowed for God to speak in our seasons of silence? As the silence can be amplified in a room of 100 people being quiet, the voice of God can be amplified in the silence if we allow His voice to be.
I’ll close with this:
Psalm 46:10, “Be still, and know that I am God! I will be honored by every nation. I will be honored throughout the world.”
Be still, be silent before the Lord and listen for His amplified whisper.