Silence.
How often do we get complete silence in our day? From the start of the day when my alarm clock wakes me up until I go to bed, it seems like there is always noise in my life, whether it’s music, talking, television, or whatever the case may be. Even in prayer I find myself listening to music or talking to God without listening. For me it seems like the only time I actually get any silence is when I go to bed. I turn off the TV, turn my phone on “do not disturb,” and for the first time that day I am surrounded by silence. I find it funny that when we rest is the only time we are engulfed in silence.
Silence is the absence of sound in our lives. So often in life I feel that I am being silent when I am in my car and have the volume below 5 on my dial where I can just hear the instruments, not the acoustic. I feel comfortable with music on all the time, but have recently seen that I do need to have some silence in my life. I’ve recently started waking up super early (early for me is 6-6:30) and developing a routine that involves going to the gym and praying. When I get home and start to pray I find myself pretty scared in the silence. I find myself asking where all the noise is. In today’s society, if you don’t have music playing constantly or have some other source of noise or distraction, then you’re doing something wrong.
We have to train ourselves to hear His voice.
I find it very hard sometimes to keep focused in silence, but it’s in the silence that the Lord speaks the loudest. You can see it in Scripture countless times that God speaks to the prophets in the most silent ways. God spoke to Moses through a burning bush, Joseph through his dreams, and Moses through rainbows. I love reading when God speaks to Elijah in the first book of Kings (chapter 19 verses 11-13). The Lord sent a great and powerful wind that tore mountains apart and shattered the rocks, but He wasn’t there. He then sent an earthquake, but he wasn’t there either, and then He sent a fire but once again the Lord was no where to be found. After the fire came a soft, gentle whisper and that was where the Lord was.
God could’ve revealed himself in any of those natural disasters but he chose to speak in a gentle breeze. Why? God speaks to us in whispers because we have to train ourselves to hear His voice.
If God came in a loud booming voice then I feel that He would scare us so much that we wouldn’t want to listen to Him. As we have all heard, God wants a personal relationship with each and every one of us. Since He is love and gives us free will, I feel that He comes in a whisper because He is giving us a chance to listen to him. That is why we need to be silent in our day to be able to find him and rest in him.