GodReflection: Silent God: Seeking His Voice
On more than one occasion I’ve heard some who struggle with faith exclaim, “If only God would speak aloud to me it would make belief easier. I could know that He is present”
To the outsider in an “educated world”, we God followers must seem to be a strange lot as we follow a silent God.
Stranger still, we English-speakers claim to talk with this silent God—who has never uttered one word in the English Language—and we tell the outsider that he listens.
When I read my Bible it begins in Genesis 1:3 with the words, “And God Said.”
After the creation of man and woman the first book of the Bible records only limited conversations between God and His new human couple.
Then God’s voice turns silent.
Following the Genesis chronology thousands of years pass before we encounter God’s verbal instructions to Noah. Flood waters rise and recede as does the voice of God.
Then after Noah, thousands of silent years pass before we encounter Abraham.
God records only a handful of conversations with Abraham over his one hundred seventy-five-year lifespan and only a couple of verbal exchanges with his son Isaac during the one hundred eighty years he lived. God spoke with Isaac’s son Jacob a half-dozen times over his walk of one hundred forty-seven years.
And, again God’s voice went silent for at least four hundred years.
That was until Moses found a bush in the desert that burnt brightly long after the fuel source was consumed. The God and Moses conversation took on a life of its own. Maybe their life-long conversation is a preview of the intimacy we will have with the Holy as residents on the newly created earth.
After Moses the next several centuries are met once again with God’s verbal silence. When God’s voice returns He seems to limit announcements and conversation to His appointed judges and His called prophets.
During seven hundred years of judges, prophets and kings, God was in constant communication with His heralding servants.
He only spoke to King David a time or two and with King Solomon twice. Although, it is obvious David and God lived in constant communion.
With the close of the Old Testament’s final book Malachi, the silence of God is encountered over an addition four hundred years prior to the events of the New Testament.
As I read the pages of New Testament Scripture I note the voice of God being audible at Jesus baptism and his transfiguration. That is only twice.
So here we are two thousand years later and God’s voice remains silent.
In my judgment, history builds a rather solid case for a silent God.
Why would Scripture paint a picture of a God who loves me and then encourage me to converse with Him if it is only a one-way conversation?
Is it possible that in my expectation of language being God’s sole mode of communication that I actually miss the language of God?
Maybe I shouldn’t expect Him to speak English? Perhaps God is greater than the limitations of language.
Can it be that God is so close and so present that language on His part is irrelevant?
Will my faith allow me to believe He is so near that he reads my thoughts and responds every time with His presence regardless of my awkward use of my own language and the lack of vowels and consonants from His lips?
Could it be that prayer is not dependent upon language at all but rather is the process of connecting my human heart to His perfect eternal heart?
Perhaps, when heart language is taken into account, God isn’t as silent as He may seem?
Stay tuned.
Dr. Gary J. Sorrells
A GodReflection on Long Intervals—Does God Speak English?
Gary@Godreflection.org www.GodReflection.org
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