Walking With Christ

Adam and Eve, Moses, Samuel, David, Isaiah, Elijah, Saul (who would then become Paul), John, and a lot of others in the bible have heard the voice of God speaking directly to them. I’ve heard it argued that God stopped speaking to us after the last prophet died, but I’ve also heard that God still speaks to us. While I’m firmly in the ‘He still speaks to us’ group, I’m not going to argue too much with the ones who think otherwise. Perhaps their personal experience has taught them that God is passively watching things unfold as the prophecies foretold.

Almost all of those who are mentioned to have heard directly from God also mention times when He is silent. For Adam and Eve, God was silent while they ate the forbidden fruit. Psalm 22:1 begins with, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?”(ESV) as David lamented at the silence of God.

I would argue that the silence of God speaks volumes to His character and who He is. A situation where a single person speaks for the entire time is called a lecture. God doesn’t want to lecture us, even though He will if needed. He wants a relationship with us. A relationship requires communication. Communication is a two-way street of information. Yes, God knows anything that we might want to say to Him, but that isn’t the point. We can’t teach God anything. If we can’t teach God anything, then why would He care enough to pause for us to give Him an answer?

The teacher is always quiet during a test. This hits the nail on the head, as it were, but it also misses so much of the value in His silence. Plants need rain, but if it constantly rains then many plants can’t grow. If a parent always speaks but never listens then the child will rarely, if ever, speak. It isn’t that God can’t speak and listen at the same time. It’s more that He knows that we can’t do both at the same time very well. Faith comes by hearing, so God speaks to us. The sharing of faith only comes through the sharing of testimony, so we must speak what we have heard.

A person could spend most of their life studying just the book of Job and still only scratch the surface. Job suffers through most of the book and God remains silent. God remains silent until Job 38 when God delivers one of the most painful rebukes I’ve ever heard in verse 4, “Where were you when I laid the foundation of the earth?”.(ESV) That had to hurt. Translation: Who are you to question me?

I think that I would argue that God speaks to us every day. He speaks to us all the time. I think that most people are just so used to that voice being there that they can’t really hear it anymore. It’s like the ticking of a clock on the wall. At first, it’s loud and you can hear it anywhere in the house, but after a bit, you have to really focus to know that it’s still there. When we get anxious or scared is when He is silent for a moment. Like the ticking of the clock that we can’t hear anymore, it’s unsettling when that ticking stops because it can take us a bit to figure out exactly what is wrong. We can be really shaken by this shift until we figure it out. We know that something is off, but we can’t put out finger on the reason for it. This can flow into every other part of our lives.