Spiritual Silence

In Old Testament times, we see so often that God warned His people before they were punished. They were so often told to repent and turn away or they would have to suffer. Yet, time and time again, they did not heed the prophets.

The last book of the Old Testament is Malachi. After that, Israel suffered 400 years of silence from God. No prophet, no prophecy, no warnings, no comfort. Nothing. God was silent for a period as long as the time of Reformation until now. But then He personally came with the ultimate Good News.

I don't know how you feel, but sometimes I have felt that I have been in a time of spiritual silence in my life. Times where we ask God something and we get no answer. We sometimes beg and plead with Him and He is silent. Why? What's wrong? Have we been abandoned?

While this question and its answer will be different for different people, often this has a common starting point. We usually fall for the errors that the Israelites themselves fell into. There are three types of common errors that I want to look at today.

First, we have the sin of plurality. This is where we worship God, we acknowledge Him and His power, but we also live in the comfort of the society around us. We see this sin of plurality when we have those who claim to be Christians who support gays as morally right, or take evolution as a possibility that God must have forgotten to mention in Genesis, or think that Christ is one of many ways to God. These are grave errors. This is exactly what happened to Israel and Judah. They did not abandon the worship of God. No, they did worse. They added to it. They took things those around them did and added them to what God had commanded. They worshiped in a politically correct way. God cannot tolerate us trying to 'fix' Him. This is one of the most dangerous evils in our day and in theirs.

Second, we often keep other sin and justify it as not a serious problem because it doesn't bother anyone or because other Christians do it too. The Holy Spirit may convict us of something that we should do, or something we should give up. Then, far too often, we find ourselves making excuses for why we are right and God doesn't know what He is talking about. We know deep down that we are wrong, disobedient, but we think if we stay busy, we won't notice. God will not show us a 10 Step Plan if we cannot obey the simple commands and convictions we already have. Often we hear no more from God because what we have already heard we are not obeying.

Third, we often pray in a wrong manner. We go before God and tell Him exactly what we need done, and how He needs to do it. We ignore praying about other things because we are afraid that He will tell us something we don't want to hear. Instead, we need to come before God in a humble fashion and ask Him for His Will. We need to be obedient not only to what He tells us specifically, but also what we already know to do but somehow hope He won't notice that we aren't doing it.

Conclusion

So what do we do? Well, we obey. You know already what the Spirit wants you to do. He will convict you of sin and of righteousness. As God in you, the Holy Spirit will show you what needs to be done. We need to pray to God for forgiveness and understanding if we have fallen into one of these traps or pitfalls. We need to ask Him to fill us and to lead us. Then we need to be faithful stewards and obedient servants.