Finding God in the silence

A pronounced silence has penetrated the noise of my life in the last few weeks. Not the kind of silence that is barren or banal, but a pregnant silence, an expectant silence. It was at the prayer night a few weeks ago at CV when I really felt God ask me to listen for Him in the silence. Now if any of you reading this know me at all, you'll know that I am by no means a silent person, quite the opposite, and yet God asked me to wait for Him there. What is the significance of that? What is the relevance of not simply what God asks, but the way in which He asks it? Or the context in which He asks it? Naturally I laughed initially, at the sheer absurdity of what He was asking; but as the absurdity subsided and the laughter passed, I was left with the silence itself, not the silence I was meant to be expecting but silence which God was using to get my attention. This was a weird state to find myself in, just in silence, and just waiting.

I felt safe expecting God in a worship set, with the lyrics of How He Loves Us, or Holy washing over me; but silence put me in a state of fear. I feel vulnerable in silence, as though anything can touch me, good or bad and I will just be the victim of whatever will consume me in it, usually my thoughts. But God wanted that vulnerability, that was exactly what He wanted from me, sheer openness, no walls, no protection, naked. It was something He was using to answer a question I had been asking in my head and heart for a while, that being, "Why can't I always hear you as clearly as I want to?" He was telling me what I needed to do to hear Him as clearly as He can hear me.

On sunday I lead worship at CV and felt a transformed sense of expectation in the spirit. I know that I need to step out and risk silence in the worship itself, and that is the next step, but listening for what He's doing, where He's moving, and what He's saying. It is a challenge for any of us, to not want to fill the silence with jobs that we can be doing, places we can be going and messages we can be sending, but He is so worth the wait. Just wait for Him. He's waiting for us.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JdKfSINWyE4