God Is Not Silent
A verse I often bring up in this devotional is Matthew 11:28 NIV, where Jesus says, “Come to me, all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest.” It reminds me that our faith in God is not a stagnant chore but an active adventure. We don’t just have the history of the church or the testimony of the word. We also have the living presence of God within us.
Jesus explains this in John 14:25-26, saying, “All this I have spoken while still with you. But the Advocate, the Holy Spirit, whom the Father will send in my name, will teach you all things and will remind you of everything I have said to you.” The Spirit helps us as we seek the Lord and bring to remembrance his word. God leads us, challenges us, and engages with us as we follow him. There’s no way around it.
It’s vitally important that believers learn to hear the voice of God. I get greatly discouraged at the fruit of churches that serve a silent God. It looks like empty religion, passionless worship, dead prayers, and hopeless situations getting crammed into the closets. Sometimes, it looks like glamorized appearances, shallow motivational sermons, or rigid religious routines. It amazes me what lengths we go to in an attempt to keep our faith in God “safe.”
God is not a silent God but rather a living, active, and speaking God. He says in his Word, “Come to me,” but that was not and will not be the last time he calls to his people. He says it today, “Come to me.” And he speaks in countless other passages with invitations to respond to him.
To follow God faithfully, we need to learn how to hear and respond to his voice. Still, this doesn’t happen in a vacuum. We would be mistaken to try and shut ourselves off from the world, the church, and the Bible and try to “hear” something in the solitude. Perhaps a rhythm of solitude will enrich your spiritual life, but isolation from the foundations of God’s church will only result in false ideas about who God is and who we are in him.
Hearing the voice of God may seem abstract and inaccessible, but remember that we have God’s word in front of us. I occasionally see an idea related to this pop up on social media. It goes something like, “Don’t say God is silent if your Bible is closed.” Some might take that too far and suggest that God only speaks through the scriptures, but this is not the case.
We can quickly fall into deception when we take the council of God’s word out of the equation, but God still speaks, and you are hardwired to hear him. Nothing the Holy Spirit says will ever contradict the word of God, and nothing the word of God says will ever contradict the voice of the Spirit.This is how we know we can be tethered to the word of God and still respond to a living and active God!
Read what Paul says in Romans 8:14-16 NIV. “For those who are led by the Spirit of God are the children of God. The Spirit you received does not make you slaves, so that you live in fear again; rather, the Spirit you received brought about your adoption to sonship. And by him we cry, ‘Abba, Father.’ The Spirit himself testifies with our spirit that we are God’s children.”
Why would Paul say that the children of God are marked by the leading of the Spirit of God if the Holy Spirit was not presently, continually, and foundationally speaking to the hearts of believers? Why, or how, would our spirit cry out by God’s Spirit, “Abba, Father,” if we were not in continual communion with God? How would God’s Spirit testify to our spirit that we are God’s children without somehow breaking the barrier and telling us that it is so?
God is not silent. He speaks.
