Do Not Keep Silence
“O God, do not keep silence; do not hold your peace or be still, O God!”
Psalm 83:1
Have you ever been through a season in life where God has felt distant and silent?
I would bet that most clergy members have struggled with this dilemma at some point in their life — even recently. In a world where there is so much noise bombardment, trying to seek the will of God and hear His voice among all others can be difficult. Not hearing God’s voice through the business and chaos can weigh heavy on our hearts and makes for very hard seasons of faith.
However, the Psalmist would reassure and remind us that these seasons come to us all. No matter how deep our longing is to walk closely with God or our commitment and pursuit of Him, sometimes, there are seasons where He feels distant. We feel that we have been left to figure it all out on our own.
In these times, the Psalms are my spiritual refuge — the Psalms and other songs that God has used to speak to me over the years. In this Psalm, you can feel the desperation from the Psalmist that God would finally break in. How reassuring it is to know that we are not the first to feel His absence.
These days, “the only way out is through” — we must clutch at the faith and hold fast to words like these that remind us we are neither the first nor the last to go through this season. We must hang on tightly to all the times when we’ve heard God speak, sensed His presence, or made decisions with God at the center that have proven to be utterly trustworthy.
However, these words offer something more as well: they provide a way to keep going, a way to keep reaching out, to not give up — God loves to hear our prayers in any season and He would rather hear our anger, frustration, our guilt or troubles than not hear from us at all.
The God you are waiting to hear from today is living and active, so keep asking that He will meet with you. There will be a day when this season will make sense, and you will hear His voice again.
In the meantime: O God, do not keep silence;
do not hold your peace or be still. Amen.
