“When
He had heard therefore that he was sick, He abode two days in the same place
where he was.” John 11:6
Has God
trusted you with a silence – a silence that is big with meaning? God's silences
are His answers. Think of those days of absolute silence in the home at
Bethany! Is there anything analogous to those days in your life? Can God trust
you like that, or are you still asking for a visible answer? God will give you
the blessings you ask if you will not go any further without them; but His
silence is the sign that He is bringing you into a marvellous understanding of
Himself. Are you mourning before God because you have not had an audible
response? You will find that God has trusted you in the most intimate way
possible, with an absolute silence, not of despair, but of pleasure, because He
saw that you could stand a bigger revelation. If God has given you a silence,
praise Him, He is bringing you into the great run of His purposes. The
manifestation of the answer in time is a matter of God's sovereignty. Time is
nothing to God. For a while you said – “I asked God to give me bread, and He
gave me a stone.” He did not, and to-day you find He gave you the bread of
life.
A wonderful
thing about God's silence is that the contagion of His stillness gets into you
and you become perfectly confident – “I know God has heard me.” His silence is
the proof that He has. As long as you have the idea that God will bless you in
answer to prayer, He will do it, but He will never give you the grace of
silence. If Jesus Christ is bringing you into the understanding that prayer is
for the glorifying of His Father, He will give you the first sign of His
intimacy – silence.