I have often wondered why, in my quiet life in this beautiful, tranquil, secure retirement village where I now live, God placed me here. His leading, the story of which is too long to tell, was so clear and unmistakable that I can never doubt that it was He, not I, who chose this place for me in my final days. I sometimes even feel guilty for being here while so many of God’s children are in dangerous places, persecuted…even under the threat of death for their faith.
For many months, even years, I have not heard a word from God in my spirit as I have in the past. Why does the Lord seem to be silent? Have I grieved Him so much that He no longer speaks to me?
Abraham’s story gave me the answer.
There is not record of any word from God after Abraham had obeyed the Lord in a dramatic way. To the point of raising the knife to kill his son, he finally obeyed God’s instruction fully and without question. He lived for many years after that, remarried, and even fathered more children. When God said, “Now I know…” seconds before Abraham plunged the knife into his son, He was saying, without another spoken word, “Abraham, you have passed your final test!” From that moment on, Abraham simply walked with God.
Can it be that God has chosen to stay silent because He is teaching me to walk by faith in His written word…that He still speaks but in a different way…and that He only speaks in the way He has done in the past when absolutely necessary…when He needs to give me specific instructions, or to intervene to stop me from doing permanent damage or trespassing into dangerous territory?
God’s silence is not abandonment or indifference. That would be contrary to who He is. I think that His silence is the expression of trust…He is teaching me to follow His word…not spoken in my spirit but written on my heart.
God’s promise to His wayward people through the prophet Jeremiah, fulfilled in the New Covenant in Jesus Christ, was that His word would become the internal compass by which His people would live…not laws and rules imposed upon them but truth freely and deeply embedded in their hearts and lived out in their character.
As I reflect on those times when God spoke directly into my spirit, I realise how much I needed those words…to rebuke my foolishness…to forgive my sin… to correct my waywardness…to steady my wavering faith…to redirect my wandering heart…and to reset the course of my life. Did those words matter? Did they accomplish God’s purpose? Have they done their work? Yes, when I obeyed Him, they did.
God made a promise to His people millennia ago…
“The rain and snow come down from the heavens and stay on the ground to water the earth. They cause the grain to grow, producing seed for the farmer and bread for the hungry. It is the same with my word. I send it out, and it always produces fruit. It will accomplish all I want it to, and it will prosper everywhere I send it.”
Isaiah 55:10-11 NLT
If the soil is ready to receive the seed, it will grow and produce a harvest.
So, I continue, day by day, to hide God’s word in my heart. His word, from cover to cover, from Genesis to Revelation, is the lamp for my feet and the light for my path. No longer a child, I do not, it seems, need to rely on interventions to keep me on course. My direction is set towards God’s goal for me…and for every blood-bought son or daughter of God…to be transformed into the likeness of His Son.
“And we all, who with unveiled faces contemplate the Lord’s glory, are being transformed into his image with ever-increasing glory, which comes from the Lord, who is the Spirit.”
2 Corinthians 3:18 NIV
It is this word, and many like it, that is the “true north” of God’s compass…His written word that He is inscribing on my heart. As my unhurried days, with their normal ups and downs, come and go, I am steadily moving towards the day when I shall be like Him when I see Him as He is.
“Dear friends, now we are children of God, and what we will be has not yet been made known. But we know that when Christ appears, we shall be like him, for we shall see him as he is.”
1 John 3:2 NIV
“Therefore we do not lose heart. Though outwardly we are wasting away, yet inwardly we are being renewed day by day. For our light and momentary troubles are achieving for us an eternal glory that far outweighs them all. So we fix our eyes not on what is seen, but on what is unseen, since what is seen is temporary, but what is unseen is eternal.”
2 Corinthians 4:16-18 NIV
Like the apostle Paul, I am slowly, and sometimes painfully, learning to let go of the temporal and stay on course towards the eternal.
“Brothers and sisters, I do not consider myself yet to have taken hold of it. But one thing I do: Forgetting what is behind and straining toward what is ahead, I press on toward the goal to win the prize for which God has called me heavenward in Christ Jesus.”
Philippians 3:13-14 NIV
As my grip on this life weakens, eternity beckons. Beneath my feet is the solid foundation of God’s love, and inscribed on my heart the word of God in which is my hope. Ahead is the promise of the celestial city which God has prepared for His people…and inside me is the guarantee, the Holy Spirit, God’s “engagement ring”, that declares that I belong to Him.
“The Spirit is God’s guarantee that he will give us the inheritance he promised and that he has purchased us to be his own people. He did this so we would praise and glorify him.”
Ephesians 1:14 NLT
To be continued