Silence without Absence (Chapter 11) (Saturday in the fourth week of Lent)

PAUSE
As I enter prayer now, I pause to be still; to breathe slowly to recenter my scattered senses upon the presence of God.

(pause)
I pray Psalm 42: 5, repeating the words slowly, several times:
“Why, my soul, are you downcast? Why so disturbed within me? Put your hope in God, for I will yet praise him, my Savior and my God.”

REFLECT
Bible: God is educating you; that’s why you must never drop out. He’s treating you as dear children. This trouble you’re in isn’t punishment; it’s training, the normal experience of children … While we were children, our parents did what seemed best to them. But God is doing what is best for us, training us to live God’s holy best. At the time, discipline isn’t much fun. It always feels like it’s going against the grain. Later, of course, it pays off handsomely, for it’s the will-trained who find themselves mature in their relationship with God. (Heb 12:7, 10-11 MSG, emphasis added)

Book passage: The Bible leaves us in no doubt at all that when God is silent, He is not absent – even if that’s the way it feels … Martin Luther argued that God withdraws and falls silent in order to draw us into the deeper relationship with Him that is only possible when we move beyond merely outward experiences and purely rational understanding. If Luther is right, then the silence and unknowing of Holy Saturday are essential to growing deeper in our relationship with God. The silence of God is intentional. It is one of the great disciplines He puts on His children “that we may share in his holiness” (Heb. 12:10). (p. 168)

ASK
Ask myself: How can I really know that God is present, even when He is silent? Is there any evidence, visible to me or to anyone that loves me, that He may be refining and maturing me through the difficult things I’m having to endure?

Ask the Lord: Father, I want to thrive, not just survive, in this difficult season. I want to emerge from it stronger, wiser, and somehow looking a lot more like You.

YIELD
A prayer of David for God to search his heart (Psalm 139: 23-24):

Search me, God, and know my heart; test me and know my anxious thoughts. See if there is any offensive way in me and lead me in the way everlasting.
Amen