Thankfulness When It Seems God is Silent
We pray and pray, but God seems silent. His quietness is deafening while we strive, struggle, suffer. We cry out to Him; however, He is silent. We wonder why He is silent. God gifted prayer as the most precious way to personally communicate with Him, our Father. When we pray to our Father in heaven, there are times that He doesn’t answer, or we think He is not answering. God answers every prayer with a “yes,” a “no,” or a “wait.” Scripture indicates He is engaging with all of our prayers.
God loves our prayers and He wants us to cling to Him like a child (Hebrews 14:5). Prayer is our personal communication with God. He cherishes our obedience in prayer. Unanswered prayers may be the result of unconfessed sin (Psalm 139:1-4). He knows our sin; however, we need to confess and repent. Bitterness and selfish desires result in unanswered prayers (James 4:3). Sin hinders our fellowship with, not only our Father, but our brothers and sisters in Christ. Sin blinds us and creates empty prayers. Our unbelief and hypocrisy impact our prayers (Proverbs 15:8; Mark 12:40).
Unanswered prayers are God’s way of drawing us closer in our faith to a deeper reliance and trust in Him, relieving us from reliance on the physical world and enabling blind faith in His will and grace for us. He teaches us greater humility, gratitude, and love (James 4:6; Proverbs 3:34). In Matthew 15:21-28, a poor Canaanite woman cried out unceasingly to Jesus for mercy. The rabbis of Tyre and Sidon ignored her cries since she was a gentile and a woman. Jesus may not have answered her stated needs immediately, but still, He heard and granted her request.
Like Job, we should be thankful and not curse God for the trials. Every time Job was afflicted he prayed and gave praise to God. God was silent through Job’s terrible suffering and while enduring the advice from his wife and friends. However, God answered Job. God and Job dialogue back and forth, and Job learned, as we learn, that we have no understanding of God’s timing, ways, or reasoning. God restored Job because he was obedient in prayer and praise, but never cursed God. Do we have the same obedience as Job? Are we able to praise God when He takes away what He has given us? Would we praise God, and not curse God, like Job? Job was thankful during God’s silence and through all the suffering and losses.
We must remember God’s timing is not our timing. He works in His own realm. The exercise of prayer is a blessing to us, because our faith is stirred to persist in prayer. This faith is pleasing to God (Hebrew 11:6). We may feel our prayer life is insufficient, however it does not reflect our spiritual standing. He wants us to grow in our prayer life. God hears our broken, distressed cries for mercy and this silence provokes us with a tenacity for more prayer. Why? Because He loves us to be in communion with Him. He draws us to hunger for the things that are after God’s heart. He allows us to walk in His ways and not our own. Faithfully praying without ceasing is living in God’s will. Living in His will is never wrong (1 Thessalonians 5:17-18).