WHEN GOD IS SILENT

J. Grant Swank, Jr.


To begin with, learn how to surrender your thoughts to Jesus each day—during the day. And at nighttime when you wake up.


Surrender thoughts and let go.


That will fall in line with His counsel: “Take no thought for tomorrow. . .” He means that. He’s not speaking poetry. He’s speaking practically. Matthew 6:34


We spend too much time planning for future security when we should be living for Jesus’ plan in the moment. Forget your plan. Live for Jesus’ plan.


After all, that’s what Christian commitment is all about. “Submit yourselves a living sacrifice, holy. . .” Romans 12:1


As you surrender your mind to Jesus, He will speak to your head. Your thoughts will recess. His thoughts will take mortal thought patterns’ place.


That is what you want.


Isaiah promises that whoever keeps his mind stayed on God will experience “perfect peace.” Isaiah 26:3


Then live that peace by surrendering your thoughts to Jesus. This takes some discipline but after awhile it becomes a lifestyle. The more you faith those thoughts to Jesus, the more excited you become in realizing that Jesus is actually alive to work in your minutia.


But what do you do when Jesus says nothing?


You let the quiet remain. You rest in the nothingness. You permit Jesus to keep the rhythm of speaking and then not speaking.


You know that in music there are the black rectangular boxes on the lines of the music scale. Those boxes are called “rests.”


Rests are when the music is to stop for silence to take over. Our ears need the rest. Musicians need the rest. Our heads need the rest. The rests help make the melody balance.


It’s the same with surrendering your thoughts to Jesus. He plants the rests in the life music. Then let them stay right where He puts them. You need them. He knows that.


Do not think that Jesus has left you. He promised that He would never leave you or forsake you. He keeps His promises. Being quiet does not mean that He has taken off. He’s there, alongside you, but quietly so.


Jesus knows that one cannot take His divine input every second. That would be overload. In those silent segments, thank Him for the silence.


During those rest moments, praise Him. Lift up your soul in thanksgiving. “Bless His holy name,” as the Psalms advise us.


Sometimes conscientious believers conclude they have to be super spiritualizing their souls every second. Not so. We mortals cannot take such strenuous activity. And it’s not necessary.


Therefore, in the middle of the day when Jesus seems to have taken a short reprieve, let Him do just that. He is there, working beneath the surface, far more than you realize.


I say to friends that Jesus is always working in the disciples’ lives in the subterranean levels. We cannot imagine how intricately Jesus is moving, preparing, arranging. Only when we look back do we begin to understand how Jesus was programming certain variables that we had never thought possible.


Our minds are so limited that even then we do not pick up on all the dimensions Jesus has worked and is working. We miss much of what His love is performing. Eternity will provide us the span to take in that analysis.


However, in the silences Jesus is doing what needs to be done for you because He loves you.


Then He breaks the silences to give you another Jesus-thought. Take it. Live it out. And go on from there.