When God Feels Silent: Trusting Him in the Waiting

Transcript

Speaker 0:37

Hey, welcome back to Beyond Sunday, or maybe I should say welcome back to me. If you've noticed, I have not been podcasting for several months now. I think January may have been my last podcast. That was not intentional. Life just got busy. We launched a Thursday night service here at the church. I've been writing a new devotional book that comes out in about. Two weeks which will be May of 2026. If you're watching or listening to this later. It's really a summer devotional to dive through the Psalms. I'm pretty excited about it. I'll talk about that more another day. But today I wanted to dive in and talk about what it looks like when God feels silent. I've reached a lot around the story of Noah recently, and this topic, this conversation keeps coming up with different people. And so I wanted to spend a few moments just diving into that. Have you ever prayed and you felt like nothing happened? Like your words just hit the ceiling and just came back down? You're asking. You're waiting, you're hoping, and God just feels. Quiet if you've ever been there or if you're there right now. This episode is for you because here's what I want to help you see today. God's silence is not his absence. We don't struggle as much when God is moving fast, when prayers are answered and doors are being over. And things are happening that season, that's easy to trust God. But what about when nothing seems to be happening? When you're doing the right things, you're trying to be faithful. You're holding on to what you believe God said, and all you hear is silence. That is where faith gets tested and where so many people find out that they don't really have a solid ground in their faith. One of the most overlooked parts of scripture is what happens after the storm and Noah's story. We talk a lot about the flood, the arc, the animals. We like to look at the rainbow, but we don't talk as much about the waiting After the rain stopped, Noah didn't get off the boat right away. In fact, he waited and waited. And waited. Genesis eight tells us he sent out a raven, then a dove, then another dove looking for some kind of sign that things were changing. He was watching, he was waiting. He was looking for evidence that God was moving. And here's what's interesting. God had already spoken. God had already given instruction, but in this moment, God is silent. See, faith isn't proven in the storm. It's actually revealed in the silence. So what is God doing when he feels silent? Because scripture shows us this isn't a one-time thing. You see it with Noah, but you also see it with David. You see it across the entire story of scripture. Even between the old and New Testament. There's about 400 years where there is no recorded word from God, and yet God was still working. Here's what we have to understand. God's silence does not mean God's inactivity. He's often doing things beneath the surface that you can't see. I think of it like this with my kids. Every now and then you hear them when they were little. You hear them playing and that's a great sound and you know what's going on. But there were some times you didn't hear them and it scared you a little bit more, you thought. Why is everything so quiet and you get up and you find out that they are still playing. It's just a different kind of play. It's quieter. It's more intentional. It's honestly peaceful in some moments. So what is God doing in those moments? He's forming, he's shaping, he's aligning, and often he's preparing because if God gave you everything instantly, you might get the promise without the maturity to carry it out. Listen to how scripture frames this. Psalm 37, 7 says, be still before the Lord and wait patiently for him. That word wait isn't passive. It's an active trust. It's choosing to believe even when you don't see. Let me ask you something. Where are you waiting right now? Is it a prayer you've been praying for months, maybe even years? A situation that hasn't changed, a door that hasn't opened a struggle that hasn't gone away? Here's where we often get it wrong. We assume silence means that God isn't listening or that God doesn't care or that God isn't going to move. But scripture teaches something very different. In fact, in Revelation two, Jesus speaks to a church that was doing all the right things externally. But something internally had drifted, and he says this in Revelation two, four, yet I hold this against you. You have forsaken the love you had at first. And then he tells them, verse five, consider how far you've fallen, repent, and do the things you did at first, and here's why that matters for this conversation. When God feels silent, our instinct is often to pull back less prayer. Less time in the word, less engagement. But Jesus says the opposite. He says, go back. See, don't let God's silence create distance. Let it deepen your pursuit for him. Now back to the Noah story. Eventually, Noah steps off the ark, but what he does next is powerful. It might be my favorite part of the Noah story. Genesis eight says, the first thing he did was built an altar and worship. Yeah, not complain about the weight, although that's probably what I would've done, right? God, you could have gotten me off this quicker. You could have done things differently. He's not questioning God's timing as he gets off. He worships why? Because he understood something We often miss that God was just as faithful in the waiting as he was in the storm. So what does active waiting actually look like? It looks like Noah's sending out the Dove paying attention, watching for movement. It looks like David writing Psalms in the wilderness. It looks like continuing to pray even when the answer hasn't come, and don't miss this promise. Psalm 34 18, the Lord is close to the broken hearted and saves those who are crushed in spirit. He's close, not distant, not absent, but close. God may feel silent, but he is never still. So here's what I wanna challenge you with today. Don't walk away in the waiting. Lean in, keep praying. Keep trusting. Keep watching. Because what feels like silence might actually be preparation. Hey, I'm really glad that you joined me for today's episode. If this encouraged you, share it with someone who might be in the waiting season right now, and take a moment today, not just to ask God to speak, but to trust him even if he doesn't speak We'll. See you next time.