"It is very hard to live with silence. The real silence is death and this is terrible. To approach this silence, it is necessary to journey to the desert. You do not go into the desert to find identity but to lose it, to lose your personality, to become anonymous. You make yourself void. You become silence. You must become more silent than the silence that surrounds you. And then something extraordinary happens. YOU HEAR SILENCE SPEAK." Edmond J.
Okay what to say now? Selah may be an appropriate word. Chew on this. Take the meat and spit out the bones. We can hear God in anyway He chooses to speak. Meditate on this. Think on this. Most of the hungriest people I know are coming out of the desert with nothing but Him. He is enough. They have heard in the silence the sound of their Lord. Silence does speak and it speaks when we decrease so that He increases in us. I am not trying to be eloquent or so cutting edge as to defy reality. I am simply saying that when I quieted down, He spoke from the silence that surrounded my life. When the tension in me decreased and I relinquished all to Him, He imparted to me His mind, His heart and His wisdom. The silence was good for me. The desert was good for me. In fact, I have to share something with you. I am a little concerned about leaving the UAE to come back to the States. My faith in Jesus is challenged and more alive in the midst of Islam than in the midst of Western Christianity. This is true for me. But in obedience I follow so America here we come.
I followed Him here into the desert along with others that had gone before me - Jesus, Paul, John, Jacob, Naomi, Ruth, Moses - the list goes on and on. They all faced a time when all they had in them was simply not good enough. They were pared down and stripped down in the midst of the monotone sound of the desert, the mundane colors of the sand. In that place, they looked and Moses saw the burning bush, Jacob saw His ladder, Ruth found her way.........they all found someone, not something. They found Him. Out of this experience did not come form or structure but relationship, trust, dependency and a wholehearted love for the ONE who called to them to follow Him into a place where silence speaks and to lose themselves they would actually find themselves.
Selah............more coming. Keep reading. Let's journey together. My hope is for you to find more of Him and less of yourself.
Amen! Have just finished preparing a study on 'Rivers of Grace in the Desert' and am listening to Jason Upton's 'In the Silence'so imagine my delight when I read this - all about silence and desert places. Thank you Lord!!
ReplyDeleteSuzanne
Amen! Amen! Amen! This brought back memories of the time in Africa when God prompted me to shout "Be Quiet" during worship. God spoke to me and said that they are worshipping me so loud in their way that they can not hear me. WHy are we taught, Why do we believe, that the louder we sing or the louder we pray, the more we show that we worship Him? What greater way to worship and honor someone (GOD) is there than sitting in silence in their (His) presence listening to Him? In Silence, you truly loose yourself and become one with Him that is around you. In the desert there is only Sand, Heat, SILENCE and GOD. Place your head on His chest in silence, feel His breathing, and hear His heartbeat. Loose yourself in Silence and become one with Him.
ReplyDeletePlease before anyone writes back, I am not saying it is wrong to worship or pray loud, I am just saying that there is a time we need to worship in silence to truly hear Him.
In the Silence by Jason Upton is one of my all time favorite songs....................
ReplyDeleteI enjoyed reading this, as I so identify and function better with spaces for silence! It (spaces for silence) helps with the process of an inner sense of need to deeply connect with God,..." in spirit and in truth" ( when there is provision of spiritual spaces for silence ). From own spiritual experiences, the presence of ongoing loud 'worship' and activities, ( within a modern "worship" church setting), without spaces for silence, sort of hinders, frustrates (almost prevents) the process of deeply connecting with God's Spirit. (...very different from visiting a worship service of a Monks Rural Monastery. It was like being on holy ground for heavenly celestial worship, as God's Presence was so strongly felt and 'sensed').
ReplyDeleteAnyway, here is part of an article about silence ( from 'Letters of Madam Guyon' ), that I found spiritually interesting.
With All Praise and Glory to Father God!
A.B.
---------------------------------
From:Letters of Madam Guyon. pg:14
"SILENT OPERATION OF GRACE."
" ...I perceive, by your letter, you are in doubt about the grace which passes interiorly from heart to heart. We notice an illustration of this in the woman who touched our Lord, when he said: "I perceive that virtue is gone out of me." In a similar manner, without words, one heart may communicate grace to another heart, as God imparts grace to the soul. But if the soul is not in a state to receive it, the grace of the interior is not communicated, as is expressed in another passage; "If they are not children of peace, your peace will return to you again." This illustrates, according to my view, pure interior communications of the grace of God, from heart to heart, which the soul relishes in silence, and which silence is often more efficacious than a multitude of words.
At our last interviews I had an inclination for silence, but finding in you an aversion to silent communion, I entered into conversation, but without any interior correspondence on my part, and, evidently, without any benefit to you. God would teach you, my dear child, there is a silence of the soul through which he operates, filling it with the unction of grace, to be diffused on other hearts who are in a state of receptivity, often more efficacious than words to replenish the soul.
We find this still harmonious action in nature. The sun, the moon, and stars, shine in silence. The voice of God is heard in the silence of the soul. The operation of grace is in silence, as it comes from God, and may it not reach and pass from soul to soul without the noise of words? O, that all Christians knew what if means to keep silence before the Lord! "