Silence

Silence.....

I feel like this word describes my summer. I've been mostly silent on my blog. That wasn't my plan. I thought summer would be a great time to write, but here it is coming to the end of July, and I've only written seven posts all summer. Several of those were just recipes or songs. I have wanted to write, and yet I feel like God has kept me silent. I haven't been overly busy. Don't get me wrong, I haven't been bored or sitting around twiddling my thumbs! I've cleaned my house, done my laundry, shuttled children back and forth to various activities, etc.

I also feel like it describes my summer in another way..... God's silence. I've actually felt this since last November but more so in recent weeks. That's probably another reason I haven't written anything. I haven't felt too much inspiration. But am I right in this? Is my reasoning correct? Or do I need another prospective?

One thing that I have just begun is a new Bible study last week at church. It's only been two weeks into it, and I can wholeheartedly recommend it. If any of you are PCA (or even if you aren't) I would say "GO TO THE PCA WOMENS' CONFERENCE IN OCTOBER!!" It will be worth it. The keynote speaker is Nancy Guthrie, and she's the author of the Bible study I've started, "Hoping for Something Better." I read her first book, "Holding on to Hope," last year. It's a loose study on the book of Job. It's her heart wrenching story of love and loss. I'm not going to share it here, but believe me you will be blessed by reading it. This second book is more of a true Bible study that goes deeper and makes me think harder than anything has for me in a long time.

Nancy spoke right to my heart last week in chapter one when she said this,

"Sometimes our feelings may tell us that God is silent. But when we complain that God is silent, when we're straining to hear the voice of God, what we are really saying is that we exhausted this final decisive Word he has spoken to us in the person of Jesus and in the pages of Scripture. It's as if we are saying the Bible has nothing further to say to us, that we've seen all there is to see in Jesus and heard all there is to hear in the gospel, that it has no power to speak into our current situations."

WOW! Is this what I'm saying? Certainly not intellectually or consciously, but when I think about it, that is exactly what my attitude is saying. I've heard so many people say over the years that God has been silent in their life for a certain period of time that it just seems to be a normal thing. But thinking about it this way makes sense. We have God's word that is living and active and able to speak to us every time we read it. We have a God who is waiting anxiously to hear from us, to answer our call, to comfort us in our sorrow. How could I think he's silent? It's not him. It's me.

In this time of "silence" I have been waiting. Some of you know about this. Others don't. I've shared a little on here, but I know it's been vague. I haven't been ready for a bombardment of questions in my life so I just share basic, vague information about what's going on. But I'm still waiting. I've felt like my life was on hold for months--not knowing what to plan for, how involved to be in activities, how to live day by day not knowing what the future holds. I try. I really do. And most of the time I do a pretty good job of it. I do put my trust in the Lord. I do put my hope in him. He is my rock and fortress. I know these things, and I cling to them. I cling to his promise to never leave me or forsake me. And I remember my blessings and how amazingly blessed I am. I remember that things could be so much worse. I remember that we have our health and that my husband and my children know Jesus. What more could I really be concerned about? And yet I am. I don't like living in uncertainty. I don't know many people who do. I happen to be perfectly fine with change. I am really okay with the thought of moving. I wasn't three months ago. But I am now. I'm okay with new friends, new church, new town, total strangers, etc. I can get pretty excited about newness actually, but it's the "not knowing" that makes it hard. It's the "not knowing" where we're going (or even if we're going.) If we do go, will there be a good church and will there be any sort of homeschooling community? Will there be good friends for my children?  These things keep me in constant communion with my Father in heaven--continually giving it to him. And maybe that's the point anyway.....

But I'd like to share something with you that I learned this week through this study. The study is on the book of Hebrews. It's all about Jesus. Really. And it's teaching us that it truly is ALL ABOUT JESUS. What does this look like really? What does this look like in our life? So we are looking at Jesus. Hebrews 2: 17 says,

"Therefore [Jesus] had to be made like his brothers in every respect, so that he might become a merciful and faithful high priest in the service of God..."

Who are his brothers? We are! In verse 11 the author of Hebrews tells us that Jesus "is not ashamed to call [us] brothers." So Jesus was human, flesh and blood. This is really nothing new to most of us in the Christian faith. We also know that he was tempted as we are, and he went through every human emotion that we do. We know that he was made like us so that "he might become a merciful and faithful high priest in the service of God" just as this verse says. He is a perfect mediator. How could he do that if he hadn't been through it?? But sometimes this all stays as head knowledge. It does for me anyway until God brings me to the point where I'm digging so hard that I have to see it.

But in thinking through this concept this week, it hit me. Jesus was 30 years old when he started his ministry. He was 12 when he first went to the temple and impressed the socks off the Jewish rabbis. He knew at that point that he was God. Whether he knew before then (humanly speaking) is debatable and there are many different ideas about that. But it really doesn't matter. The Bible is silent about Jesus' life on earth from the time he was 12 years old until he was 30. Did he live through those years or did he just skip them? Stupid question, right? Of course he lived them. And during those years he experienced all the things that normal teenagers experience and then all the things that normal twenty-somethings experience. All the while, he knew he was the savior. He knew God had a plan for his life. He knew the will of his Father. What he didn't know was "when" that would happen. Could he have saved the world at 13? Probably. Could he have done it at 18 or 25? I'm sure he could have. But God had him wait for 18 years. So Jesus knew what it was like to wait.

This gives me comfort. Jesus knows. Jesus understands. Jesus is at God's right hand telling him exactly what I need because he's been there. He's done that. I can rest in this knowledge. Oh, my glorious Jesus knows and cares and mediates for me.

Does it make it easier to wait? For now it does. While I keep an eternal perspective it does. When I lose that (which I'm sure will happen from time to time) I will probably worry again. I'm human. I'm fallen. I'm nowhere close to the perfection that God is sanctifying me for. But I have truth to fall back on. I have God's word that is never silent, always living, and always able to speak to every situation I will ever encounter. That's the word of the amazing, living God of the universe that we serve.