Five - After God’s Silence...What?
Five
After God’s Silence...What?
Now Jesus loved Martha and her sister and Lazarus. So, when He had heard therefore that he was sick, He stayed two more days in the same place where He was (John 11:5–6).
The Absence of Audible Response
Jesus stayed two days where He was without sending a word. We are apt to say, “I know why God has not answered my prayer. It is because I asked for something wrong.” That was not the reason Jesus did not answer Martha and Mary. They desired a right thing. It is quite true God does not answer some prayers because they are wrong, but that is so obvious that it does not need a revelation from God to understand it. God wants us to stop understanding in the way we have understood and get into the place He wants us to get into. That is, He wants us to know how to rely on Him.
God’s silences are His answers. If we only take as answers those that are visible to our senses, we are in a very elementary condition of grace. Can it be said of us that Jesus so loved us that He stayed where He was because He knew we had a capacity to stand a bigger revelation? Has God trusted us with a silence, a silence that is
absolutely big with meaning? That is His answer. The manifestation will come in a way beyond our comprehension.
Are we mourning before God because we have not had an audible response? Mary Magdalene was weeping at the sepulcher. What was she asking for? The dead body of Jesus. Of whom did she ask it? Of Jesus Himself, and she did not know Him! Did Jesus give her what she asked for? He gave her something infinitely grander than she had ever conceived—a risen living, impossible-to-die Lord.
How many of us have been blind in our prayers? Look back and think of the prayers you thought had not been answered but now find that God has answered with a bigger manifestation than you ever dreamed. God has trusted you in the most intimate way He could trust you, with an absolute silence, not of despair but of pleasure, because He saw you could stand a much bigger revelation than you had at the time.
Some prayers are followed by silence because they are wrong, others because they are bigger than we can understand. Jesus stayed where He was—a positive staying, because He loved Martha and Mary. Did they get Lazarus back? They got infinitely more; they got to know the greatest truth moral beings ever knew—that Jesus Christ is the Resurrection and the Life. It will be a wonderful moment when we stand before God and find that the prayers we clamored for in early days and imagined were never answered, have been answered in the most amazing way, and that God’s silence has been the sign of the answer. If we always want to be able to point to something and say, “This is the way God answered my prayer,” God cannot trust us yet with His silence.
Here is where the devil comes in and says, “Now you have been praying a wrong prayer.” You can easily know whether you have—test it by the word of God. If it has been a prayer to know God better, a prayer for the baptism of the Holy Spirit, a prayer for the interpretation and understanding of God’s Word, it is a prayer in accord with God’s will. You say, “But He has not answered.” He has, He is so near to you that His silence is the answer. His silence is big with terrific meaning that you cannot understand yet, but presently you will. Time is nothing to God. Prayers were offered years ago and God answered the soul with silence. Now He is giving the manifestation of the answer in a revelation that we are scarcely able to comprehend.
The Attitude of Awful Repose
Picture Martha and Mary waiting day after day for Jesus to come, yet not till Lazarus’ body had been in the grave four days did Jesus Christ appear on the scene. Days of absolute silence, of awful repose on the part of God! Is there anything analogous to it in your life? Can God trust you like that, or are you still wanting a visible answer? “Whatever we ask we receive from Him” (1 John 3:22). If God has given you a silence, praise Him. Think of the things you prayed to God about and tried to hold and, because of His love, He dare not let you hold them and they went. For a time you said, “I asked God to give me bread and He gave me a stone.” But He did not, and you found that He gave you the bread of life. You prayed that you might keep the thing that seemed to make your life as a Christian possible. You asked that it might always be preserved by God, and suddenly the whole thing went to pieces. That was God’s answer. After the silence, if we are spiritual and can interpret His silence, we always get the trust in God that knows prayers are answered every time, not sometimes. The manifestation of the answer in place and time is a mere matter of God’s sovereignty. Be earnest and eager on the line of praying. One wonderful thing about God’s stillness in connection with prayers is that He makes us still, make us perfect confident. The contagion of Jesus Christ’s stillness gets into us—“I know He has heard me”—and His silence is the proof He has heard.
The Answer’s Amazing Revelation
Could the answer that Jesus Christ gave ever have entered into the heart of Martha and Mary: a raised brother, the manifestation of the glory of God, and the understanding of Jesus Christ in a way that has blessed the church for twenty centuries?
Remember that Jesus Christ’s silences are always signs that He knows we can stand a bigger revelation than we think we can. If He gives us the exact answer, He cannot trust us yet. “If two of you agree on earth concerning anything that they ask, it will be done for them by My Father in heaven” (Matthew 18:19). That is stated for people who are not spiritual. Our Lord’s revelations about prayer in Luke 11 and 18 are for those who are spiritual, who remain in confidence in prayer. Because Jesus Christ keeps silence does not mean that He is displeased, but exactly the opposite. He is bringing us into the great run of His purpose, and the answer will be an amazing revelation. No wonder our Lord said, “Greater works than these he will do . . . And whatever you ask in my name, that I will do” (John 14:12–13).
That is what prayer means—not that God may bless us. As long as we have the idea only that God will bless us in answer to prayer, He will do it, but He will never give us the grace of a silence. If He is taking us into the understanding that prayer is for the glorifying of His Father, He will give us the first sign of His intimacy—silence. The devil calls it unanswered prayer. In the case of Martha and Mary, the Spirit of God called it a sign that He loved them, and because He loved them and knew they were fit to receive a bigger revelation than ever they dreamed of, He stayed where He was. God will give us the blessings we want if we won’t go any further, but His silence is the sign that He is bringing us into this marvelous understanding of Himself.
O Lord, I ask for the power of Your Spirit to adore You more fully. Keep my spirit brightly infused by Your Holy Spirit, O Lord, that thus energized, my Lord Jesus Christ and His perfections may be manifested in my mortal flesh.
O Lord, breathe on me till I am one with You in the temper of my mind and heart and disposition. I turn to You. How completely again I realize my lost-ness without You.
O Lord, I have no inkling of Your ways in external details, but I have the expectancy of Your wonders soon to be made visible. Lord, I look to You. How completely at rest I am, yet how free from seeing Your way. You are God and I trust in You.