When God is Silent…
Read Time: 7 mins
“Remember to obey the Law of Moses, my servant—all the decrees and regulations that I gave him on Mount Sinai for all Israel. “Look, I am sending you the prophet Elijah before the great and dreadful day of the Lord arrives. His preaching will turn the hearts of fathers to their children, and the hearts of children to their fathers. Otherwise I will come and strike the land with a curse.”
Malachi 4:4-6
If I’m being honest, sometimes I don’t feel God. I know He’s there but I don’t always feel His presence. I don’t hear His voice. I cry out and still feel alone. Prayers seem to go unanswered and pain persists. I long for Him and don’t seem to be moving forward. It hurts. It feels claustrophobic and suffocating to be stuck. It's depressing to keep getting hit. It can feel lost and hopeless.
If you’ve felt this you aren’t alone in your experience. The entire community of Jerusalem may have felt this same thing. They had gone through the consistent traumatic cycle of going from oppression to liberation, then losing their way and going back into exile. They’ve been oppressed, saved, and then back into oppression again many times. But now things are different.
Throughout their journeys, they’ve always had a prophet, an oracle, a messenger, or a spokesperson who would offer hope in the name of God. In Egypt they had Moses. Samuel and David helped to bring hope during their clashes with the Philistines. Elijah and Elisha in the periods of idolatry and religious fornication of corrupt kings. They had people like Esther, Jeremiah, and Daniel through the Babylonian and Medo-Persian captivity. Despite the challenge, God would raise spokespeople to proclaim hope.
Yet, the book of Malachi was written right before what some theologians call the silent period. This is a period where we have no prophets, scripture, or any other accounts of God speaking. For 400 years, God is there but He is silent. The time between the end of the Old Testament after Malachi and the beginning of the New Testament starting with Matthew is silent. The chosen people are still going through challenges but God is silent. The problems persist but God is silent. The Egyptians, Persians, and Greeks had stints of control over the Israelites in this period but God didn’t seem to offer any hope. No messenger. No vision. No savior. Can you imagine how they felt?
You may have felt this before. You may currently be feeling something similar. You may feel like God is distant or silent. I get it. And the first offer of hope I want to lend is to remind you that you are not alone. I believe this is a normal part of our Christian journey. Life is like the ocean. There will be ebbs and flows. Growth never looks completely linear and God knows this, so He gives us instructions for when things feel backward, broken, or distant.
Before this period of silence, God gave His people hope and instruction that I believe He is also giving us. He acknowledges that difficulty must come, but if we are to make it through the bad times we must hold on to two things we possessed in the good times: hope and habits.
The teacher is always the most silent during a test, and God has already given us the study guide to make sure we make it through these growth moments effectively. The first thing this text tells us to tackle in these tough times is obedience. God tells His people to remember the instruction they've already been given. Many of us are asking God to speak when He already has. It doesn’t make sense to ask for new marching orders when we haven’t walked in the ones that were already prescribed. This may rub us the wrong way because unsubmitted leaders have made submission seem unsafe. However, this prescription of practice is actually for our protection and prosperity.
God gives instruction not as a way of restraining, stifling, or holding us back from better. He actually gives us instruction as a means to prosper us. God knows that in these difficult moments, His instructions will bring us the blessings and benefits we are longing for. Many of us are asking God to speak when He already has. It doesn't make sense to keep calling out for help if you aren’t going to take heed of His instruction. It’s a waste.
God is saying that when you feel stuck, distant, broken, lost, emotionally paralyzed, or depressed, that is not the time to stop engaging in the prosperous practices He has already outlined. Some of us stop going to the church community when we feel alone, but it was given to us because God knew we couldn't function without a trusted community. Some of us stop praying when we feel anxious but God already told us prayer is the antidote to worry. Some of us stop trusting when things get more difficult, but that is the most important time to stick to the game plan.
There’s a dismissive mindset in the Christian community. We acknowledge that the devil is defeated but attribute all negative consequences to him as if he still has dominant power and position in our lives. Maybe some of the issues we face aren’t the works of the devil. Maybe they are the effects of sinful people ignoring the law and direction of God. Maybe we are sinking because we stopped following instructions on how to swim. When you don’t hear God it’s time to get even more intentional in your healthy habits, not run from them.
It is a shame that it often takes a challenge for us to take our walk seriously. Sports teams will play lazy and careless when they are up, but put them in a close game as the 4th quarter ticks away and notice how intentional they begin to get. Notice how hard they begin to play. They start to remember every habit and detail they were taught to implement. What is interesting is that often times if they never lost their discipline and intentionality in the first place, they would have never found themselves in a close late-game situation. When life gets good, it's easy to let up, but if we just stuck to the systems and habits our creator mapped out for us, we would actually avoid many of the situations we find ourselves in today.
As we are in this period of walking and waiting, we must not solely hold on to the healthy habits God has prescribed. We must also hold on to hope. The messenger goes on to exclaim, “Behold, pay attention and look here, I am sending you a prophet.”
God reminds us of the liberation, hope, and power that was brought through biblical heroes like Moses and Elijah, and goes on to say He isn’t finished. “You may not feel it now but I’m still working.” Help is on the way. While this is really a prophetic word predicting the coming of Jesus in the next chapter, the writer uses biblical heroes, with whom the people have already had salvific encounters, to describe the type of liberation they could look forward to.
While the Bible says that eyes haven't seen and ears haven't heard neither has it entered into the heart of man what God has in store for His children, He often tells us to remember what He did in the past to build our faith and hope in what He will do in the future. 1 Peter 3:15 tells us to always have an answer to why we have hope. This is another command that is given for our own good. Remembering what God has already done is a great way to hold on to hope while waiting for what He is going to do next. Holding on to hope will get you through the hardest seasons of life.
I know it hurts. I get it. I'm in that space in a few categories of my life now, but I've seen what God already did, and I believe better is coming. That hope gives me the strength to keep working and walking in faith when it doesn't make sense. That hope allows me to follow the commands when they feel stupid and impractical. The hope helps me seek God when I'm scared to. It helps me submit when I feel scared. The hope makes it possible to keep going. The memory of the great things He has done and hope in what is to come allow you to follow Him into dark places. Don't you think the Israelites would have approached this dark time differently if they knew it would end in complete liberation with their savior? Keep going. On the other side of this pain is prosperity.
Would you keep fighting if you knew this season of darkness was the door to your healing? Would you keep walking if you knew the humbling moment would be the end of your addiction? What if the hardest counseling session revolutionized your relationship or the greatest sacrifice led to the greatest blessing? Hope in Jesus gives us the power to walk through life when it is scary, painful, confusing, dark, embarrassing, humbling, isolating, and depressing. Hope in Jesus is what makes this walk worth it.
Don't lose hope. You can’t fathom what He wants to bring you.
