When Jesus heard that his friend Lazarus was sick, He stayed two more days in the place where He was. (John 11:6)

The bible shows us that Jesus didn’t immediately come running when he heard his friend was sick. Nor does it indicate that He sent a message back at once. When all is silent, this can be confusing or upsetting; delay of an answer feels bewildering or even agonizing. Oswald Chambers, in his writings in ‘From My Utmost for His Highest’, asks us a magnificent question: Has God trusted you with His silence—a silence that has great meaning?

God’s silences are actually His answers. Just think of those days of absolute silence in the home of Mary and Martha in Bethany. Is there anything comparable to those days in your life? Can God trust you like that, or are you still asking Him for a visible answer? God will give you the very blessings you ask if you refuse to go any further without them, but His silence is the sign that He is bringing you into an even more wonderful understanding of Himself.

Are you mourning before God because you have not had an audible response? When you cannot hear God, you will find that He has trusted you in the most intimate way possible—with absolute silence, not a silence of despair, but one of pleasure, because He saw that you could withstand an even bigger revelation. If God has given you a silence, then praise Him—He is bringing you into the mainstream of His purposes. The actual evidence of the answer in time is simply a matter of God’s sovereignty. Time is nothing to God. For a while you may have said, “I asked God to give me bread, but He gave me a stone instead” (Matthew 7:9). He did not give you a stone, and today you find that He gave you the “bread of life” (John 6:35).

His silence is the sign that He is bringing you into an even more wonderful understanding of Himself.

A wonderful thing about God’s silence is that His stillness is contagious—it gets into you, causing you to become perfectly confident so that you can honestly say, “I know that God has heard me.” His silence is the very proof that He has. As long as you have the idea that God will always bless you in answer to prayer, He will do it, but He will never give you the grace of His silence. If Jesus Christ is bringing you into the understanding that prayer is for the glorifying of His Father, then He will give you the first sign of His intimacy—silence.

CBT Publications urges sojourners to always remember that the Spiritual Journey requires much waiting. When nothing is heard, listen to the quiet—even when excruciatingly long periods of silence occur.