Engaging the Silence
Hebrews 11:1-2 TPT
Now faith brings our hopes into reality and becomes the
foundation needed to acquire the things we long for. It is all the
evidence required to prove what is still unseen. This testimony of faith
is what previous generations were commended for.
There is not just a PERIOD separating the Old and New Testaments;
there is a PAUSE. There is extended, excruciating SILENCE!
Psalm 13:1-6 NIV
How long, Lord? Will you forget me forever? How long will you hide
your face from me? How long must I wrestle with my thoughts and
day after day have sorrow in my heart? How long will my enemy
triumph over me? Look on me and answer, Lord my God. Give light
to my eyes, or I will sleep in death, and my enemy will say, “I have
overcome him,” and my foes will rejoice when I fall.
Engaging the Silence
- Celebrate the Past
Deuteronomy 4:9 NIV
Only be careful, and watch yourselves closely so that you do not
forget the things your eyes have seen or let them fade from your
heart as long as you live. Teach them to your children and to their
children after them.
The tyranny of present pain is that it steals the joy of past pleasure.
“When you are happy, so happy that you have no sense of needing
Him, so happy that you are tempted to feel His claims upon you as an
interruption, if you remember yourself and turn to Him with gratitude
and praise, you will be—or so it feels—welcomed with open arms.
But go to Him when your need is desperate, when all other help is
vain, and what do you find? A door slammed in your face, and a
sound of bolting and double bolting on the inside. After that, silence.
You may as well turn away. The longer you wait, the more emphatic
the silence will become. There are no lights in the windows. It might
be an empty house. Was it ever inhabited? It seemed so once. And
that seeming was as strong as this. What can this mean? Why is He
so present a commander in our time of prosperity and so very absent
a help in time of trouble?” – C.S. Lewis
Engaging the Silence - Anticipate the Future
Hebrews 6:16-19 NLT
Now when people take an oath, they call on someone greater than
themselves to hold them to it. And without any question that oath is
binding. God also bound himself with an oath, so that those who
received the promise could be perfectly sure that he would never
change his mind. So God has given both his promise and his oath.
These two things are unchangeable because it is impossible for
God to lie. Therefore, we who have fled to him for refuge can have
great confidence as we hold to the hope that lies before us. This
hope is a strong and trustworthy anchor for our souls.
Engaging the Silence - Participate in the Present
“Advent prepares not just for the first coming of Christ to Israel, or
even the second at the end of time. There is a third coming between
these two in which Jesus comes in spirit and power for our rest and
consolation.” – Saint Bernard of Clairvaux
Don’t miss the miracle b/c of the mess.
“Christ has no body on earth but yours, no hands but yours, no feet
but yours. Yours are the eyes through which Christ’s compassion for
the world is to look out; yours are the feet with which He is to go
about doing good; and yours are the hands with which He is to bless
us now.” – Saint Teresa of Avila