When Silence Breaks Your Heart

"How long, Lord, must I call for help but you do not listen?  Or cry out to you, 'Violence!' but you do not save?"

Habakkuk 1:3

We've all been there. Prayers that bounce off the wall.  No answers when we cry out day after day, week after week, month after month.  We question the goodness of a God who seems silent when we, desperate for answers and solutions, beg Him with tears, moans, and sometimes anger.  Why?????

Often, when we look back, months and sometimes years later, we see what The Plan was.  Sometimes we don't. But when we are actually going through the experience of petitioning our God for our needs and we feel unheard and unloved, it's not easy.

If you are familiar with Lysa Terkeurst, she's faced a number of battles recently when she has cried out to God for answers.  She experienced a marriage crisis and breast cancer within the last two years.  But in her new book, "It's Not Supposed to Be This Way", Lysa gives us a wonderful example of  one of these times when God seems silent.

Lysa was struck with indescribable pain one morning as she woke.  She was rushed to the ER, put in ICU, and her abdomen was distending more and more each minute.  No amount of  medications could touch her pain.  She prayed, begged, cried for relief.  Nothing.  It was excruciating.  And why?  Why wouldn't God, in His mercy, help with a crisis like this?  Well, you will do yourself a favor if you read this book and this story, but the short story goes like this.  Because Lysa continued to have such hideous pain, the doctors continued to look for a reason.  After 5 days, they found the answer that required surgery.  Funny thing, her colon had almost ruptured.  If it had ruptured, her pain would have stopped and she would have thought God had heard her and answered.  But she would have most likely died.  So, by extending her pain, the Father saved her life.

The Bible is full of stoies of people who had to wait.  God promised Abraham that he would be the father of many nations.  He waited and waited, nothing.  I'm sure he asked a lot of why questions.  Unfortunately, Abraham did not wait for God, and he went ahead trying to make it work for himself.  Big mistake.  Then there was Joseph.  Joseph was sold as a slave.  He lived a very difficult life for many years, and yet he was faithful.  His promise from God that he would be a leader of his people was finally brought to reality.  I know Joseph wondered if God would ever hear his pleas.
I believe what God is trying to tell us through these stories is that he is faithful.  He WILL do what He promises.  His way IS best.  

I have to believe the same thing  when my pain is extended.  I have a couple of issues recently where I have cried, begged God to take away the pain, to give me an answer.  And right now, all I'm getting is silence.  It's a time when you are tempted to resent His silence.

Scipture speaks to us about the wait:

"But those who wait on the Lord shall renew their strength; they shall mount up with wings like eagles, they shall run and not be weary, they shall walk and not faint.:

Isaiah 40:13 (NKJV)

and:

"Wait for the Lord.  Be strong, and take heart, and wait for the Lord. "

-Psalm 27:14 (NIV)

and my personal favorite:

"The Lord will fight for you;  you need only be still."
Exodus 14:14 (NIV)

I can't address this without touching on another situation we all have faced.  What if the answer finally comes, and it is nothing that we wanted.  Not even close.  That family member doesn't get better.  That wayward child gets further and further away from God.  That relationship is permanently broken.  It's happened to me, and I'll bet it has happened to you as well.  What then?  Well, I think it is all about trust.  I can be the petulant child, be angry at God for not giving me my way, sulk and pout and put a barrier between us.  Or, I can do as scripture tells me and:

"Trust in the Lord with all your heart, and lean not on your own understanding; In all your ways acknowledge him, and he will make your paths straight."

-Proverbs 3:5-6

If we believe ONE WORD of the Bible, we have to believe this.  We don't understand, He does.  We don't know what's right for us based on eternity, He does. And He loves us and always thinks of what is for our good.  Even when the silence breaks our hearts.