{"id":325,"date":"2020-09-21T19:16:25","date_gmt":"2020-09-21T19:16:25","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/covenantmoravian.com\/index.php\/watchword-reflections\/monday-reflection-september-21-2020-when-god-seems-silent\/"},"modified":"2026-07-10T13:59:15","modified_gmt":"2026-07-10T13:59:15","slug":"monday-reflection-september-21-2020-when-god-seems-silent","status":"publish","type":"watchword","link":"https:\/\/covenantmoravian.com\/index.php\/watchword-reflections\/monday-reflection-september-21-2020-when-god-seems-silent\/","title":{"rendered":"Monday Reflection \u2013 September 21, 2020 When God Seems Silent"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p><strong>Monday Reflection \u2013 September 21, 2020<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n<p><strong>When God Seems Silent<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n<p><strong><em>I am shut in so that I cannot escape;\u00a0my eye grows dim through sorrow.<\/em><\/strong><strong><em>\u00a0Every day I call on you, O Lord; I spread out my hands to you. Psalm 88:8-9<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n<p>One of the most difficult seasons we can endure as believers is when we feel God is silent, especially when we are in the midst of challenging situations. When it seems everything is going wrong and help seems to be nowhere in sight, it leaves us feeling forgotten, dejected and rejected. Our major frustrations from these seasons come not from simply being in this pit, but thinking that God&#8217;s silence means his absence.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n<p>The author of this Psalm\u00a0identifies with this situation and writes about been through this heartbreaking situation.\u00a0Psalm\u00a088\u00a0appears to be one of the saddest and most dismal\u00a0chapters\u00a0in the Bible. The writer expresses feelings of being overwhelmed, cut off, forgotten, grieved, rejected, terrified, despaired and imprisoned.\u00a0Worst of all, he is crying out to God wondering where God is in all his suffering.\u00a0The Psalmist ends saying, &#8220;<em>darkness is my closest friend<\/em>&#8221; (vs. 18).<\/p>\n\n\n<p>However, as Christina Patterson points us, the hope this\u00a0Psalm\u00a0offers is not in its ending, but in its beginning. In verse 1 he says,\u00a0<em>\u201cLord, you are the God who saves me; day and night I cry out to you<\/em>.\u201d Before he lays out a long list of everything that is going wrong, the Psalmist acknowledges that there is hope for salvation in the Lord, even when God appears silent. We learn that just because God is silent does not mean he is absent, and it certainly does not mean he is not working behind the scenes on our behalf. We must not be deceived by the darkness in our life, it is never greater than where our help comes from. Even when we feel we are in the darkest of places, the writer of\u00a0Psalm\u00a088\u00a0assures that God is there with us.<\/p>\n\n\n<p>Four times in this\u00a0Psalm\u00a0the writer calls out to God. There was clearly no one else worth reaching out to. The writer must have grabbed a hold of God\u2019s precious promises and desperately clung to them. He knew of God\u2019s endless love and his promise to never leave us nor forsake us. We learn that God is right in the darkness with us and he even walks through the valley of the shadow of death\u00a0<em>with<\/em><em>\u00a0us<\/em>\u00a0(Psalm 23:4).\u00a0<strong>We may not always feel or hear God, but we can always believe his promise is greater than our darkness.<\/strong><strong><\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n<p>Amazingly, this dark season pushed the Psalmist closer to God. He was not calling out to another person or thing for help. He called out to the one he knew could save. This Psalm reminds us that our dark seasons do not serve to show us\u00a0that God is absent, but how desperately we need his presence.\u00a0The Psalmist felt his life was near death so he cries out to the very One who raises the dead.\u00a0He does not look for salvation from people or things, but from the giver of salvation and the fountain of abundant and eternal life. \u00a0Our dark seasons have a purpose. Sometimes the purpose is for us to rely less on self and more on God. I believe this is a sobering lesson to learn in the midst of Covid-19.\u00a0There is purpose in our pain and hope in our dark season to push us to the light.<\/p>\n\n\n<p>Patterson reminds us that\u00a0sometimes God empties us so he can fill us back up. Sometimes he is silent so we can learn to listen. Sometimes God allows darkness so we can see that he is the true light of our lives.<\/p>\n\n\n<p>\u00a0Jermaine Gibson\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Monday Reflection \u2013 September 21, 2020 When God Seems Silent I am shut in so that I cannot escape;\u00a0my eye grows dim through sorrow. Every day I call on you, O Lord; I spread out my hands to you. Psalm 88:8-9 One of the most\u2026<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"template":"","watchword_topic":[12],"class_list":["post-325","watchword","type-watchword","status-publish","hentry","watchword_topic-hope"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v28.0 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/product\/yoast-seo-wordpress\/ -->\n<title>Monday Reflection \u2013 September 21, 2020 When God Seems Silent - Covenant Moravian<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/covenantmoravian.com\/index.php\/watchword-reflections\/monday-reflection-september-21-2020-when-god-seems-silent\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Monday Reflection \u2013 September 21, 2020 When God Seems Silent - Covenant Moravian\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Monday Reflection \u2013 September 21, 2020 When God Seems Silent I am shut in so that I cannot escape;\u00a0my eye grows dim through sorrow. 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