God speaks in various ways to different people at different times. When we entered the Advent season, it was as if we are going back to the time between the Old and New Testaments of our Bible. For those 400 years God seemed silent to his chosen people. They had had words from prophets telling of God’s deliverance through a Messiah, but hadn’t seen anything yet. Here are just three of the hundreds of prophecies about the Messiah:
(Isaiah 7:14) “The Lord himself will give you the sign. Look! The virgin will conceive a child! She will give birth to a son and will call him Immanuel (which means ‘God is with us’).”
(Micah 5:2) “But you, O Bethlehem, are only a small village among all the people of Judah. Yet a ruler of Israel, whose origins are in the distant past, will come from you on my behalf.”
(Isaiah 61:1)“The Spirit of the Sovereign LORD is upon me, for the LORD has anointed me to bring good news to the poor. He has sent me to comfort the brokenhearted and to proclaim that captives will be released and prisoners will be freed.”
After thousands of years of God’s words and interactions with his people the Israelites, this period of silence must have seemed so difficult for them. God had promised Messiah….but then….nothing. Kind of like when God promised Abram, “I will make your descendants as numerous as the stars in the sky and will give them all these lands, and through your offspring all nations on earth will be blessed” (Genesis 26:4 NIV), and then Abram heard and saw nothing…no baby…no children…nothing…for twenty-five years. Sometimes silence is “golden,” but sometimes silence is just silence.
The waiting and the silence had to be filled with something. Maybe the message from this verse in Psalm 130:5 might have been Abram’s prayer: “I wait for the LORD, my whole being waits, and in his word I put my hope” (NIV). Maybe the message of these verses helped carry the Israelites through their 400 years of waiting: “I remain confident of this: I will see the goodness of the Lord in the land of the living. Wait for the Lord; be strong and take heart and wait for the Lord” (Psalm 27:13-14 NIV).
Finally after 400 years of prophecies that had seemingly lain dormant, suddenly God spoke through the angel Gabriel. The Gospels of Matthew and Luke tell us of angel visitations to a young girl engaged to be married and to her fiancé. The messages brought by that angel were that Mary would have a baby by the Holy Spirit and that baby would be the Savior of the world.
If you, too, feel you are in a silent time of waiting, I invite you to take heart and remember God’s goodness to his people – including you. Remember that God is still alive, awake, and moving, even when silence seems to be the answer. If it’s “always darkest before the dawn,” maybe it’s always most silent before the clamor. Yet, when we don’t fight the silence – when we have ears to hear – God’s whisper of reassurance, healing, and hope is most heard.
Lord,
We cry out to you, grateful that you hear our voices, answer our prayers, and hear our pleas for mercy. Your wonderful forgiving love forgives our sins; we love and worship you! Help us to wait in hope for you to speak into our silences. For those who are waiting for answers or healing or provision or breakthrough or peace or a whole host of other things, we pray you would help them to choose hope and trust in you. You are tenderhearted, kind, forgiving and have thousands of ways of setting us free. Redeem this time of silence and waiting so that you are honored and glorified in our lives. We ask in Christ’s name, Amen.
Lord, I cry out to you out of the depths of my despair!
Hear my voice, O God!
Answer this prayer and hear my plea for mercy.
Lord, if you measured us and marked us with our sins,
who would ever have their prayers answered?
But your forgiving love is what makes you so wonderful.
No wonder you are loved and worshiped!
This is why I wait upon you, expecting your breakthrough,
for your Word brings me hope.
I long for you more than any watchman
would long for the morning light.
I will watch and wait for you, O God,
throughout the night.
O Israel, keep hoping, keep trusting,
and keep waiting on the Lord,
for he is tenderhearted, kind, and forgiving.
He has a thousand ways to set you free!
He himself will redeem you;
he will ransom you from the cruel slavery of your sins!” (Psalm 130:1-8 TPT)