Silence is the sleep that nourishes wisdom.
- Sir Francis Bacon
For those interested in developing a robust prayer life for the purpose of seeing realtime genuine answers to prayer, the need to develop the skill of silence is as vast as it is overlooked. This is particularly true for those immeshed in the hustle and bustle of modern life.
Given the meteoric rise of technology and corresponding media explosion we are bombarded 24/7 with everything but silence. Such being the case, setting aside regular and lengthy times of silence is a necessary prerequisite to having a realistic hope of prevailing in prayer or in any Christian endeavor.
Earthly silence may be the rarest and therefore loudest sound heard in heaven. Yet with constant communication and distraction, not to mention temptation and deception, a vanishing minority within modern Christianity show serious interest in such an unostentatious pursuit.
A crucial step in Scripture’s perfect formula of repentance, silence is instrumental in developing such virtues as brokenness and humility, qualities fundamental in hearing and responding to our invisible and silent Creator and Savior.
Tragically, when it comes to diligently seeking and serving God, most believers today invest less time and effort than a high school football player. For this and a myriad of other issues, much of Churchianity generally falls somewhere between the None and Some categories mentioned above. Yet another in a long list of reasons serious and strategic prayer should become a high priority beginning with practicing the prayer of silence.
While unable to identify these and other challenges consciously, intuitively the average Christian may well sense some of the difficulties inherent in the prayer of silence thus losing heart before beginning.
Prior to prematurely closing the chapter on this vital mode of prayer, it would be helpful to identify possible gains so as to determine to what the degree the ends justify the means. Let’s begin with a partial list of benefits from prayer in general:
▪ A reasonable response to the realities and hazards of mankind’s precarious existence.
▪ A desire to know and please God.
▪ To organize and express, as well as work through, our thoughts and feelings.
▪ To seek relief from anxiety and fear.
▪ To obtain Divine help in times of need. For ourselves and family.
▪ To petition and thank God for resource and blessing.
▪ To intercede on the behalf of others.
▪ To understand why we are here.
▪ To comprehend the heavenly vs. hellish eternal consequences of earthly life.
Additional gains associated with extended practice of the prayer of silence include the following:
1. Decompression: Quality time to allow mundane and/or serious cares and concerns to exit center stage that “…the peace (soul harmony which comes) from Christ rule (act as umpire continually) in your hearts [deciding and settling with finality all questions that arise in your minds, in that peaceful state] to which as [members of Christ’s] one body you were also called [to live]. And be thankful (appreciative), [giving praise to God always].” Col 3:15 AMP
2. Retrospection: Developing the ability to “judge with righteous judgment” rather than simply by appearance. Regularly investing the effort to be still before the Lord, waiting of God to reveal truth and falsehood, wisdom and foolishness, success and failure from both temporal and eternal perspectives.
3. Introspection: Internalizing the Kingdom of God within practicing the Bible’s directive: “Do not be rash with your mouth, And let not your heart utter anything hastily before God. For God is in heaven, and you on earth; Therefore let your words be few.” Ecc 5:2 NKJV
4. Evaluation: Implementation of Scripture’s advice to take stock and number our days.
5. Appreciation: Dedication to counting our blessings, which within the modern world are nearly without number.
6. Tension: For those wondering the wilderness and/or experiencing fiery trials, silence can both cultivate and demonstrate spiritual sensitivity as well be a precursor for deep intercession.
7. Direction: Silence is the best way to listen. A fact doubly true in regards to training one’s soul to more fully recognize God’s still small voice.
8. Adoration: Given the Creator of 50 billion trillion suns is a consuming fire, positioning oneself to honor Omnity is always wise. Since the average Christian stops and prays less than 5-10 minutes a day, what better way to do so than by beginning with the prayer of silence?
9. Preparation: As noted by Florence Nightingale, “Life is a hard fight, a struggle, a wrestling with the principal of evil, hand to hand, foot to foot. Every inch of the way is disputed. The night is given us to take breath, to pray, to drink deep at the fountain of power. The day, to use the strength which has been given us, to go forth to work with it till the evening.”
10. Identification: Recognition of subtle areas of spiritual impasse engendered by apathy and/or presumption, worldliness and weakness.
The short list above should prove impressive enough to make the practice of the prayer of silence universal, yet sadly it’s anything but. Also it should be noted that as in keeping with all aspects of genuine sanctification and spiritual growth, when it comes to the prayer of silence our ancient and advance Enemy employs a devilish network of resistance to thwart any effort with the potential to upset the status quo. While it should be obvious how extremely foolish it is to underestimate the deceptive power of the Architect of heaven’s angelic rebellion, nothing could be more common.
Directly and indirectly responsible for much if not most of earth’s past, present and future woes, the Accuser of the brethren rarely receives his due. All this while Satanic manipulations set the stage for the Great Tribulation long foretold by John’s Book of Revelation. An unprecedented time of global testing during which for the most part Scripture clearly indicates the Church is not only present for but overcomes the Antichrist and his Mark of the Beast primarily through martyrdom prior to Christ’s middle to late tribulation Rapture. One would think such approaching distress would be reason enough to snap Churchianity out of the sleep of complacency and into weekly if not daily prayer meetings heavily and deeply accentuated by profound periods of broken and penitent intercession and silence before God.
Unfortunately, reasons why such is not the case are more numerous than the ten previously listed. Seeming to conspire together, they resinate deeply and universally with the dark side of our fallen condition.
For example, while all forms of prayer should precede and accompany any and all Christian endeavors, earnest effort in doing so holds little or no attraction. Even regularly scheduled superficial prayer meetings lasting more than a few minutes, if they exist at all, are the most scarcely attended of church programs. And when larger fellowships of a thousand or more have a handful attending such a weekly meeting it’s usually without the presence of the senior staff.
On the other hand, even standard church programs showing little or no spiritual results are far better attended. These provide opportunities to accentuate modern Christianity’s lighter and brighter, happier major rather than sorrowful minor chords and keys. Such ministries are quite content employing seeker friendly church growth principals rather than face, much less work through, more difficult and challenging issues of worldliness and sin. A trend both Old and New Testament Scripture harshly warn against:
- “I can’t stand your religious meetings. I’m fed up with your conferences and conventions. I want nothing to do with your religion projects, your pretentious slogans and goals. I’m sick of your fund-raising schemes, your public relations and image making. I’ve had all I can take of your noisy ego-music. When was the last time you sang to me? Do you know what I want? I want justice—oceans of it. I want fairness—rivers of it. That’s what I want. That’s all I want.” Amos 5:21-24 MSG
- “I can’t impress this on you too strongly. God is looking over your shoulder. Christ himself is the Judge, with the final say on everyone, living and dead. He is about to break into the open with his rule, so proclaim the Message with intensity; keep on your watch. Challenge, warn, and urge your people. Don’t ever quit. Just keep it simple. You’re going to find that there will be times when people will have no stomach for solid teaching, but will fill up on spiritual junk food—catchy opinions that tickle their fancy. They’ll turn their backs on truth and chase mirages. But you—keep your eye on what you’re doing; accept the hard times along with the good; keep the Message alive; do a thorough job as God’s servant.” 2 Timothy 4:1-5 MSG
- “Submit yourselves, then, to God. Resist the devil, and he will flee from you. Come near to God and he will come near to you. Wash your hands, you sinners, and purify your hearts, you double-minded. Grieve, mourn and wail. Change your laughter to mourning and your joy to gloom. Humble yourselves before the Lord, and he will lift you up.” James 4:7-10 NIV
- “Watch your step when you enter God’s house. Enter to learn. That’s far better than mindlessly offering a sacrifice, Doing more harm than good. Don’t shoot off your mouth, or speak before you think. Don’t be too quick to tell God what you think he wants to hear. God’s in charge, not you—the less you speak, the better.” Ecclesiastes 5:1-2 MSG
- “When you tell God you’ll do something, do it—now. God takes no pleasure in foolish gabble. Vow it, then do it. Far better not to vow in the first place than to vow and not pay up. Don’t let your mouth make a total sinner of you. When called to account, you won’t get by with “Sorry, I didn’t mean it. Why risk provoking God to angry retaliation? But against all illusion and fantasy and empty talk there’s always this rock foundation: Fear God!” Ecclesiastes 5:4-7 MSG
- “Let me tell you something: Every one of these careless words is going to come back to haunt you. There will be a time of Reckoning. Words are powerful; take them seriously. Words can be your salvation. Words can also be your damnation.” Matthew 12: 36-37 MSG
Potential Gains
1. Strategic Repentance: A variety of Biblical passages describe an antidote for the virulent plague of worldliness often running rampant among the people of God. These include the Old Testament’s famous 2 Chronicles 7:14 “If My people…” as well as previously mentioned advice from the glorified Christ to Laodicea and that from James (the Lord’s half brother and head of the 1st century church of Jerusalem).
By definition deception, including presumptive self deception, are invisible viruses having already penetrated the spiritual firewalls of individuals and groups, churches and whole denominations. Thus frequent practice of the prayer of silence is an indispensable part of obeying Scriptures call for radical repentance and discipleship. Reasons for this are many, not the least of which is a kind of brooding of the Holy Spirit over our attitudes and actions, a spiritual soaking designed to dislodge deeply held beliefs and habits contrary to God’s desires and plans. These included a litany of obvious and subtle forms of immorality and rebellion, besetting sins and doubtful habits:
- “Knowing the correct password—saying ‘Master, Master,’ for instance—isn’t going to get you anywhere with me. What is required is serious obedience—doing what my Father wills. I can see it now—at the Final Judgment thousands strutting up to me and saying, ‘Master, we preached the Message, we bashed the demons, our God-sponsored projects had everyone talking.’ And do you know what I am going to say? ‘You missed the boat. All you did was use me to make yourselves important. You don’t impress me one bit. You’re out of here.’ These words I speak to you are not incidental additions to your life, homeowner improvements to your standard of living. They are foundational words, words to build a life on. If you work these words into your life, you are like a smart carpenter who built his house on solid rock. Rain poured down, the river flooded, a tornado hit—but nothing moved that house. It was fixed to the rock. But if you just use my words in Bible studies and don’t work them into your life, you are like a stupid carpenter who built his house on the sandy beach. When a storm rolled in and the waves came up, it collapsed like a house of cards.” Matthew 7:21-27 MSG
2. Strategic Hearing: When it comes to recognizing and being transformed by the Holy Spirit, it’s one thing to listen and another to hear. Hence Scripture’s comments, “Whoever has ears, let them hear” and “Be careful how you hear” and “…not forgetting what they have heard” and “Are your ears awake?”
Truth be told, the rift between superficial and sporadic conformity to the elementary principals of the New Testament and it’s weightier teachings and demands is a gulf so deep and wide few today dare acknowledge, much less begin, such a rigorous decent into the costly grace of genuine righteousness. A fact tragically self evident when honestly examining the disconnect between Churchianity’s exuberant declarations of commitment and intimacy in comparison to our previously unknown levels of modern apathy and worse. While more pronounced today than ever, Scripture’s all encompassing requirements on the lives of believers has long been a major point of conflict within the heart and minds of Christian leadership and laity. A battle of wills and theology noted most succinctly by the Søren Kierkegaard, the amazing 19th century Danish philosopher, theologian, poet, social critic, and religious author who is widely considered to be the first existentialist philosopher. He wrote critical texts on organized religion, Christendom, morality, ethics, psychology and philosophy of religion.” He framed the challenge this way:
- “The matter is quite simple. The Bible is very easy to understand. But we Christians are a bunch of scheming swindlers. We pretend to be unable to understand it because we know very well that the minute we understand, we are obliged to act accordingly. Take any words in the New Testament and forget everything except pledging yourself to act accordingly. My God, you will say, if I do that my whole life will be ruined. How would I ever get on in the world? Herein lies the real place of Christian scholarship. Christian scholarship is the Church’s prodigious invention to defend itself against the Bible, to ensure that we can continue to be good Christians without the Bible coming too close. Oh, priceless scholarship, what would we do without you? Dreadful it is to fall into the hands of the living God. Yes it is even dreadful to be alone with the New Testament.”
- “It is true that a mirror has the quality of enabling a person to see his image in it, but to do this he must stand still.”
- As has been noted, “Kierkegaard is convinced that Christendom is nothing but a lifeless outer shell of mediocrity. ‘Think of a very long railway train – but long ago the locomotive ran away from it. Christendom is like this... Christendom is tranquillity – how charming, the tranquillity of not moving from the spot.”’ “In short, faith is the passion of sacrifice and self-denial, a way of being in the world that suffers ridicule and persecution from the established order with its religious hypocrisy. For this reason, ‘The will of Christ is this: an examination in which one cannot cheat.”’
Those deeply interested in such issues as evangelism and discipleship, revival and judgment, do well to keep in mind an incorrect assessment of spiritual problems do more harm than good. As has been noted, one difference between medicine and poison is the dosage. Another is the diagnosis. An aching left shoulder might be as simple as strain or serious as a heart attack. Prescribing nitro glycerin for the former is as deadly as prescribing a heating pad for the latter.
3. Strategic Planning: Even should assessments such as Kierkegaard’s prove only half correct, every indicator reveals that modern society has entered a post Christian era. For astute and caring believers, such sorrowful news requires an appropriate response. Prophetic Christians not only understand the times and the season, but develop plans accordingly. These recognize that while a thermometer tells the temperature, only a thermostat correctly connected to a working air conditioner makes a real difference.
Comprehensive strategic planning should carefully yet fully encompass even the most difficult of realities:
- Humanity’s Fallen State: The abortion of over a billion in conjunction with inverting morality in a single generation are just two of many indicators humanity’s careened off a societal cliff into the free fall of sin.
- Opportunistic Darkness: The gathering and persistent spiritual darkness enveloping the world is a direct result of the lack of light emanating from Churchianity.
- Worldly Attraction: Rather than overcoming the world, modern Christianity has largely embraced all but it’s most gross forms, and in millions of cases even these. Unable or unwilling to differentiate between the wisdom from above vs below, billions are and continue to be willingly enslaved to pleasure and wealth.
- Reconciled to God: Our actions and inactions make as strong case that our generation as a whole has “insulted the Spirit of grace.” Inaccurate sermons filled with unconditional love and inappropriately intimate worship notwithstanding, billions of believers need the gift of repentance before we can hope to introduce our counterparts to the true and complete gospel revealing the genuine Christ of Scripture.
- Characterological Deficiencies: Tempted and deceived we’ve chosen cheap and greasy grace over the costly and transformative power of genuine sanctification. Like Gary Larson’s cartoon “Boneless Chicken Ranch” 1st world nation believers are the weakest, most apathy Christians in history. And that just as history may be running out.
- Time Running Out: Individually and corporately, judgment which the Bible declares, “begins with the household of God” is imminent. It’s high time to overcome the spiritual impasses laying us waste. Particularly in light of Christ’s warning “As long as it is day, we must do the works of him who sent me. Night is coming, when no one can work.” Doing so requires embracing radical discipleship, moving beyond the dark double-minded dualism of Roman’s 7 to the light of Romans 8 reiterated in Paul’s greatest prayer.
- Spirit of Antichrist: At work in the world since Biblical times, devilish and demonic influence is setting the stage for the appearance of the Man of Sin. A key figure from the middle to the end of the Great Tribulation, his first assignment is to “wage war against God’s holy people and to conquer them. And it was given authority over every tribe, people, language and nation. All inhabitants of the earth will worship the beast—all whose names have not been written in the Lamb’s book of life, the Lamb who was slain from the creation of the world. Whoever has ears, let them hear. “If anyone is to go into captivity, into captivity they will go. If anyone is to be killed with the sword, with the sword they will be killed.” This calls for patient endurance and faithfulness on the part of God’s people.”
Potential Pitfalls
1. Denial: There is hardly a consensus on the need for repentance, hearing and planning, strategic or otherwise. This being said, as a body at rest tends to stay at rest, there’s little chance of a sudden whirlwind of willingness among believers to courageously confront growing levels of apathy and worse within their own rank and file. As a body in motion tends to stay in motion, so too the inertia of business as usual, emphasis on business, keeps Churchianity stuck in deeply warn ruts of “church growth” mentality. Money for salaries and budgets, buildings and programs necessitate telling people what they want to hear. A practice that also pleases pastors and teachers by not upsetting precious and polished doctrinal apple carts.
2. Disagreements: In any case, given societal and religious pressures, finding even a handful of well meaning persons in a particular geographical location willing begin at least a somewhat honest and serious weekly prayer meeting is extremely challenging. Furthermore, among the spiritual remnant, or even remnant of the remnant, disagreement is nearly a certainty. Like blind men, those describing the elephant in the room generally have a favorite part. Additionally, generally speaking among those disenfranchised by modern Christianity are not many noble, influential or wise. Rather such tend to be unsuccessful, isolated and quirky. Obtaining lasting peace, much less unity, among this kind of gathering is akin to herding cats. Sadly, more often than not the end result is short lived partial efforts that avail little rather than the much needed so desperately by billions.
Unfortunately I know wherein I speak. As a pastor in the late 1980’s I oversaw the development of 23 small groups. Attendance increased and satisfaction was high, so long as they conformed to general, albeit charismatic, church growth standards. During subsequent decades, challenge by increasing insight into the truer nature of Churchianity’s condition, growth happened almost in reverse.
Sorrowfully, I can report that having attended well over 1,000 public prayer meetings I have yet find a single one ever employing the prayer of silence, with the very infrequent exception of setting aside a handful of minutes here and there. Moved by such a state of affairs, on more than one occasion I attempted to introduce 20-30 minutes of silence among a handful of the best interceding Christians I could find. These weekly meetings, while showing far more promise than most, slowly disintegrated after a matter of only a few months.
Nevertheless, the facts speak for themselves. Given the worldliness and worse running amok within modern Christianity, even our resistance to the practice of the prayer of silence, not to mention the other six modes, presents a strong argument in favor of their necessity.
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