When God is silent, do not frantically search for answers. Only continue your regular time in His Word and know the Spirit is in the process of helping you understand what God is doing in your life.

One of my favorite interactions with Jesus is that of Mary, Martha, and Lazarus. I love the idea that Jesus, knowing He is going to raise Lazarus, still waits and weeps with Mary and Martha. What enormous compassion! He did not need to weep with them. He knew he was going to resurrect Lazarus in just moments.

But something else strikes me today. Remember when He waited to go until after Lazarus had been dead for 4 days already? He shows up and Martha says, "Jesus, if you had been here, my brother would not have died." (John 11:32) Here is something to think about: I think Jesus could have said, "You're right! If I had come when you asked, your brother would not have died."

She knew Jesus would heal him. After all, she had see him heal time and time again. It is as though he was saying, "You would not have come to know me more and deeper than you are about to know me. You would not have been prepared for an even greater revelation of me than you had already known."

God's silence in our lives means He is prepared to bring into your life an even greater revelation of Himself than you have ever known. When God is silent, start watching for what he is about to teach you about Himself. This will require faith, trust, and anticipation.

The story is told of a moment in an old ice house where they would throw down layers and layers of sawdust to keep the ice from melting. There was a day when a worker had lost his grandfather's watch in the course of the day. For hours, the other workers searched the whole building for the watch to no avail. Eventually, they gave up the search writing it off as "lost" forever.

A small boy went in after everyone left and came out in a matter of moments with the watch in hand. When asked how he found what everyone else had spent hours trying to find, the boy said, "I just went in and laid down on the sawdust and listened for the ticking of the watch."

------

Before you conclude that prayer is pointless or unheard or unanswered, take a moment to just be still and listen...