February 27, 2025 • 11 mins
We live in a noisy world. When are we ever silent? Is there value in silence, especially silence before the Lord?
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:02):
Hi, this is Mark. Thanks for joining me today on
words of Truth. You've got to be honest with you today.
Rarely do I really enjoy silence? Are you with me
on that? I mean, if I'm by myself in my shop,
for example, or driving in the car, I usually have
(00:22):
the radio on, or I'll be listening to some music.
When I work out, I'll have my headphones on my
EarPods in listening to a podcast or some music. If
I have a free evening with nothing to do, I'll
watch a couple of TV shows. It's hard for me
(00:44):
just to sit and be silent. I mean, even when
I'm reading a book or my Bible, my mind tends
to race thinking about all sorts of other things, and
that honestly makes prayer by myself difficult because my mind
just keeps getting off track. Now, I'm not attention deficit
(01:06):
or anything like that. I just think I'm like a
lot of other people who just find it difficult to
be silent. There's noise everywhere we go, isn't that right?
Walk into a restaurant there will be music playing in
the background. In fact, we think it's kind of weird
when there's no music in the background. Walk down the
(01:27):
street and you'll hear the traffic sirens from ambulances and
fire trucks, and music blasting from passing cards. Even in
our homes, children will be laughing and playing and crying,
or the neighbor's dog is barking, or our own dog
is barking. It's really difficult to find silence in the
(01:48):
world in which we live, and silence can be awkward.
When I'm silent, I feel painfully unproductive. I'm the kind
of person who doesn't want to miss out on the
chance to catch up with a friend or to check
something off my to do list. And like most people,
(02:09):
I certainly don't look forward to dealing with the underlying
worries or fears that might be lingering deep inside my soul.
And so what do I do? Like most people? I
push it down somehow with some kind of noise. Now,
I'm not saying that taking in the information is bad, no, no,
(02:29):
But in our content saturated culture, it's too easy to
fill in every moment, or to numb every uncomfortable feeling
with some form of noise. I've been thinking about this
a lot lately, maybe because my own life is so
busy and all my moments are so filled up. My
(02:51):
wife will often say to me, can you just sit
down and relax? Can you just sit there and do nothing?
And so I guess I'm just I have what burying
my own soul for a minute in this podcast, as
I began to search from scripture about the value of
silence and what God says about that, and I found
(03:12):
some really interesting principles in of all places, the book
of Habakkuk. You probably haven't been there for a while,
have you to me either, Well, here are some principles
that I found about silence. Number one, silence can actually
be an act of worship. In Habakuk, we find a
(03:34):
prophet who's troubled over the wickedness and violence that he's
witnessing amongst his own people. It seems that Judah and
us leaders were corrupt leaders, and in prayer, the prophet
begins pouring out his heart to God and even complaining
to God that God isn't doing anything about what was happening.
(03:55):
As you read, you see Habakuk going back and forth
with God, questions and complaining to God about his silence.
And then in chapter two and verse twenty, God says,
but the Lord is in his holy temple. Let all
the earth keeps silence before him. WHOA that probably pulled
(04:19):
habacca cup short a little bit, don't you imagine as
it should us. It's almost like a parent telling their
children who are complaining, to shut their mouths for a minute.
You see, we can be quick to give God a
peace of our minds, and sometimes that's okay, and God
will take it all from us and even allow it,
(04:42):
as we see in some of the psalms where King
David was complaining to God. But there comes a point
when we have to recognize that God is God and
we're not. You see, silence is is our acknowledging to
Him that we know our place before him, and that
(05:04):
he'll always get the last word, and that he gets
our worship. You see this message of silence repeated time
and time again in scripture. Solomon put it this way,
and Ecclesiastes chapter five and verse two. Be not rash
(05:24):
with your mouth, nor let your heart be hasty to
utter a word before God. For God is in heaven
and you are on earth. Therefore, let your words be few.
Letting our words be few is a way that we
can worship God, because it gives us time just to
look around and be thankful for His beauty and work
(05:48):
in this world. So let silence be a form of worship.
But also I see the principle here in Habaka. This
silence can show us where we've placed something else in
place of God. We call this idolatry. We've set up
an idol. Habakic condemns those who carved false idols in
(06:11):
wood and stone. In fact, right before God commands the
earth to be silent in chapter two, verses eighteen and nineteen,
says what profit is an idol when its maker has
shaped it a metal image? A teacher of lies? For
its maker trusts in his own creation when he makes
(06:34):
speechless idols. Woe to him who says to a wooden thing,
awake to a silent stone, arise, can this teach Behold?
It is overlaid with gold and silver, and there's no
breath in it at all. Now I've never made a
stone or a wood idol, and you probably haven't either.
(06:57):
But too many of us are prone to worship other
things like the glow of the glowing RECTI tangle or
we look for answers and security and even a sense
of satisfaction from the plastic and metal devices we carry
in our pockets or that lay around in our homes
(07:18):
will say Alexa or hey, Google, find me the answer
for And the idols of Habakak didn't talk back like
ours do from a search. Oh look, my phone just
woke up. But I wonder if ours can be even
(07:42):
more dangerous than theirs, because our idols can't teach us
what most of us need to know. They don't have
the very breath of God. They can't respond to the
cries of our souls. I think that if we rig
it practice silence from our technology, maybe that can help
(08:04):
us to reorient our attention to the true God. Hum
note to self. But I also find the silence can
be an act of showing trust in God. After Habaca
finished complaining to God, he says in chapter two and
verse one, I will take my stand at my watch
(08:26):
post and station myself on the tower and look out
to see what He will say to me. It's easy
to complain, isn't it. But it's a lot harder to
wait patiently for God's answer. It's easy and maybe quicker
to ask a friend or search the internet for an answer.
(08:46):
But before you run to somebody else. Let me encourage
you to run first to God, and before you figure
out the solution to some problem on your own, no
matter how smart or clever you are. What would it
look like to calm and quiet yourself before the Lord.
(09:06):
This might mean spending an extended period of time meditating
on God's word and listening for the guidance of the
Holy Spirit. Or we can sit in God's presence in prayer.
And like King David when he wrote and Saw one
hundred and thirty two verses one and two, Oh Lord,
my heart is not lifted up, my eyes are not
(09:29):
raised too high. I do not occupy myself with the
things too great and too marvelous for me. But I
have calmed and quieted my soul like a weaned child
with this mother. You see what's happening there. David is
quieting his soul before God, clearing his mind of the
(09:49):
details and distractions of life, clearing his own agin, and
just waiting in silence before God. Like me, you might
ask a quest, and so what's in it for me?
What am I going to get when I do that?
And the answer is that that's not for you to question.
(10:11):
It's not up to you what God might say or
might not say say. He might not say anything. But
the purpose of being silent before God is to show
God an absolute trust in him. We wait and we
listen because God is greater than us, has a purpose
(10:31):
higher than our own, and has a plan greater than
we can think about. And so let's be quiet, Let's
wait and listen for the Lord, the only true God,
the one who hears and answers and offers the very
salvation and rest we desperately need. I know that I
(10:55):
need to take more time in my own life to
be silent before the Lord. I hope you'll do it too.
Thanks for listening. I hope this helps, and I'll see
you next time.
Hi, this is Mark. Thanks for joining me today on
words of Truth. You've got to be honest with you today.
Rarely do I really enjoy silence? Are you with me
on that? I mean, if I'm by myself in my shop,
for example, or driving in the car, I usually have
(00:22):
the radio on, or I'll be listening to some music.
When I work out, I'll have my headphones on my
EarPods in listening to a podcast or some music. If
I have a free evening with nothing to do, I'll
watch a couple of TV shows. It's hard for me
(00:44):
just to sit and be silent. I mean, even when
I'm reading a book or my Bible, my mind tends
to race thinking about all sorts of other things, and
that honestly makes prayer by myself difficult because my mind
just keeps getting off track. Now, I'm not attention deficit
(01:06):
or anything like that. I just think I'm like a
lot of other people who just find it difficult to
be silent. There's noise everywhere we go, isn't that right?
Walk into a restaurant there will be music playing in
the background. In fact, we think it's kind of weird
when there's no music in the background. Walk down the
(01:27):
street and you'll hear the traffic sirens from ambulances and
fire trucks, and music blasting from passing cards. Even in
our homes, children will be laughing and playing and crying,
or the neighbor's dog is barking, or our own dog
is barking. It's really difficult to find silence in the
(01:48):
world in which we live, and silence can be awkward.
When I'm silent, I feel painfully unproductive. I'm the kind
of person who doesn't want to miss out on the
chance to catch up with a friend or to check
something off my to do list. And like most people,
(02:09):
I certainly don't look forward to dealing with the underlying
worries or fears that might be lingering deep inside my soul.
And so what do I do? Like most people? I
push it down somehow with some kind of noise. Now,
I'm not saying that taking in the information is bad, no, no,
(02:29):
But in our content saturated culture, it's too easy to
fill in every moment, or to numb every uncomfortable feeling
with some form of noise. I've been thinking about this
a lot lately, maybe because my own life is so
busy and all my moments are so filled up. My
(02:51):
wife will often say to me, can you just sit
down and relax? Can you just sit there and do nothing?
And so I guess I'm just I have what burying
my own soul for a minute in this podcast, as
I began to search from scripture about the value of
silence and what God says about that, and I found
(03:12):
some really interesting principles in of all places, the book
of Habakkuk. You probably haven't been there for a while,
have you to me either, Well, here are some principles
that I found about silence. Number one, silence can actually
be an act of worship. In Habakuk, we find a
(03:34):
prophet who's troubled over the wickedness and violence that he's
witnessing amongst his own people. It seems that Judah and
us leaders were corrupt leaders, and in prayer, the prophet
begins pouring out his heart to God and even complaining
to God that God isn't doing anything about what was happening.
(03:55):
As you read, you see Habakuk going back and forth
with God, questions and complaining to God about his silence.
And then in chapter two and verse twenty, God says,
but the Lord is in his holy temple. Let all
the earth keeps silence before him. WHOA that probably pulled
(04:19):
habacca cup short a little bit, don't you imagine as
it should us. It's almost like a parent telling their
children who are complaining, to shut their mouths for a minute.
You see, we can be quick to give God a
peace of our minds, and sometimes that's okay, and God
will take it all from us and even allow it,
(04:42):
as we see in some of the psalms where King
David was complaining to God. But there comes a point
when we have to recognize that God is God and
we're not. You see, silence is is our acknowledging to
Him that we know our place before him, and that
(05:04):
he'll always get the last word, and that he gets
our worship. You see this message of silence repeated time
and time again in scripture. Solomon put it this way,
and Ecclesiastes chapter five and verse two. Be not rash
(05:24):
with your mouth, nor let your heart be hasty to
utter a word before God. For God is in heaven
and you are on earth. Therefore, let your words be few.
Letting our words be few is a way that we
can worship God, because it gives us time just to
look around and be thankful for His beauty and work
(05:48):
in this world. So let silence be a form of worship.
But also I see the principle here in Habaka. This
silence can show us where we've placed something else in
place of God. We call this idolatry. We've set up
an idol. Habakic condemns those who carved false idols in
(06:11):
wood and stone. In fact, right before God commands the
earth to be silent in chapter two, verses eighteen and nineteen,
says what profit is an idol when its maker has
shaped it a metal image? A teacher of lies? For
its maker trusts in his own creation when he makes
(06:34):
speechless idols. Woe to him who says to a wooden thing,
awake to a silent stone, arise, can this teach Behold?
It is overlaid with gold and silver, and there's no
breath in it at all. Now I've never made a
stone or a wood idol, and you probably haven't either.
(06:57):
But too many of us are prone to worship other
things like the glow of the glowing RECTI tangle or
we look for answers and security and even a sense
of satisfaction from the plastic and metal devices we carry
in our pockets or that lay around in our homes
(07:18):
will say Alexa or hey, Google, find me the answer
for And the idols of Habakak didn't talk back like
ours do from a search. Oh look, my phone just
woke up. But I wonder if ours can be even
(07:42):
more dangerous than theirs, because our idols can't teach us
what most of us need to know. They don't have
the very breath of God. They can't respond to the
cries of our souls. I think that if we rig
it practice silence from our technology, maybe that can help
(08:04):
us to reorient our attention to the true God. Hum
note to self. But I also find the silence can
be an act of showing trust in God. After Habaca
finished complaining to God, he says in chapter two and
verse one, I will take my stand at my watch
(08:26):
post and station myself on the tower and look out
to see what He will say to me. It's easy
to complain, isn't it. But it's a lot harder to
wait patiently for God's answer. It's easy and maybe quicker
to ask a friend or search the internet for an answer.
(08:46):
But before you run to somebody else. Let me encourage
you to run first to God, and before you figure
out the solution to some problem on your own, no
matter how smart or clever you are. What would it
look like to calm and quiet yourself before the Lord.
(09:06):
This might mean spending an extended period of time meditating
on God's word and listening for the guidance of the
Holy Spirit. Or we can sit in God's presence in prayer.
And like King David when he wrote and Saw one
hundred and thirty two verses one and two, Oh Lord,
my heart is not lifted up, my eyes are not
(09:29):
raised too high. I do not occupy myself with the
things too great and too marvelous for me. But I
have calmed and quieted my soul like a weaned child
with this mother. You see what's happening there. David is
quieting his soul before God, clearing his mind of the
(09:49):
details and distractions of life, clearing his own agin, and
just waiting in silence before God. Like me, you might
ask a quest, and so what's in it for me?
What am I going to get when I do that?
And the answer is that that's not for you to question.
(10:11):
It's not up to you what God might say or
might not say say. He might not say anything. But
the purpose of being silent before God is to show
God an absolute trust in him. We wait and we
listen because God is greater than us, has a purpose
(10:31):
higher than our own, and has a plan greater than
we can think about. And so let's be quiet, Let's
wait and listen for the Lord, the only true God,
the one who hears and answers and offers the very
salvation and rest we desperately need. I know that I
(10:55):
need to take more time in my own life to
be silent before the Lord. I hope you'll do it too.
Thanks for listening. I hope this helps, and I'll see
you next time.
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