Tag Archives: Doubting Thomas

When God is Silent

Surely there have been times in your life that you have asked the question of the ages:

Why is God silent?

Does He not hear me? My prayers are not being answered, maybe He doesn’t love me. Have I done something wrong?

  • I don’t feel Him.
  • I don’t hear Him.
  • I definitely don’t see Him.

I am surely all alone in this world!

when God is silent

Haven’t we all been there? Maybe we have even lived there for a time? It isn’t easy.

Can we say it can be just plain difficult?

I am not one of those that is fortunate enough to hear the Lord speak in an audible voice to me every morning and say, “Good morning Nannette, time to get up, Sweet Daughter of Mine! Here is what I have planned for you today…”

But He does speak to us, in a variety of ways, mostly through His Word and prayer. And the two of them together? Even better chance you will hear that still, small voice of the Lord.

But sometimes, there is silence; and He is teaching us to trust Him.

Do you remember Thomas? Poor Thomas is still getting picked on as The Doubter. He said he wouldn’t believe that Jesus was alive unless he could see the nail marks in his hands and put his hand in his side. But Jesus said to him, “Because you have seen me, you have believed; blessed are those who have not seen and yet have believed.” John 20:29 NIV.

Compare it to a marriage relationship. If your spouse is away on a trip, are you panicked that they don’t love you anymore?

  • You can’t feel them next to you.
  • You can’t see them.
  • You can’t talk to them if they are busy or in meetings.
  • You can’t hear them.

Does that mean that just because there is silence that their love means nothing any longer? Of course not.

Absence makes the heart grow fonder.

Would it not be wonderful to think that the Lord is preparing us in the silence, to teach us to long for Him?

Of course, we want to be sure that there is not something keeping us from hearing from the Lord.

  • If there is sin, repent.
  • If there is anger, get rid of it.
  • If there is someone you need to forgive, go do it.

Clean up the heart. Draw nigh to Him and He will draw nigh to you. His Word promises that.

Can we trust God even when we don’t hear from Him? When we don’t feel Him every day? He promised to never leave us or forsake us, when there is silence we lean on His promises!

Can we keep on loving Him, serving Him, telling others about Him, just because we love Him, and not because He owes us anything in return?

C.S. Lewis said, “Though our feelings come and go, God’s love for us does not.”

He never changes, He is always the same. “Jesus Christ the same yesterday, and today, and forever.” Hebrews 13:8. And in an ever-changing world that is full to the brim of uncertainty, we can encourage one another by reminding ourselves of His faithfulness and remembering prayers that He has answered in the past.

You can trust Him, even in the silence.

Doubting like Thomas?

There was a disciple who walked with Jesus who said this very thing about our Lord,“Unless I see in His hands the print of the nails, and put my finger into the print of the nails, and put my hand into His side, I will not believe.” John 20:25 NKJV.

He said he had to see it to believe it. But when Jesus showed up He said to Thomas, “Thomas, because you have seen Me, you have believed. Blessed are those who have not seen and yet have believed.” John 20:29.

We are so quick to jump on Doubting Thomas…but how many of us are so much just like him? We have to see to believe.

When it comes to making money or making a deal with someone, we want to know what we are getting, right? We use all kinds of catch-phrases when we are wheeling and dealing:

A Day Late and A Dollar Short
A Pretty Penny
At the Drop of a Dime
Cash Cow
Cash on the Barrelhead
Chicken Feed
Dollars for Doughnuts
Don’t Take Any Wooden Nickels
Golden Rule
In for a Penny, In for a Pound
In a Clover
Keep the Wolf from the Door
Midas Touch
Money Jam
Nickel Tour
Not for Love nor Money
Pay the Piper
Red Cent
Scot Free
Sticky Fingers
The Penny Dropped
Turn on a Dime
Two Bits

And of course, Show Me the Money!

If we can’t see what we are buying, forget it. We’re not even going to make the deal. We have avenues and outlets like eBay, Craigs List, Etsy and a host of other unique sellers, but we wouldn’t buy anything from them if we couldn’t at least see a picture of the item first.

It is so programmed into us to wheel and deal and bargain with people that we have to have everything proven to us FIRST.

But when it comes to our Savior, it should never be that way. We must learn to trust Him, not ask to have everything shown to us.

Trust-Me-hopeinthehealing-1024x775

If we do it God’s way…He says, Trust Me…just simply Trust Me…and He will show us.

Show us what?

He will show us that He can take care of us.

That He is in control.

That He cares about everything in our lives and there isn’t anything that comes our way that He cannot handle…

If we will trust Him…first.

It sounds so easy and yet it is so hard to do sometimes. Our carnal nature takes over and we want to help God fix things. Isn’t that funny? That we think we can actually do things better than Almighty God? The One who created the Heavens and the Earth?

Yes, this earthly flesh gets in the way…but we can keep it under submission by daily prayer and ingesting the Word of God. The more time we spend getting to know Him, the more we become like Him. And the more we know Him, the more we trust Him.

Is there anything in your life that you have been trying to make God show you first? You want to see behind the curtain before you can trust Him?

How about laying down those apprehensions today and just trusting Him? 

“Trust in the LORD with all your heart, and do not lean on your own understanding. In all your ways acknowledge him, and he will make straight your paths.” Proverbs 3: 5,6.

Let Him take care of things and you can stop worrying about where all of the answers are going to come from!

“This God–his way is perfect;the word of the LORD proves true; he is a shield for all those who take refuge in him.” Psalm 18:30.

“Let not your hearts be troubled. Believe in God; believe also in me.” John 14:1.

“Commit your way to the LORD; trust in him, and he will act.” Psalm 37:5.

“It is better to take refuge in the LORD than to trust in man.” Psalm 118:8.

“Every word of God is pure; He is a shield to those who put their trust in Him.” Proverbs 30:5.

See the promises in His Word?

You can lean back in your chair and say,”Lord I trust You…You don’t even have to show me.”

 

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Chaos into cosmos…it’s in His hands!

It’s Five Minute Friday! So thankful for the word prompt today, “hands”. FMF is all about writing just for the love of the written word. No over-thinking, over-editing, or stressing out! Today I am linking up with other writers at Lisa Jo Baker’s site. You can read all of the other posts there too! Join me and feel free to comment on these “hands”.

‘All things work together’; they would not do so, unless there was one dominant Will which turned the chaos into a cosmos. ~Alexander Maclaren

Have you ever tied a string around your finger so that you would not forget something important? Perhaps that seems foreign to us today since we have our high-tech phones into which we can set a “reminder” so easily. But it used to be a common spoken-of way to remember what you were to pick up at the grocery, or to not forget that one of the children had band practice after school. Of course the bigger tragedy would be to forget what you tied the string there for in the first place!

“Behold, I have graven you on the palms of my hands; your walls are continually before me.” Isaiah 49:16.

As was the custom of the Jewish people at that time, they might make a mark in their hand, or on their finger, a resemblance of the holy city so they would not forget its importance to them. This is, perhaps, taken from the memorial of Passover in Exodus 13:9 ESV: “And it shall be to you as a sign on your hand and as a memorial between your eyes, that the law of the LORD may be in your mouth. For with a strong hand the LORD has brought you out of Egypt. The Lord was letting Jerusalem know that they were always before Him. They were not forgotten! They were so important that He had engraved them on His hands! When those hands went to work, those hands that rules nations, subdued kingdoms and won every battle, it was all for Zion.

That promise was not just for Jerusalem, friend. That promise was for you today. For me.

Jesus actually fulfilled that promise in a big way on Calvary. He literally took spikes in His hands for our remembrance. They are ever before Him, we are never forgotten. He did it for you. For me. “Then He said to Thomas, ‘Reach your finger here, and look at My hands; and reach your hand here, and put itinto My side. Do not be unbelieving, but believing.’” John 20:27 NKJV. Like Thomas, we may think at times that we are forsaken. We just cannot find the strength to believe because we don’t “see” the answer. Yet He is there.

Chaos into cosmos

And we know that all things work together for good to them that love God, to them who are the called according to his purpose.” Romans 8:28. THE Called. We skip over that part so much when we quote it; sometimes it is left out altogether! But it has always stood out to me. THE Called.

He called us, He sanctioned us, and He redeemed us for His purpose.

Then He promised to never leave us nor forsake us and to be with us to the very end. That is where our faith and trust in the One whose hands rule the world is so important. We can believe, not because we have seen, but because of His Word. It never fails. It never comes back to us empty. And everything He asks us to do, or believe, we can know that He is using those hands to work it out for our good.

Chaos into cosmos…it’s in His hands.

Kingdom2

 

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