{"id":5510,"date":"2014-07-03T00:05:55","date_gmt":"2014-07-03T07:05:55","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/nettelhorst.com\/blog1\/?p=5510"},"modified":"2014-07-02T23:15:48","modified_gmt":"2014-07-03T06:15:48","slug":"silence","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/nettelhorst.com\/blog1\/2014\/07\/03\/silence\/","title":{"rendered":"Silence"},"content":{"rendered":"

\u201cOf whom were you worried and fearful
\nWhen you lied, and did not remember Me
\nNor give Me a thought?
\nWas I not silent even for a long time
\nSo you do not fear Me?
\n\u201cI will declare your righteousness and your deeds,
\nBut they will not profit you.
\n\u201cWhen you cry out, let your collection of idols deliver you.
\nBut the wind will carry all of them up,
\nAnd a breath will take them away.
\nBut he who takes refuge in Me will inherit the land
\nAnd will possess My holy mountain.\u201d
\nAnd it will be said,
\n\u201cBuild up, build up, prepare the way,
\nRemove every obstacle out of the way of My people.\u201d
\nFor thus says the high and exalted One
\nWho lives forever, whose name is Holy,
\n\u201cI dwell on a high and holy place,
\nAnd also with the contrite and lowly of spirit
\nIn order to revive the spirit of the lowly
\nAnd to revive the heart of the contrite.
\n\u201cFor I will not contend forever,
\nNor will I always be angry;
\nFor the spirit would grow faint before Me,
\nAnd the breath of those whom I have made. (Isaiah 57:11-16)<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

The long stretches of silence when God does nothing to the wicked can lull everyone into a false sense of security. God\u2019s silence does not mean that he won\u2019t act. It also doesn\u2019t mean that he doesn\u2019t care. When the righteous cried out for relief and nothing happened; when Joseph remained a slave or in prison for eighteen long years; when his people rotted in Egypt for four hundred years; when Israel suffered captivity in Babylon for seventy years. When the Messiah tarried his arrival for hundreds of years\u2014it never meant that God had stopped caring. It didn\u2019t mean that he wasn\u2019t busy. God does not contend with people without end, he does not leave them to twist in the wind. He understands that human beings are limited, that there is only so much that they can endure. But like a good trainer with his athletes, God knows that they can be pushed further than they imagine. Just one more push up; just one more lap. Then do it again.<\/p>\n

But eventually it will be time to hit the showers. Eventually game time comes. Relief arrives only after hard work, after all. You don\u2019t get a vacation because you were sitting around all day. You get it for a reason: you\u2019ve been working hard. That reason just isn\u2019t so much fun and we\u2019d all like the vacation sooner than we really need it.<\/p>\n

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\u201cOf whom were you worried and fearful When you lied, and did not remember Me Nor give Me a thought? Was I not silent even for a long time So you do not fear Me? \u201cI will declare your righteousness … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"_s2mail":"yes"},"categories":[18,17,16],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/nettelhorst.com\/blog1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5510"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/nettelhorst.com\/blog1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/nettelhorst.com\/blog1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nettelhorst.com\/blog1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nettelhorst.com\/blog1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5510"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/nettelhorst.com\/blog1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5510\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5512,"href":"https:\/\/nettelhorst.com\/blog1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5510\/revisions\/5512"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/nettelhorst.com\/blog1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5510"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nettelhorst.com\/blog1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5510"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nettelhorst.com\/blog1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5510"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}