Sabbatical #7: The Challenge of Silence

My first experience with silence at Starbucks was nice. I’ve done it a couple times since in my hotel room where it was quieter – no disco or Latin music. You’d think it would go better, but it was much more difficult to sit and be un-agenda-ed with God. The silence magnified the challenge of waiting for God on His timing. It was an awkward silence.

I think real silence is preferable, but it will take some growing on my part for this to no longer be “awkward.” When I think about it, I really don’t cultivate silence. I like music on, or TV on, or some kind of noise. I’m addicted to noise.

I’m reading Hearing God by Dallas Willard. I’ve read it before, a few years ago, but I still haven’t lived out the sub-title: “Developing a Conversational Relationship with God.” I think, at least at the learning stages, I need to get used to hearing His voice in quiet before I learn to discern it in the jumble of life.

Suzanne and I have been watching Ultimate Fighter over the last couple weeks. (OK, I watch most of it and she pops in from time to time, but leaves for most of the fights). I started watching because I saw an old high school wrestling teammate was one of the coaches (Jens Pulver). Suzanne asked how they could hear the directions from their coaches while they were fighting and all the hollering that was going on. I don’t know how it works for the guys in the octagon, but when I was wrestling, I could pretty well tune things out and only hear the voices of my coaches. I trained my ear to hear them.

I think that’s what I’m trying to do in terms of God’s voice. My goal isn’t to be a monastic that spends hours of silence each day. Rather, I want to be acquainted with His voice like that of a companion through the struggles, and joys, of everyday life.

I won’t summarize Willard’s book – I usually fade about 2/3 of the way through in such enterprises (see the Reformission posts on Driscoll’s “Radical Reformission”). But where I am now in the book makes a good point that if God is speaking specifically to us we should be looking for it. Just because He’s speaking doesn’t mean we’re in a posture to hear. We need to be aware. We need to cultivate an ear that hears.

How do you cultivate an ear for God’s voice?

Can you hear Him amid the din of life?

Perhaps more primary, do you want to?