When God Is Silent (Or So It Seems)
I’ve been in a season of silence from God for more years than I can count. At first, I assumed He had stopped speaking. But over time, I’ve started to wonder—maybe it wasn’t that He went quiet. Maybe I just stopped listening. Maybe I never really knew how to recognize His voice in the first place.
We live in a culture that prizes self-reliance. As Americans, we’re raised to admire the “self-made man,” to celebrate those who overcome odds through grit, hustle, and sheer will. Independence is our virtue. Weakness, our greatest fear.
But in the biblical story, one man embodies this kind of self-made attitude: Jacob.
Jacob was a smooth talker, a clever manipulator. He tricked his brother Esau out of his birthright. He used his wit and strategy to get what he wanted. For a while, it worked. But like all of us who try to control life, it eventually caught up to him.
Years later, Jacob found himself face-to-face with the consequences of his actions. Esau was coming—and Jacob feared the worst. This time, there was no plan to outsmart the situation. No escape route. No more control. Just fear, vulnerability, and the weight of everything he’d done.
And it’s here—at the end of himself—that Jacob encounters God.
He wrestles with the Lord through the night, refusing to let go until he receives a blessing. It’s not a moment of strength, but of desperation. Jacob wasn’t trying to win; he was clinging to God because he had nothing else left. No schemes. No swagger. Just a plea: “I will not let you go unless you bless me.”
I’ve come to believe that God’s silence in my life hasn’t been punishment. It’s been mercy. A quiet act of rescue from my own self-sufficiency. The silence exposed the truth: that I had built a life where I didn’t need to hear from Him. And now, like Jacob, I’ve run out of clever plans. I don’t want to move without His voice. I don’t want to live without His blessing.
Silence isn’t abandonment. It’s an invitation.
An invitation to go deeper.
To tune out the noise.
To find God not in the fire or the earthquake, but in the still, small whisper.
Maybe you’re there too. Maybe you’ve been in a season where God seems distant, and the silence feels suffocating. But what if He’s drawing you closer? What if He’s not withholding love, but calling you to seek Him with a desperation that finally breaks through all the distractions?
If you’re in the silence, you’re not forgotten—you’re being invited. Invited into the depths of His mercy. Invited to wrestle. Invited to hold on until you know that He sees you, hears you, and blesses you.
You don’t have to have it all together. You don’t have to fake strength. You just have to cling.
And in that clinging, you might just discover that the silence was never silence at all.
