Trusting God in the Silent Seasons

Psalm 37:3-4 (NKJV)

³ Trust in the Lord, and do good;
Dwell in the land, and feed on His faithfulness.
⁴ Delight yourself also in the Lord,
And He shall give you the desires of your heart.

 Mountain highs and valley lows – anyone who has been a believer for any length of time has experienced both. The intensity of both experiences is great. Obviously, the mountain highs are a time of great joy, feeling very much loved by our Heavenly Father. The opposite is just as intense but in a negative sense; the valley lows can leave us feeling completely alone. While a believer knows in his heart that he is not alone, negative emotions nonetheless must be dealt with or they can lead a believer to a place he does not want to go.

The starting point for avoiding/dealing with negative emotions that can intensify the silent seasons is found in Psalm 37:3 where we are told to “feed on His faithfulness.” That would involve purposefully going back over our history with God and remembering all the times in the past when we felt His Presence and His Hand in delivering us. Doing that will counter the thoughts that “this time” He will not be there for us.

Feeding on God’s faithfulness always opens the door to the most important place believers should live, especially during the silent seasons; that being, living in a revelation of the true nature of God. The phrase “true nature” is important because religious tradition does not always reflect His true nature. Incidents from the Old Testament have been used to paint the wrong picture of God, reflecting One who is hard to please and quick to judge. But an encounter Moses had with God paints an entirely different picture:  In Exodus 33:18-19 (NKJV) God Himself sets the record straight;

¹⁸ And he {Moses} said, “Please, show me Your glory.”¹⁹ Then
 He {God} said, “I will make all My goodness pass before you,
and I will proclaim the name of the Lord before you. I will be
gracious to whom I will be gracious, and I will have compassion
on whom I will have compassion.”

When Moses asked to see God’s glory (in essence who He was), God responded by showing Moses His goodness. Simply put, we need to live our lives firmly rooted in the goodness of God.

 Experiencing an always-growing revelation of God’s goodness should be the number one priority in our walk with the Lord. One well-known minister of the gospel coined this ongoing discovery of the revelation of the goodness of God as a life-long “journey into the nature of God.” The further we journey into His character, the more we trust Him to see us through any situation in life.

It is wrapping ourselves in God’s nature that insulates us from the negative emotions that can come during the silent seasons. Another well-known minister of the gospel summed it up perfectly when he said, “When you can’t feel God’s Hand, trust His Heart.”

6/25