MORE of God by Saying LESS.

Could sitting with God in silence actually be a secret to experiencing more of Him?

I remember that morning as if it was this morning.

It was early 2019 and I was pacing the living room of the little townhome our family of five shared at the time here in Salt Lake City. I don’t recall exactly what time it was, but I know it was early because it was still dark outside. I had all the lights off, so I didn’t wake up one of my kids who at the time seemed to stir at even the thinnest thread of light, or the slightest sound. As I spent this early morning pacing the living room, I also prayed, which was my practice at the time. The movement helped me stay awake and quietly praying out loud helped keep my mind from wondering. I was praying through the same list I prayed over almost every morning…

• I prayed for myself - confessing sin, asking for wisdom, and begging for strength.

• I prayed for my family - my wife, my kids, my siblings, and parents.

• I prayed for my church - for health, for unity, for growth.

• I prayed for my friends - for comfort, for strength, their sense of God.

I sincerely lifted all of these genuine needs up to God just as I had so many times before. But something strange happened when I finished my list on this particular morning. Out of what felt like nowhere came a rather disorienting and disconcerting thought:

I could never do that again and be just fine.

That thought was disorienting because I’d never had it before. I don’t recall ever consciously feeling, or thinking that my practice of prayer was unnecessary, but in this moment of honesty, I have to admit that’s exactly what I was feeling. And that was disconcerting. I’d been a disciple of Jesus most my life and I wondered what it said about my faith if all the sudden I didn’t value prayer. The good news is, my thought process didn’t end with this rather Debbie-downer sentiment. Immediately after thinking, “I could never do that again and be just fine,” I then thought…

There must be more than this.

Little did I know that this disorienting and disconcerting thought, was in and of itself, one of the most profoundly deep prayers in its own right. The heart of this thought was a longing for deeper intimacy with God. It wasn’t that I was ready to be done with prayer, I was simply done praying the way I had been. Stay with me and see if you can relate with this.

When I reflect on the way I have spent the majority of my life praying, I can’t help but compare it to the way I interact with a server at a restaurant.

When you go out for a meal, you are escorted to a table and presented with a menu. At some point a server comes by, takes your order and then he, or she set about getting you the very things you’ve ordered. That's the way many of us have been conditioned to pray. God is the cosmic server we sit down with and present all our requests for the day. He in turn is obligated to then deliver the very things for which we have petitioned Him. Now, there’s certainly nothing wrong with this form of prayer. We call these prayers of petition and God invites them in Scripture.

• “Pray at all times in the Spirit with every prayer and request [petition]…” (Ephesians 6:18)

• “Don't worry about anything, but in everything, through prayer and petition with thanksgiving, present your requests to God.” (Philippians 4:6)

• “First of all, then, I urge that petitions, prayers, intercessions, and thanksgivings be made for everyone…” (1 Timothy 2:1)

Presenting God with our requests (i.e. petitions) is an essential and Biblical expression of prayer. It’s simply not the only one.

The problem with the habit of petition-only prayer that I fell into, is you don’t build an intimate relationship through one-sided petition alone. Imagine trying to build a friendship through nothing but presenting a friend with daily requests of all you’d like them to do for you. No true processing of what’s happening in your heart, or mind. No listening to what’s happening in theirs. No opportunity to simply be with that person. We all know that no relationship will flourish through this kind of one-sided petition alone, yet this is exactly how many of us have learned to pray. Is it any wonder that so many of us find ourselves with this lingering longing for more?

As you can imagine, that experience in February of 2019 has radically altered the ways in which I pray. What might surprise you is the first way it changed how I pray. After admitting I was tired of one-way prayer and acknowledging my longing for more I began to sit for varying lengths of time throughout the day and pray by saying…

NOTHING.

That’s right…absolute silence. I simply sat with God. And here’s what surprised me: I left these times of saying nothing to God feeling closer to Him than I ever had when I only dumped my requests on Him. You may feel some resistance to this idea of sitting in silence as a form of prayer. But think about how powerful it can be to silently share space with another.

Amnesty International conducted an experiment in which they had refugees from Syria and Somalia sit with Europeans and silently hold eye contact for 4 minutes. They barely could speak to one another because they did not share the same language. Despite the inability to communicate through words, the results were amazing. They experienced a deep and intimate connection in the silence through little more than silent eye-contact. Yet it provoked ear-to-ear smiles, laughter, and crying. All of this connection and emotion in the context of an almost exclusively silent connection. My only point is that we don’t always need words to communicate.

So here’s what I’d like to invite you to this week. If it is not already your practice, I want to invite you to experiment by sitting with God in silence. You can start with just a few minutes, or expand it as long as you’d like. Regardless, here are a few practical points of advice:

1. Be mindful of the reality that you’re sitting with God.

You aren’t sitting there alone. You aren’t “doing nothing.” You are being with God and that is something. You are sharing space with the God of the universe who longs for intimacy with you and gave everything to make it possible.

2. Be gentle with yourself when your mind wanders.

God made your mind and He created it with the capacity to wander. It’s not a curse, it’s an opportunity. Look at every time your mind wanders as a means of grace. You get to come back to the loving embrace of Jesus each time.

3. Be patient with the practice.

All spiritual practice is like a muscle that gets stronger with use. Embrace the discomfort, don’t give up right away and stick with it.

The sixteenth century Christian mystic, St. John of the Cross wrote, “Silence is God’s first language.” Thomas Keating expounded on this phrase writing, “Everything else is poor translation. In order to understand this language [silence], we must learn to be silent and rest in God.” Silence can be unnerving. Until we learn to befriend it, silence has a way of making us uncomfortable. Our minds wonder. It feels unproductive. We're unaccustomed to “doing nothing.” But the reality is, discomfort is good, God made our minds to wander and sitting with Him in silence is doing something. It’s creating the time and space to simply be with Him. And being with God is where intimacy is formed.

Tell me about your experience with silence.

What resonates?

What’s hard?

What questions do you have?

What obstacles have you run up against?

Let’s talk this out together.