Why silence is worth it.
The more evasive a practice proves to be, the more essential we understand it’s benefits.
I felt it prior to being fully aware of it.
My heart rate elevated.
My muscles tensed.
My body temperature began to rise.
My nervous system started to fire signals that I was in danger of some unforeseen threat and I needed to run.
Believe it, or not, this wasn’t an experience of be tracked by a mountain lion on one of our beautiful hikes here in Utah. This is an experience I’ve had over and over again when sitting in silence with God.
Let’s be very honest about something for a second: The idea of silence tends to be more attractive than our actual experience of it. Think about this: Psalm 46:10 says,
“Be still and know that I am God.”
Who doesn’t love the idea of this invitation? It produces images of peace in our imagination, but tends to evade us in actual experience. You finally make the time and create the space to sit down, be still and enter into silence, when you are immediately met with what feels like an army of obstacles opposing your ability to experience what Psalm 46:10 invites. And if you’re anything like most people, you reluctantly wave the white flag, signaling surrender and consciously, or unconsciously decide that silence must not be a spiritual practice for you.
Now, if any of this resonates with you, here’s what you should know:
You.
Are not.
Alone.
This is a common and shared experience of every person I’ve ever met who attempts to adopt this foundational spiritual practice of sitting with God in silence. Almost any amount of stillness creates space and opportunity for immense emotional, mental, and spiritual discomfort. But here’s the thing: Just because something is uncomfortable in no way means it is unhelpful. Take exercise for example. Exercise is immensely uncomfortable, but equally helpful. Silence, as well as many other spiritual practices, is the same. So here’s what I find:
The more evasive a practice proves to be, the more essential we understand it’s benefits.
So before we tackle some of the most common obstacles to the spiritual practice of silence, I think it’s critical we wrap our hearts and minds around the many benefits. So let’s dive in.
THE BENEFITS ARE ENDLESS.
The benefits of silence to your entire system are virtually endless. I won’t drag this out, as a simple Google search will open a bottomless hole of information you can read for yourself, but here are just a few. Neuroscientists have found that a couple hours of silence a day may actually create new braincells. Additionally silence lowers your overall stress level by lowering cortisol and adrenaline. It also lowers your blood pressure and since I’m pretty sure my system runs on coffee and carbs, this of great interest to me personally. Silence has also shown to improve concentration and focus (no surprise there), calm out of control thoughts, foster creativity and aid mindfulness. If these were the only benefits, they would be enough for me. Outside of these, there are three I think we need to carefully consider.
1. Silence welcomes what hides within us to the surface.
Any time the topic of silence comes up, I tend to hear some version of the same resistance: "I don’t like the thoughts, feelings and memories that surface when I’m silent.” The truth is, most of us have learned a complex means of locking all that discomfort away and the silence invites it out. I’m not going to lie, I totally get why we’d be reluctant to do this. I have the same experience. In fact, the opening sentence of this particular article describes my own encounter with this discomfort. Often silence creates space for my own regret, shame, grief, fear, and doubt to raise their head.
But what if God is actually the one behind all this? We have a saying at our church and it goes like this: What is hidden can't be healed. What if God wants to invite all these uncomfortable thoughts, feelings and memories to come out of hiding so that He can heal them?What if we stop avoiding silence as yet another way of suppressing all that’s uncomfortable within us and instead embrace the silence as the safe place that God welcomes every wound for the purpose of healing? Surgery isn’t comfortable, but if it saves your life, wouldn’t you agree its worth it? Let’s allow silence to be the operating room in which God heals.
2. Silence invites us to embrace the grace of simply being with God.
Of all the various theological truths we profess as followers of Jesus, grace is by far the most difficult for us to embrace in any sort of experiential manner. Our resistance is understandable because grace doesn’t make sense. We have such a transactional view of relationship that the notion of being loved and accepted based on no merit of our own, but simply due to God’s decision to set His love on us, is truly mind-bending. Beneath so much of the hard work we hide behind is an inability, or unwillingness to simply receive the gracious welcome of the Father that is mediated by Jesus and dispersed by His Spirit. Even so much of our Bible reading, church attendance, serving, giving, singing, and praying is driven by this nagging sense that these activities are in fact the basis of God’s love for us.
Sitting with God in the silence is a tangible means by which we resist the lie of works-based righteousness. Silence is the embrace of grace. In the wake of words we are saying, “Abba, I’m going to trust that you are with me, that you love me and that you’ll never leave me, regardless of my output.” Holy Spirit uses the simple practice of silence to help move grace from a doctrine we understand in our minds and a truth we profess with our mouths, to an experience we embrace in our hearts.
3. Silence allows us to tune our hearts to God’s voice.
One massive area of deficiency in much teaching on prayer is the role that listening plays. Most of us have been taught to talk to God in the form of one way conversation. We talk. He listens. The problem is, even basic conversation skills teach us that this isn’t how conversation works. Conversation go two ways. There is talking and there is listening. Silence allows space for God to speak. In silence we can learn to listen to the way God communicates through Scripture, through words, through impressions, through memories, and through the imagination. I can’t help but think of the story of young Samuel. God was communicating with him, but he hadn’t yet learned to recognize God’s voice. He needed Eli to teach him how to recognize the voice of God. I’m convinced this is the plight many of us experience. God is communicating, He’s just rarely loud about it, so we struggle to recognize His voice. The reality is, we don’t need God to shout, we simply need to get still. In the silence our hearts learn to tune themselves to God’s voice.
INTO THE SILENCE.
Here’s the bottom line: All the talk of silence is of little use unless we actually enter into the practice of it. So if you’re open to it, I want to invite you into an experiment this week. I want to invite you to sit in silence at least once a day, each day this week. Pick an amount of time you can handle. It could be 2 minutes, it could be 20. Regardless of the time, here are the three things of which to be mindful:
First, be intentional about your breathing. Breath regulates the nervous system in a powerful way, so settle your body into the stillness with deep inhales through the nose and long, slow exhales through the mouth. Think four seconds in and 6 seconds out. Second, just notice what comes up. You may feel anxious, antsy, or restless. An uncomfortable memory may surface. You may be bored, irritated, or agitated. Don’t make judgements about what comes up, simply notice it. Third, tell God about what you’re experiencing. Trust Holy Spirit to surface what He wants to talk about it. One of the way He communicates what He knows we need to discuss with Him, is by allowing it to come to the surface. So each day, set your timer, focus on your breath, notice what comes up and then talk to God about it.
Next week I’ll tackle some of the obstacles that keep us from entering the silence with God, but for now, let’s hitch our hearts to the many benefits. Let’s welcome what’s in us to the surface. Let’s embrace the grace of simply being with God. Let’s tune our hearts to His voice. It may be a little uncomfortable, but that doesn’t mean it will be unhelpful. Let’s enter the silence together and find God there.
Join the conversation…
I desperately want to help you overcome the obstacles you face. So tell me about any obstacles that come up as you sit in silence this week. What is the experience like? What makes it hard? Post your thoughts in the
comments and we can go deeper together.