The Silent Treatment Series: Mute – Part 1 Various Scriptures I was reading about this married couple who was having some problems in their relationship, and so they decided the best way to deal with these problems was to go on a daytime talk show…which is really great strategy. And they’re on national television talking with this talk show host, who has no expertise or credentials in marriage counseling, trying to work out their issues, and this couple especially had a problem with giving each other the silent treatment. The years of their marriage had been marked by just different seasons of not talking to each other. Sometimes for hours, sometimes for days, even weeks… On a few occasions, for months at a time they just didn’t talk to each other. They would give each other the silent treatment, and neither would be humble enough to break the silence. It would just go on and on. As luck would have it, it was during the taping of this talk show that they were having one of these episodes. They wouldn’t talk to each other, but they would talk to the host about one another. And that’s how they were communicating. And so the husband was talking about how it created all kinds of problems, as you would expect, within their marriage. But just in life in general it created problems, because they couldn’t be partners. They couldn’t be a team. And so he told about how on one occasion he needed to wake up the next morning at five o’clock for an early morning business flight, but he wasn’t talking to his wife and she wasn’t talking to him. But she’s the one who knew how to use the alarm clock, and so he left her a little note by the sink that said, “I need to be up at five o’clock in the morning.” He left it out where he knew that she would see it. The next morning he wakes up and he rolls over and looks at the clock. It’s past seven! He’s in a panic. And then he sees this note next to the alarm clock in his wife’s handwriting and it says, “It’s five a.m. Wake up!” And it’s not…it’s not very effective. In fact, I think you hear stories like that, and what do we think? We think it’s petty! It’s just kind of petty to give each other the silent treatment. It’s this passive-aggressive form of punishment where we try to punish the other person in our life. I don’t even think it’s that effective. I think a lot of husbands…well, I don’t think they would consider the silent treatment punishment at all. I saw one husband wearing this shirt that said, “Please, Honey, not the silent treatment. Anything but that.” I detected sarcasm! It’s kind of petty. It’s not real effective. But do you ever sense that God is giving you the silent treatment? You ask Him for help. “God, would You please help us?” “God, just tell us what to do. We need some direction here. Whatever You tell us to do, that’s what we’re going to do. Just tell us what to do. I don’t know, so You just tell us.” (Pause) Just silence. It feels like your prayers just kind of bounce off the ceiling right back at you. Do you ever feel like that? 1 Each year I go through a daily Bible reading plan that takes me through the Bible in chronological order. And eventually I come to the point in that reading plan where the Old Testament comes to and end and the New Testament begins. Now historically speaking, there was a period of four hundred years of history between the Old Testament and the New Testament where there’s nothing ... nothing. Biblically there is nothing recorded for us. It’s called “the four hundred years of silence”—this intertestamental period—four hundred years of silence where there is no word from the Lord and there is no prophet from God with a word from God. Just four hundred years of silence. Each year, my journey through the Old Testament portion of my reading plan concludes with the book of Nehemiah. Now, you find Nehemiah kind of in the middle of the Old Testament, but chronologically it’s at the end. It brings us to around 420 BC. Jesus won’t be born until some four hundred years later, and so you’ve got these years of silence. And every year it gets me to thinking about what was going on during those four hundred years? What was God up to? Years ago they used to print a blank page in Bibles between the Old Testament and the New Testament and that blank page represented the silent years, where there is no word from the Lord. So we’re going to talk a little bit about “What do you do during the parts of your story that are marked by a blank page?” What do you do when it feels like God is giving you the silent treatment? It may not be four hundred years, but most of us know what that feels like. Now we don’t talk about it—not in here. We don’t want to be the one that doesn’t hear from God, right? So we like to pretend…or we like to at least give the appearance… that this isn’t an issue, that this isn’t a struggle for us. But what I know and what you know is that there are times…there are parts of our story where God seems silent, where you’re talking to God and you suddenly realize, “I don’t think He’s listening.” It’s like when you’re on the cell phone. And you’re talking to maybe a good friend, and you’re going through some of the challenges that you’re experiencing. And maybe you’re talking for three or four minutes kind of pouring out your heart, and then you realize, “I don’t know that there’s anyone on the other end of the line.” The call was dropped. You don’t even know when it was dropped, but at some point in the middle of your talking the call got dropped. And you…you just feel a little bit foolish. You feel a little bit ridiculous because for the last five minutes you’ve just been talking to yourself. Do you ever feel like that when you pray? You start off and it seems that God is listening, but then somewhere along the line you stop and you’re…all you hear is silence. And maybe God doesn’t get that great of reception up there in heaven, because it sure seems like a lot of calls get dropped. 2 So what do you do in the silence when it feels like God is giving you the silent treatment? John Claypool was a well-known and much-loved pastor, preacher, theologian, author, and teacher. Among the many books he wrote was a bestseller entitled Tracks of a Fellow Struggler. And in the book John Claypool tells about losing his 10-year-old daughter, Laura, to acute leukemia. When Laura was first diagnosed the family found a treatment, and the treatment caused her to go into remission. So there was a lot of hope initially. Life kind of went back to normal, and they thought, “Well, maybe…maybe it’s been a misdiagnosis” or “Maybe she’s been healed miraculously,” as they had been praying. But it wasn’t to be, and on an Easter Sunday morning all of that came crashing down when his young daughter went into a severe relapse. It caused her to be hospitalized for several weeks. Her eyes were swollen shut. Her body was wracked with pain. And Claypool talks about just the draining experience of walking with her through this journey. It was just a helpless feeling as a father. He tells about one night where it was especially difficult. She could get no rest and she was in a lot of pain. So they sat in silence in the dark room and his young daughter said, “Daddy, when will the leukemia go away?” And he said, “Honey, you know…you know that we are doing everything in our power to find an answer, to find a cure for this. You know we’re doing everything we can.” Silence for a little while. She asks her dad, this pastor, “Dad, when did God say the leukemia would go away?” He hedged a bit. “Honey, you know that we’ve been praying and praying and praying, and we’ve been asking God’s help.” She interrupts. “Yeah, but what did He say? What did He say? When did He say it would go away?” And John Claypool writes, “What do you say to such childlike directness when the heavens seem so utterly silent?” How do you deal with that when you cry out to God in a moment of desperation? You’re going through a trial, a challenge…there’s this moment of desperation…and God…God just seems silent. What do you do during the parts of your story that seem to be marked by the blank page? Well, here’s one thing we do. We tend to ask this question to God, “God, why don’t You do something?” Now when we ask that question we don’t say this nonchalantly.