How to pray when God isn't saying anything through the bible

You've been asking about one thing for a while now. Not a small thing. Something you actually need an answer on, and you've brought it properly — you've prayed about it more than once, you've read around it, you've waited on it.

And there's nothing. No sense of anything. No verse that seemed to be for you, no conviction one way or the other, no door opening or closing. Just the same question, still open, and you saying it into a room.

So tonight you sit down to pray about it again and you can hear yourself doing it. Same words as last time. You get about a sentence in and think, what is the point of this. And you stop, and check your phone, and go to bed.

Nothing dramatic has happened. Nobody's died. You're not in a crisis. You just can't tell anymore whether anyone is on the other end of this, and it's been long enough now that you've stopped expecting to find out.

Here's why that one doesn't get prayed.

Because to say it, you'd have to say it to the person who isn't answering. And that feels either pointless or rude. Pointless, if he isn't there. Rude, if he is — because who are you to complain about the timing.

And underneath there's a worse thought, and it's the one that keeps you quiet. That the silence means something about you. That other people seem to hear from him and you don't, so either you've done something, or you're not the sort of person he speaks to. That's not a thought you can raise at church. So it sits there.

And so the actual thing you're carrying — not the request, the silence around the request — never gets said to anyone at all.

There's a psalm that says it in the first line. Psalm 28. It's David's. We're not told what was going on, only that people around him were saying one thing and meaning another.

I'm going to read the beginning and the end. There's a section in the middle about the people who had wronged him, and that's a different evening's episode. So this is part of it, not the whole thing.

To you, Yahweh, I call. My rock, don't be deaf to me, lest, if you are silent to me, I would become like those who go down into the pit. Hear the voice of my petitions, when I cry to you, when I lift up my hands toward your Most Holy Place.

Blessed be Yahweh, because he has heard the voice of my petitions. Yahweh is my strength and my shield. My heart has trusted in him, and I am helped. Therefore my heart greatly rejoices. With my song I will thank him. Yahweh is his people's strength. He is a saving stronghold to his anointed. Save your people, and bless your inheritance. Be their shepherd also, and carry them forever.

Start with what he does in the first sentence. He names the silence, to God, as the problem. Don't be deaf to me. If you are silent to me.

He doesn't work around it. He doesn't open with praise and hope the subject comes up. The silence is the thing he's got, so the silence is the first thing out of his mouth. That's permission you might need tonight — the not-hearing-anything is allowed to be the content of the prayer. It doesn't have to be got past first.

And look how seriously he takes it. If you are silent to me, I would become like those who go down into the pit. He is saying that if God stays quiet he is finished. Not disappointed. Finished.

So the psalm does not tell you the silence is fine. It doesn't say God is teaching you patience, or that this is a season, or any of the things people say. David treats God's silence as a serious matter and says so to his face. If you've been feeling that it's a bigger deal than you're allowed to admit, the Bible agrees with you.

Then he calls him my rock. In the same sentence as the complaint. Not instead of it.

That's worth sitting with, because it's how the whole prayer is built. He doesn't have to choose between saying God is silent and saying God is his rock. Both go in. Most of us think we have to pick one — either be honest or be faithful. He does both in one breath.

Then the turn, at verse six. Blessed be Yahweh, because he has heard the voice of my petitions.

Now, read that carefully, because the psalm does not tell us what happened in between. It doesn't say God spoke. It doesn't say the situation changed. There's no answer recorded anywhere in this psalm. The man who was asking God not to be deaf to him is now saying God has heard him, and nothing in the text explains the gap.

And that's the shape you can use. Heard is not the same as answered. He is not saying the problem is solved. He is saying the words got there.

That's a smaller claim than you probably want. It is also one you can make tonight without lying, and it's the one David makes.

So here's the one thing.

Tonight, out loud, say the silence to God as the first sentence. Not after the thanks. First.

God, you haven't said anything. And I need you to. And you're still my rock.

Say the actual thing you've been asking about, by name, in that sentence. Not prayer requests in general. The one you've stopped bothering to mention because you've mentioned it so many times.

And if your own words won't come, David's first line is available. It was written down and kept so that people who couldn't say it themselves could use his. Read it out and mean it at him.

You may hear nothing again tonight. The psalm doesn't promise you will, and David didn't get a word recorded here either. What's different is that the silence has now been said out loud, and said to the person it's about, instead of turning over in your head at eleven at night.

My rock, don't be deaf to me, lest, if you are silent to me, I would become like those who go down into the pit.

That's in the book. Said to God, and nobody corrects him for saying it.

Blessed be Yahweh, because he has heard the voice of my petitions.