He stopped talking out loud in the car about eighteen months ago and did not notice for a while.
It was not a decision. There was no moment where he sat down and concluded anything. It faded the way things fade. He kept it going in his head sometimes, in short bursts, mostly when something was going wrong, and even that got shorter.
If you asked him why, he would probably say he got busy, and that would be about a third true.
The actual reason is that he had started to feel like a man talking in an empty room, and doing that out loud made it worse, because out loud you can hear how it sounds.
He has never said any of this to anybody. Everybody he knows who is into this seems to have something happening. He has assumed for a long time that the difference is him.
The most famous complaint about it is quoted by Jesus
Open the Psalms and read the first two verses of Psalm 22:
My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me? why art thou so far from helping me, and from the words of my roaring? O my God, I cry in the daytime, but thou hearest not; and in the night season, and am not silent. (Psalm 22:1-2, King James Version)
I cry in the daytime, but thou hearest not.
That is in the Bible. Not as a warning about a bad attitude. As a prayer, preserved on purpose, in the songbook the people of God used.
And then this. On the cross, Jesus says the first line of that psalm out loud (Matthew 27:46).
Whatever else that means, it means the sentence is not disqualifying. The most God-abandoned-sounding words anybody has ever said were said by the Son of God, out loud, in public, and the Father did not correct Him for saying it.
You are not under a verdict, and the quiet is not one. Psalm 22 is preserved in the book on purpose and then quoted by Jesus out loud in public, and it is His Spirit who lets a man say a sentence like that without believing he has just failed something.
Scripture is honest that there are quiet stretches
Read how the book of Samuel opens:
And the word of the LORD was precious in those days; there was no open vision. (1 Samuel 3:1)
No open vision. That is a straight report about an era. Not a comment on anybody's spiritual condition; a description of a period of time.
Habakkuk opens his whole book complaining about it:
O LORD, how long shall I cry, and thou wilt not hear! (Habakkuk 1:2)
And Job describes hunting for God and finding nothing:
Behold, I go forward, but he is not there; and backward, but I cannot perceive him: On the left hand, where he doth work, but I cannot behold him: he hideth himself on the right hand, that I cannot see him. (Job 23:8-9)
Every direction. Nothing.
And then, in the very next verse, without anything having changed:
But he knoweth the way that I take. (Job 23:10)
Job cannot find God. Job is certain God sees him. Both of those are in the same paragraph and neither one cancels the other.
You are not the only one, and this is not new. Job 23 says it in the first person and Samuel says it about a whole era, and it is the Holy Spirit who is at work in a reader long before anything is audible.
What He actually promised
This is the part that resets the whole question.
Be strong and of a good courage, fear not, nor be afraid of them: for the LORD thy God, he it is that doth go with thee; he will not fail thee, nor forsake thee. (Deuteronomy 31:6)
And the writer of Hebrews quotes it back:
for he hath said, I will never leave thee, nor forsake thee. (Hebrews 13:5)
Read what is promised there. Presence. He will go with you. He will not leave.
He does not promise to be audible. Nowhere in Scripture does God commit to speaking on request, and the people in the Bible who did hear from Him mostly were not expecting it and often were not asking.
That is a real distinction and it changes what silence means. If He had promised to talk whenever you asked, silence would be a broken promise. He promised something else, and He has not broken it.
You have exactly what He promised, and what He promised was presence. Hebrews 13 states it absolutely and does not hedge it anywhere, and it is His Spirit rather than any experience who makes an absolute promise hold weight in a quiet room.
He stayed away on purpose, and the text says why
There is a story in John where Jesus deliberately does not come.
Word reaches Him that His friend Lazarus is sick. And John writes this, in this order:
Now Jesus loved Martha, and her sister, and Lazarus. When he had heard therefore that he was sick, he abode two days still in the same place where he was. (John 11:5-6)
Loved. Then therefore. Then he stayed where he was for two days.
John puts the love and the delay in the same sentence, joined by a word that means one caused the other. He could have written it any other way and he wrote it like that.
By the time Jesus arrives it is too late by every measure anybody had. Both sisters say the same thing to Him, separately: if you had been here.
He does not defend Himself. He does not explain the two days. He weeps (John 11:35), which is the shortest verse in the Bible and probably the most surprising, and then He does what He came to do.
You are not being handed a decision when you are being made to wait. John 11 has the reason written into the sentence itself, and it is the Holy Spirit who keeps a man from reading a delay as an answer about himself.
And He says it about Himself
One more, and it is one of the strangest lines in Isaiah.
Verily thou art a God that hidest thyself, O God of Israel, the Saviour. (Isaiah 45:15)
That is not an accusation. It is worship. The man saying it goes straight on to call Him the Savior in the same breath.
Scripture is comfortable with something most teaching is not: that God is not always obvious, that this is something He does rather than something that happens to Him, and that it does not change what He is.
You are dealing with somebody who is real whether or not He is loud. Isaiah 45 says both halves in one verse, and it is His Spirit who holds a person steady in the half they are currently living in.
So say it once, out loud.
You are not being judged by the quiet. The line about God not hearing is in the Bible, preserved on purpose in Psalm 22, and Jesus said the first verse of that psalm out loud from the cross, and it is the Holy Spirit who makes that something a man can stand on at eleven at night.
And check what was actually promised. You have the thing He committed to, which was presence and never volume. Hebrews 13 says I will never leave thee, nor forsake thee, and He has not, and Christ is in you now by the Spirit who is described as being at work in people who cannot feel a thing.
Nothing here promises you will hear something tonight, and nobody writing this hears on demand either. The woman says she still does not hear anything. You are known all the way through by somebody who said He would never leave (Job 23:10, Hebrews 13:5), and it is His Spirit rather than any answer coming back who makes saying it out loud a receiving.
If this is heavier than one person can hold, that is not weakness and it is not a sign of doing it wrong. Say it to somebody today: a doctor, a counselor, somebody you trust. If it goes further than that, call or text the 988 crisis line, and sit down with a person while you do it if there is one nearby.
Declare this over yourself
Say it out loud. You are in Christ and Christ is in you, so the authority to speak over this is genuinely yours, given to you and never invented. God promised presence rather than audibility and He has kept it, so speak to the silence you have been reading as an answer about yourself: you have standing to address it because the promise you were actually given has not been broken. An ambassador carries the King's word and never his own opinion, so say what God has said and leave the outcome to Him. Every line below is Hebrews 13:5 and Job 23:10 handed back in your own voice, and it is His Spirit, not how loud you say it, that makes saying it a receiving.
- Silence I have been reading as an answer, you are not a verdict on me and you are not what God promised me instead of Himself. The Word of God says I will never leave thee, nor forsake thee, and He has kept that one exactly as it was worded.
- Conclusion that the difference is me, you are finished in the name of Jesus. I am known and I am accompanied, because Job 23 has him searching every direction and saying in the next breath, but He knoweth the way that I take.
- Father, You have not gone anywhere and You are not withholding Yourself from me. I receive what Your word promised today, which was presence and not a sound, and I am saying the true thing out loud once and leaving it with You.
Job 23:10
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