Two Lies and a Truth – When God Feels Silent

This podcast is presented to you by Pastor Jason and Liz Burns in Access Church in Lakeland and Marto, Florida.

For more information, visit Access.tv.

Oh, I am so excited to be here.

This week was back to school.

Who was excited about that?

Good.

Four people, excellent.

Love the participation.

All right.

Well, I get the privilege today to close our Two Lies and a Truth series.

Have you enjoyed the series?

Good, yeah.

I loved it.

I especially loved hearing from our location pastors, Pastor Isaiah, Pastor Derek.

That was so cool to get to hear from them.

And today I get the honor of closing out the series.

Ours is kind of a twist on the traditional icebreaker game, Two Truths and a Lie.

We made it Two Lies and a Truth.

So to start out, as everybody else has been doing, I'm gonna do a little fun version of Two Truths and a Lie with you about myself, about moi.

Um, and we're gonna we're gonna see if you can tell.

This is really hard.

So uh here's some things about me that may or may not be true.

Um I've never broken a bone, okay?

I'm the youngest of two sisters, and I'm an incredible runner.

The fact that you laugh like hurts so much.

Like, why would you all immediately laugh?

That's uh incredibly, that's incredibly rude.

Um, but you're right.

Um I have never broken a bone.

Knock on whatever.

Um, I have I am the youngest of two sisters.

I've shout out to my sister Lori if she's watching.

And I am not an incredible runner.

I am what I call a struggle runner.

Um, I don't know if we have real runners in this church, including my two boys.

They're like incredible.

They for fun did a half marathon.

Like, and you have to pay to do that, which is actually so insane.

Like, imagine paying someone to torture you.

I don't know.

But um, so I'm a struggle runner, um, but right now I'm training uh for a Disney 10K in October.

Don't cheer.

It literally might not happen.

I don't, it's not looking good.

Like, I don't, I'm very it's so hot outside.

Um, my husband was driving by in the neighborhood as I was running the other day, and he's like, You just look so pained.

I'm like, yes, like it's what am I supposed to look like?

I've never had the runner's high people experienced.

I've had a pizza high, but I've never had a runner's high.

Um, so that is not something I'm doing.

But you know what?

I'm over 40, so I'm out there trying, God bless.

So here we go.

All right.

So I got excited about that.

Those were the everybody else who was over 40.

Um, I want to do now uh twist this and go back to our series, which is two lies and one truth.

Now these may be a little bit harder to figure out, but these are about our spiritual life, all right?

So listen to this and see if any of this resonates with you, okay?

When I feel God, I know he's real and that he is happy with me.

Okay.

If I don't feel God, he's not working and I start to doubt him.

And what about this one?

Feelings are not accurate indicators of God's reality.

Okay.

So it gets quieter, right?

These first two are the lies.

And yet, when I was asked to speak in this series, nothing was clearer to me.

Because if I say 12 people recently have come to me and said, man, my my prayers feel like they go nowhere.

Or God's not speaking to me.

God is silent.

Do you feel that way sometimes, North Lake Linbarto?

Like you, you're you're waiting on God, but He's He's not there.

Or He's allowing things to happen that you you don't know what He's doing.

And I'm here today because I want to talk about the lie that if I don't feel God, He's not moving and He's not working.

Is that all right?

Everybody get quiet because this one's serious, but it's gonna be good.

We're gonna break down some lies.

And you know the only way to break down a lie, right, is to replace it with truth.

So let's do that today.

We're gonna be better when we left than when we got here.

All right.

So uh my oldest son, Joey, loves the game of chess.

Do we have any chess players in the room?

Excellent.

Six of you, and you're a quiet bunch.

Um, they're like me, ma'am.

Um, so my oldest son, speaking of, he moves to college this Friday.

Like, literally pray for me.

People are like, Are you doing well?

I'm like, I'm not doing great.

If that's what you're asking.

Like, I can cry at any point, at any time.

He was born six minutes ago, so I don't understand how he's going to college.

Um, but we're we're doing that on Friday lately.

When I think of the song Christ is my firm foundation, I'm like, that resonates with me.

Because when a lot of change right now, right?

Um, a lot of things going on.

But he loves the game of chess.

Uh, I had never played chess, so as a good mom, I was like, well, teach me, teach me to play chess.

Like, you know, maybe I can play with you.

This is something we can bond over.

And um, I really tried to to understand.

I really did.

Um, but as he was explaining it to me, like, have you ever seen the meme that's like a little monkey playing like six instruments?

And that's what was going on in my head, because he's like, okay, to start out.

And then I was like, playing with the horses, like all my he's just like, he's like, this is not, and I don't still know how to play chess, I'll be honest with you.

Um, but there's a reason I'm bringing up the game of chess.

It's because from what I understand, from those who do play chess, and you can correct me if I'm wrong, but the chess is not a game where you're just thinking of your next move.

So chess is a game where you're thinking about eight, nine, ten steps down the road.

So you're thinking of the move after the move after the move because you want to correctly set up a checkmate, right?

So you can't just be thinking about the next move.

I I bring this up today because I'm gonna talk about a story that when people come to me and say, Pastor Liz, I pray, but God doesn't listen.

I pray, but my prayers are going unheard.

God is so quiet.

Where is he?

I always point them to a certain book of the Bible, and it's the book of Esther.

And years ago, I did a study on the book of Esther, and there was a chessboard on the front of that book, and there's a reason for that.

It's because the story of Esther is very, very interesting, but it doesn't make sense if you follow her every move.

But it's a, hey, God's playing the long game here.

And I think for a lot of us, we're gonna have a shift in our perspective today of God's activity, of his movement, of his perceived silence.

And we're gonna do that by studying this book of Esther.

So a couple background things on the book of Esther that I hope you enjoy today.

Things that are fascinating to me.

I hope you will think of this the next time you are reading it.

But the story of Esther, not only is God's name not mentioned once in the whole book, okay, so that's a little weird, right?

Because God in his sovereignty ordained what would and would not be included in the Bible.

So why a book that does not have his name?

So not only is God's name not in the book of Esther, but Esther's name doesn't even start coming into the book until chapter two.

And that's strange to me, right?

Because I think, man, how many of us live our lives that way?

Where a lot of our life feels like the things that have happened to us instead of things we got to choose for ourselves.

Like, see, a lot of you have walked in with painful things that have happened to you, that you had no say in, that weren't your fault, and they set up your life in such a way.

And Esther, this book that has her name, she's not even mentioned in it until chapter two.

And so I want to set that up for you.

I want you to understand that.

We're gonna start in reading in chapter two, and this is verse five through seven.

It says, Now there was in the citadel of Susa a Jew of the tribe of Benjamin named Mordecai, son of Jer, the son of Shimei, the son of Kish, who had been carried into exile, remember that, from Jerusalem by Nebuchadnezzar, king of Babylon, among those taken captive, remember that, which Jehoiachin, king of Judah.

Now Mordecai, he had a cousin named Hadassah, whom he had brought up because she had neither father nor mother.

Remember that too.

Okay?

This young woman who was also known as Esther, here comes her name finally, had a lovely figure and was beautiful, my life first.

Um Mordecai, sorry, that's so out of pocket.

Mordecai had taken her as his own daughter when her father and mother had died.

Okay, I want you to stop here and pause here.

If you are Esther, okay, you are born and then orphaned.

Both your mother and father die.

Scripture doesn't tell us if they died in one sweep together, if they died at separate times, but it does tell us that she is an orphan.

Okay.

If you're Esther, does that feel like God is setting you up for something great?

Or does that just feel like God, where are you?

Okay.

If you're Esther, then you go live with your cousin who is living in exile.

Does that feel, oh man, I can't wait to see what God's about to do?

No, if you're Esther, you probably have a lot of sleepless nights going, why me?

I've been brought up in tradition to understand there is a God, but where is he in my life?

What is he doing?

Is he, does he even care?

And Esther's life, a lot of it feels like things that have happened to her that have been forced on her.

And there is no way, friends, that she's thinking she's gonna be set up to do something great.

See, a lot of times in our own lives, when we look back, we can see how God was faithful, right?

But in the moment, we may not understand what God is up to.

And I have to think it was that way for Esther.

I have to think that she's thinking, God, God's not in my life.

He let both my parents die.

Now I'm living with my cousin.

We're in exile.

Okay, so something happens.

Again, in Esther chapter three, Esther not even mentioned.

She feels like a side character in a book named about her.

Somebody can relate to that today.

Okay?

So what happens is there's a king in the land, King Xerxes.

He has a queen named Vashti.

He wants Vashti to come and he wants to show her off to her his friends.

She refuses, so he says, get her out of here.

I need a new queen.

So he goes on a search, a hunt, sort of a beauty pageant.

He puts the word out that he's looking for a new queen, and Esther gets brought into that.

She gets brought in as a contestant, and she actually winds up becoming the queen.

Now you may think, like, that's an incredible story.

Wow, that's that's the end.

That's the thing she was expecting.

But this is not an age and a day where Esther as queen has any power or is seen as an equal.

No, in fact, Esther is pretty powerless.

The king can see her if he wants to, or he cannot.

She is not the only person who he will share a bed with as a king, right?

Sorry to be frank, but that's kind of what she's facing.

So again, Esther in a life that she has very little control over, and yet her name is on the title.

So what happens is Esther's cousin Mordecai, he finds out that there is a scheme in place to kill all the Jews.

And Mordecai and Esther are Jews.

So he goes to Esther and he is like, Esther, you've got to do something.

You've got to do something to help us out.

And Esther is not excited about this.

She is not excited about this.

In fact, this is what she says to Mordecai when he's like, Esther, you gotta go talk to the king for us.

Go talk to the king for us, get us saved.

She says, Listen, all the king's officials and the people of the royal provinces know that for any man or woman who approaches the king in the inner court without being summoned, like if he didn't ask for you, that the king has but one law, that they be put to death, unless the king extends his gold scepter to them and spares their lives.

But 30 days have passed since I was called to go to the king.

Sure, Esther was orphaned, she's living with her cousin in exile, and you're like, oh great, she's the queen.

The king hasn't even seen her in 30 days.

This is not a happy marriage of great intimacy.

This is a power position play.

And she's not excited about this.

She's not thinking, oh, God has a plan here.

No, it's been 30 days.

So pause.

You may know how this story is about to go.

Don't think of that.

Imagine Esther in this moment.

She's just been told that all of her people are going to be killed.

She was already an orphan.

She's already living with her cousin in exile.

Now she's been told that all her people are about to be killed.

Do you think she's excited and says, Wow, God speaks to me all the time?

Do you think she's sitting there at night going, Wow, God's about to move?

I can't imagine that's the case.

Have you been in a situation like that 30 days?

Maybe it's been a lot longer than that, and you go, I haven't heard from God in a minute.

So Esther is sitting there not realizing she's been set up.

And we think of chess, right?

Think of those pieces you have to move far in advance to get that checkmate.

Esther's going through that spiritually, but she in the moment has no idea.

And I say that, friend, because you may have come in today with no idea where God is or what he's doing in your life.

And if you're frank, it feels like he's been silent for a while.

This story is for you today.

So I actually think we're uncomfortable with silence.

So we equate silence to God's inactivity.

We say if God's silent, if he's not speaking, then he must not be moving.

But I want to encourage you with a few things today.

I hope you'll leave and get this.

Just because God seems, and I say seems, silent, it does not mean, number one, that God is not working.

Can I tell you how the story of Esther winds up going?

So Esther is there and she tells Mordecai, like, I don't think I can do this.

You can't just go to the king.

He hasn't talked to me in 30 days.

If I go to him, he might kill me.

And this is what he says to her, and it's such a zinger, it's so good.

He says, Hey, Esther, who knows but that you have uh come to your royal position for such a time as this.

See, Mordecai.

He must have been a man that was sitting with God because he had that perspective.

He said, Hey, listen, I know this seems bleak, but what if God is setting you up right now?

Isn't it interesting?

We talk about Esther being royal and her position, and it all comes back to chess, right?

She's being moved around.

And sometimes you may be the chess piece being moved, or sometimes the chess pieces around you seem like they're being moved.

And yet, in all the same ways, God is setting you up for victory.

So he says, What if you've come for such a time as this?

Can I tell you what does happen?

Esther does gather her courage.

She goes to the king, he winds up extending his scepter to her.

And through a series of banquets and a whole long story, I go home and read it, by the way.

It is the most fun, incredible, and really like juicy kind of book.

Anyway, go home and read it.

Esther winds up going to the king and he gives her permission to turn around that edict that was gonna kill all the people.

So Esther winds up saving the entire population of the Jews.

Okay, that is a massive thing.

And yes, I think when we think of Esther, we think of the queen who saved her people, but do you remember how she got there?

Do you remember that she got there because she was orphaned?

Because she was living with her cousin in exile, because she gathered courage to go speak to a man who hadn't even called her for 30 days.

Don't, in looking at the highlight reel of people's lives, forget that sometimes there's quiet nights, silent nights, night where you question if God is speaking, if he is still active.

Sometimes he is speaking and he is active, but you are not in that place yet you are being set up for, but God is still working.

Can I get an amen?

Yeah.

Okay.

So just because God is silent does not mean he's not working.

It also does not mean that God's not in control.

Okay?

Sometimes so much is going on around us.

I am tempted with this all the time.

Life can feel very overwhelming, yes?

And yet, scripture says that God is in control.

I love when you read the Bible to the depth that you start to realize the kind of humor in it sometimes.

I read through the Bible almost every year, and this year when I was reading through Job, this verse stood out to me because you know Job went through awful times and he's questioning God, and God finally speaks, and it is such like a zinger.

He says, Hey Job, where were you when I laid the earth's foundation?

Tell me, if you you understand, you know, since you're questioning me so much, who marked off its dimensions?

Surely you know, you know, who stretched a measuring line across it?

God is in control, and we may not understand that, but God, who can laid the foundations of the earth, God who is infinite, says all these things, and we're like, God, you're not speaking, you're not doing all this.

He's like, hey, where were you when I um made the world?

Yeah, that'll make you pause for a second, right?

Just because God seems silent also does not mean that God is not for you.

Oh, I struggled with this one before.

Because you you've gone through pain, and I I've gone through pain.

In fact, just at the beginning of this year, I went through what I would call a dark night of the soul.

Um, and I very much had a hard time remembering that God is for me.

I think that's because a lot of us are focused sometimes on our vision.

And if I'm honest, somebody would come up to me and say, God is for you, and I'm like, Yeah, but it doesn't feel like that.

Remember, my my feelings aren't accurate indicators of God's reality because you see, friend, my feelings are gonna go up and down.

But the truth of God is that Jesus Christ is the same yesterday and today and forever.

So whether I feel it or not, he is good and he is for me.

And somebody in this room needed to hear, somebody in Bartow, somebody in North Lakeland needed to hear, God really is for you.

He's for you.

It says in Romans 8.

What then shall I we say in response to these things?

If God is for us, who can be against us?

He who did not spare his own son, he didn't spare his own son for you.

But he gave him up for us all.

How?

Will he not also, along with him, graciously give us all things?

The one who would give up his son for you is for you.

That can be trusted.

That can be trusted.

A lot of our problems, I think, are because we're focused on the outcome of our prayers and not the person we're praying to.

Can I say that again?

A lot of you are way more focused on the outcome of your prayers than the person to whom you are praying.

And I'm here to say, to say, what if we started saying, you know what, I don't know what, but I know who.

The who is the one who didn't spare his own son for me.

That is trustworthy.

And I have enough faith to know that God is for me.

What if I stopped saying, what, what, what, God, and I started saying who you are is beautiful, who you are is trustworthy, who you are is the one who died for me.

I could put my hope and trust in that.

Because I want to let you know today that if your what if is bigger than the who, you're way out of alignment.

If your what ifs have become bigger than the who for you, you are out of alignment because I don't know what you're facing today, but I know who can carry you through that.

God is moving, but are you watching?

God is speaking, but are you listening?

And God is prompting, but are you noticing?

See, a lot of the times I don't actually think he's silent.

I think he's asking us to wait.

And there is not a single thing more that we hate than being told to wait.

Can we have group confession?

School went back this week, and my son graduated, so I am back in the pardon me's hellscape of the car line.

Okay?

There's long lines, and I just want to tell you, I was fighting for my Christianity this week.

Your girl had her car in the middle to try to like keep people from don't pass in the car line.

What is wrong with you?

Stop doing that.

If I were to ever be mayor, that's my platform.

Stop passing in the car line.

You think your schedule's more important than mine?

It's not, okay?

We don't like waiting.

We do not like waiting.

You go to the doctor's office, everyone's on their phone with a book.

You see one insane person just staring, and you're like, they're crazy.

We don't like waiting, okay?

So we don't like waiting, so we distract ourselves.

We distract ourselves.

We get online, we uh look at our phones, we read a book, we watch TV.

Sometimes I'm on my phone and watching the TV, okay?

We don't like to wait, so we distract.

We don't like to wait, so we settle.

Come on, I'm talking to somebody who said, God, I'm waiting on a godly spouse, but it got to be too long, so you settled for what you knew wasn't right, but it sure was available.

Okay?

We don't like to wait, so we'll go to another source.

We don't want to wait on God.

He's mysterious.

So I'll go to my best friend, I'll go to a podcast, whatever it is.

We we don't like to wait.

And we're rarely without a phone, noise, or a distraction.

So can I ask you who has the silence problem?

God or you?

God or you.

I'm speaking to myself right now.

I actually read this week that Americans get uncomfortable with uh one silence goes to 6.3 seconds.

That's crazy.

That's crazy.

For school, I had to do a silence retreat, two hours, no phone, no talking, nothing.

And I almost lost my mind.

No.

But I can't tell you how many times I reached for my phone during that, and I was like, nope, but I gotta tell you something fascinating about it.

God spoke to me.

Who would have thought?

When I actually put it down and I listened, he's like actively speaking.

I want to tell you that it's not an activity issue, it's an awareness issue.

He is speaking.

I may not be listening, I may not be aware of what he's doing, but he is listening.

I I hear from So many of you that feel like you've dealt with the topic of unanswered prayer.

I don't want to be with all compassionate when I talk about this because I really do understand how fatiguing that can feel to feel like God has not answered your prayer.

To feel like it's gone unheard.

You've been waiting on the same thing.

When God doesn't do things in our way in our time, we get upset, we get frustrated, or we think he's mad at us, or he doesn't care about us.

But what if it was none of those things?

What if it was like Isaiah 55-9 says, that as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways, God's ways, higher than your ways, and my thoughts, God's thoughts, higher than your thoughts.

The problem comes because he is infinite and we are finite.

He sees everything while we see this much.

He's playing chess, and I'm playing checkers.

Do you understand me?

So the lie is that God is not speaking, that he's not active.

But the truth is that he is speaking.

Am I listening?

Am I listening to what he's saying?

Remember chess?

What if this changed this for you today?

What if the next time you were tempted to say, God's not speaking, or he didn't answer my prayer?

Instead, you realized I'm being set up for my miracle.

God may not be moving how I want him to, but I know and I trust he's moving because he, the one that wouldn't even spare his own son, is for me, and I can trust him with that.

What if that was the truth for us today?

I want to pray for those of us who have felt like God was silent because that's real.

I want to pray for those who felt like your prayer didn't go answered or like God was sitting back and watching life happen to you.

I just want to tell you this: He is speaking, he is for you, and he is in control.

And God told me to tell you that today.

So there it is.

God is for you.

Bow your heads with me today, will you?

God, there are those in this room who came with a heavy heart today saying, What is the point of praying again?

God is not listening, He is not speaking, and yet you sent me here to tell them that you are for them, that you, the one who would not spare your only son, you play chess, you play the long game.

You are setting us up for a miracle, and we could put our trust in that.

That we are gonna look back over our life one day and say, Oh God, you were faithful, you are faithful.

But friend, while every head is still bowed, every eye is still closed, I need to say this because there could be some in this room today who you've never even prayed to make Jesus Christ the Lord of your life, and today can be that day.

Maybe you came with a friend, you came to watch someone be baptized.

God has set you up today to be here for such a time as this.

So with no one looking in this room, not a soul, if that is you today and you say, Today, I need to give my heart to Jesus, or I need to re-give my heart to Jesus after a long journey, that's you, will you raise your hand right now?

No one looking, just a moment of boldness.

Yes, I see you, I see you, yes, I see you, I see you.

Now do this, pray this with me in your heart, in your mind.

Say, God, thank you for sending Jesus.

You didn't even spare your own son out of your great love for me.

So now I invite you into my heart, into my life.

Be my Lord, be my God today.

Change me, make me new.

I want to spend eternity in heaven with you.

I give you my whole heart today.

In Jesus' name.

Amen.

Friends, look up at me.

People just pray to accept Christ.

Come on.