I am not talking today about the “silent treatment” that happens in marriage during and after a quarrel. We all know what this is. Obviously, not letting the sun go down on our anger is Biblical. All I know is that I would rather wake up with noise, rather than silence.
Moving on.
We are surrounded with so many voices around us, and sometimes these sounds can be very frustrating, discouraging, and a killer from inside out.
At one instance, Jesus and His disciples were traveling by in the sea, and suddenly the violent wind blew against them, and the waves broke over the boat, so that they almost flooded. The disciples tried their best to control the situation with their own strength and intellect but failed miserably.
You know this story. Jesus slept in the inner part of this boat. His disciples were gripped with fear of death, and they went and woke Him saying, “
Teacher, don’t you care that we are drowning?”
Of course He cared. He calmed the storm.
Luke 8: 22-25.
How could Jesus sleep so deeply during chaos? Jesus knew who He was, and He knew the Will of His Father.
This He knew for His present and future challenges and pains.
Especially His Cross coming.
The disciples didn’t know this.
Many people mistake Jesus’ silence just like the disciples did on the boat.
“Why is Jesus silent when there is so much evil and chaos around?”
The first thing to remind us of is:
Jesus’ silence into our situations and trials, is not His ignorance or lack of care about us. He is not surprised by our chaos. He knows everything from eternity to eternity.
Second reminder is:
Jesus’ silence does not mean His absence. God will never leave you alone. He is always with you and I, but He is closest to us in the toughest of our times.
The third important reminder is that Jesus’ silence is not His betrayal.
God is very faithful, very merciful, exceedingly gracious, and extremely loving. He will never let you down.
We tend to drown ourselves in self-pity, doubt and unbelief at times. Our boat of logic and misunderstanding about who and what Jesus is capable of, tends to sink our boat in this life, before it ever leaves the shore.
Sometimes it is a slow leak that happens and when the boat is full of water, it seems too late for our miracle.
Not with Jesus. He is there, always.
Fourth, reminder is:
The presence of God in your life might not stop the wind to come against you, but He will surely stop the wind from killing you.
No one on this planet, especially Christians, understands why some leave this planet sooner than others. We do not understand or comprehend why this or why that happens, especially sudden death to a loved one.
It is God’s Providence, and His alone, which His plan adheres to. His Blueprints and Purposes of each life that loves Him, is under His complete control.
From the beginning to the end of all things, has His Design and Thumbprint on it.
For me and for you.
For the righteous, and the sinner. If they repent and accept Him as their Savior, He will be amid their storms too.
He cares about those who do not love Him yet.
He cares about everything.
All things.
Even every sparrow that hits the ground. Are we not much more than a bird?
Matthew 10:29.
Each sparrow does not hit the ground without God’s consent.
He does not give us the “silent treatment at all.”
Noah went through floods. The floods did not overtake him. Nor did anyone with him die.
Isaac went through famine, but famine couldn't touch him. He was greatly blessed during that famine.
Daniel went through the lion’s den. (Not a lion like yours that sits on your lap wanting a treat. Little kitty won’t devour you, just her food).
The fifth and last reminder is:
In Mark 4:35 Jesus said,
“Let us go over to the other side. Jesus already told them, let us go, no matter what situation they might face. He said with His actions, not words, that they would definitely reach the other side.”
God has already declared your purpose, and nothing can stop it.
Well, you can delay it by doubting who is in your boat.
Do not be anxious about anything. Easier said than done.
Case in point:
Before I knew Jesus as Savior in prison, I almost died seven times in my addicted world I lived in. Shot at. Stabbed by the sting of beatings I took from the police and others. Including my enemies.
One case began in a Biker Bar. You know the one. (Well, maybe not personally, but in the movies).
I walked in. Drunk as a skunk. (Maybe the dead skunk in the middle of the road we have all seen is the one that was on his way to a bar and got hit by a biker).
I don’t know for sure.
Anyway.
I ordered a cold, draft beer. Looking around the room for the biggest, maddest, hairiest biker I could find.
I walked up to him, as he sat at a table with his other Gorillas, and I tossed all the beer out of my glass into his face.
After I woke up, I realized the right side of my face was broken, and that perhaps, I should leave.
I went out to my pickup truck. I remember these details vividly.
It took ten minutes for me to put my key into the outside door lock to open my truck.
Maybe I should not drive?
I asked another drunk person leaving the bar, “Can you help me here?”
He came over, and the both of us, with both our hands, clutching the ignition key together, got it open.
Finally open.
It was pouring down rain. Great combination for a bad conclusion to this night.
I did not have a designated driver. They had not been invented until 1988. Long after this insane night.
The Center for Health Communication launched this Designated Driver Campaign, as an approach to slowing down drunk drivers.
And of course, there was M.A.D.D. Mothers against drunk drivers began in 1980.
Neither program would have helped me in the early seventies.
The only way of “slowing me down” was to take my keys, truck and my brain, and have it examined by a professional Lobotomist.
And here I go. I drove away in the pouring rain. I passed a slow-moving car at 65 miles per hour on a curve. It was a two-lane highway late at night.
According to the police report anyway.
I do not remember much about this night.
When I passed the car, I realized for a moment that I was no longer on the road. I had passed this car, took out 90 feet of fence, and rolled the truck over.
Not just any roll over.
I hit the ditch head on at 65, and the truck flipped. End over end, not a typical roll over.
The rear of the truck landed on a huge fence post, which was part of the 90 feet of fence I destroyed.
My truck. Ughhh.
The back glass of the truck popped out in one piece and was lying next to me in the front seat.
Like it was a passenger.
I did not wear a seat belt. “I wonder why?”
The truck back wheels were still spinning because the entire bed and rear of this truck were resting on a big fence post. The front of the truck was gone, and the remnants of it were crushed against the firewall under the hood.
Well, where the hood used to be.
My battery from the truck was hanging off the right fender. The bed of the truck was twisted like a pretzel.
Get the picture yet?
I climbed out of the wreck, unscathed. A small cut above my eye next to my eyebrow.
That was it as far as injuries.
I remember staring at my truck before the cops came.
I looked at it and said to myself,
“If I could get it off that pole, I could drive home.”
Sure thing.
The police came and arrested me. Charging me with drunk driving, destruction of private property (the fence), and no insurance.
I blew into the breathalyzer, and blew a .32 blood alcohol number on the test.
I was close to a coma.
An alcoholic coma usually results in death.
I was in jail.
Bonded out, finally.
Went to court.
The court fined me and made me rebuild the 90 feet of fence for the property owner. I had to go to Alcohol meetings, and I lost my license for one year, except for going to work, and meetings in A.A.
When I arrived at the intake meeting for Alcoholics Anonymous, I was greeted by a professional.
He evaluated me for thirty minutes and finally said.
“Mr. Wilkins, you are a seven on the scale from one to four, four being the worst addict, regarding alcohol abuse. I have never seen anyone as lucky as you to survive that wreck, and your addictions.”
The point?
I ended up helping him teach the class.
Jesus protected me from the time I was conceived in my mother’s womb.
All the times that my self-inflicted wounds from overdoses, crime, shootings, and car wrecks, tried to kill me.
He was there. He is there still.
Watching over us and silencing all the things that try to put our soul in a grave.
Jeremiah declares,
“Before I formed you in the matrix of the womb, I knew you, before you were born, I set you apart; I appointed you as a prophet to the nations.”
I am not Jeremiah by any stretch of the imagination.
What I am is forgiven.
What I was, is under the Blood of Jesus.
What I will become, is His servant, which I became, back in 1977, the day I was born again in prison.
The prison I was in was mean.
I was mean.
Jesus is not mean.
He is meaningful in His Plan.
He protected me from that self-destructive lifestyle.
He protected me from two major car accidents back in the 1990’s.
He watched over me in surgeries I have had.
He protected and still is protecting my wife and two grown sons.
He is the Protector, and the Great Silencer.
Our Great Silencer.
He silences the enemy of our souls, Satan. The accuser of the brethren is dead in my eyes. Jesus silences the grave as a believer in Him.
“‘O death, where is your sting? O Hades, where is your victory?’ The sting of death is sin, and the strength of sin is the law. But thanks be to God, who gives us the victory through our lord Jesus Christ.”
1st Corinthians 15: 55-57
Silencer. There is only One. His Name is Jesus.
Before I went to prison, I was in the last stages of building a real silencer for a firearm.
I worked in a machine shop and had everything to make one.
I had the measurements from the gun.
I met with the man who owned it. It had no serial numbers.
The good news. I was arrested before I could finish it.
There is nothing good that would have come from a silencer I made for a criminal family member. I am so grateful for Jesus stopping me in my tracks so that piece of unfinished polished steel was never completed.
It would have worked. It would have done its job.
Lives would have ended by me.
I would not have pulled the trigger. I might as well have.
I almost finished building it. My part was the killer machinist.
This kind of silencer is deadly.
Jesus is the Good Silencer.
He silences death.
He puts to shame the ignorant plans of Satan.
He then speaks loudly, after silencing your soul with love, so pain and lies die off your life. Once and for all.
Jesus is Our Great Silencer.
He does what He does, without ever pulling a trigger.
