We Need to Learn to Worship God in Silence, Doing Nothing but Standing in Awe of Him
The Book of Revelation is an amazing book. However, I fear that many people miss the point of it. The intent of Revelation isn’t to give us a detailed map of the future.
Instead, Revelation provides us with a grand overview of God’s ultimate power and amazing plan for the future, our future.
The goal in reading Revelation isn’t to formulate a timeline, detail the future, or argue about the end times. The grand revelation of Revelation is to comprehend the power, the grandeur, and the glory of God.
So it is with today’s text. John writes that when the angel opens the seventh seal there is silence in heaven for half an hour.
Silence.
Total quiet.
Nothing.
How do you deal with silence? How much silence can you withstand before you go crazy? If you’re like most people, your answer is only a few seconds.
Imagine being in the presence of God. The setting overwhelms. God sits on his throne surrounded by his people and spiritual beings. An angel brakes a seal to open a sacred scroll. Silence fills the space in awe over God’s presence, power, and plan.
The only response is to do nothing, to stand quietly, and to not say a thing. To bask in God’s essence.
Nothing happens for thirty minutes. That’s 1,800 seconds.
Tick, tick, tick. That’s three seconds. Can you stand the silence? Do you feel the pressure to say something or for someone else to break the quiet?
Now wait 1,797 seconds more. That’s a lot of quiet. That’s a quiet that honors God. It’s a quiet that God deserves. It’s one way we can worship God.
No music, no song, and no singing. Just silence. By doing nothing we can worship God. By sitting in silence in the presence of his glory, we honor him.
Does silence scare you? It shouldn’t. When done right, it shows God our adoration.
Maybe we should worship God in our silence more often. We can start right now.
[Read through the Bible this year. Today’s reading is Revelation 4-8, and today’s post is on Revelation 8:1.]
Read more in Peter’s devotional Bible study, A New Heaven and a New Earth: 40 Practical Insights from John’s Book of Revelation.
Peter DeHaan writes about biblical Christianity to confront status quo religion and live a life that matters. He seeks a fresh approach to following Jesus through the lens of Scripture, without the baggage of made-up traditions and meaningless practices.
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