Finding God in the Noise of Silence

HARD PLACES 

“We’ve not done a great job in the church of acknowledging the hard places in God, including when He seems silent,” Amber says.  She knows from painful, personal experience: a deacon board who dismissed her claims of abuse by her first husband and told her she must leave the church instead; being scammed by a young woman who claimed to be pregnant with the twins Autumn and Eddie had planned to adopt; and going through financial difficulties during the COVID pandemic.  In each situation, and many others, Autumn felt God was silent when answers to her prayers simply didn’t come. 

THE ENEMY 

Autumn says the enemy of our souls wants to fill the silence when God seems distant, as he did in the Book of Job, where God is silent for 38 of the 42 chapters. “He’s an opportunist,” she explains. “If you are in that season and God is silent, you are in the best company ever: Job’s. Satan fundamentally believed, based on the text, that the only reason that Job loved God and had faith in Him was because of his stuff,” Autumn points out.  “As proved in the dialogue between God and Satan, Satan thought that if Job’s blessings were taken away, Job would fold his faith like a cheap lawn chair. Satan worked so hard for Job’s faith because it’s the only thing Satan doesn’t have access to.”  She goes on to explain how to make sure the enemy doesn’t destroy our faith.  “What’s the only way for him to get it?” she asks. “You have to surrender it.  Why does he want your faith so badly?  Because it’s the only thing that is eternal.  It’s the only thing that secures your spot in heaven.  It’s the only thing that will outlast this world.”  We hold onto our faith, she says, by leaning into truth, the Word of God.   

GOD MAY SEEM SILENT …

…but He isn’t, Autumn says.  “Job was feeling the effects of silence: mentally, emotionally, and spiritually but was God actually silent?  The answer is no. While God didn’t interject in the dialogue for most of the Book of Job, Job didn’t know that God was actually talking about him in heaven.  Heaven talked about Job.  Heaven knew who Job was,” she says.  “No, God didn’t speak directly to Job, but does it help you to know that while God was silent to Job, he was not silent about him? He was speaking about Job to the entire throne room. He was boasting about Job’s blamelessness. All heaven was overhearing God Himself talk about how special Job was.  Job had no idea. Isn’t’ that Like us?  We don’t realize that God is actively protecting us behind the scenes.  He doesn’t always explain how He’s intervening. But the enemy can’t touch us unless God permits it,” Autumn explains.   

LET’S BE HONEST 
 
“Since childhood, I’ve struggled with the effects of fear theology – this belief that if I’m too honest with God, then He’ll punish me for it,” Autumn confesses.  She recalls a time when she was upset about something and felt she should be completely honest with Him. “God, I’m mad at You. I’m so mad at You,” she finally admitted. “Still sitting in traffic, I began to empty my heart before the Lord. I poured out every emotion and thought I had suppressed over the past few months.  The Lord’s invitation to speak freely was exactly what my entire being needed.  Sometimes the truth is ugly.  Truth – though ugly, unpleasing, and even grotesque --- is still truth.  God desires truth. He desires truth from us. He doesn’t want to be talked to like He’s your Sunday school teacher; He wants the unvarnished version of where you are emotionally, mentally, and spiritually.  Anything less is dishonesty.”

RESTORATION

Autumn encourages us to look at how the Lord restored Job in every way He had allowed the devil to diminish him.  “I wonder whether, today, you’re obsessed with the loss in your life. It’s easy to do. The enemy wants you to focus on the substantial losses in your health, marriage, finances, or reputation -- whatever it may be -- and, yes, you are free to do so.  But I invite you to meditate on Job 42:10, where God restored Job in such a way that we’re still reading about it today.  That same God is your God.  He has calculated your loss as well.  We can resist believing in God’s restoration and settle into bitterness – which is exactly where the enemy wants us – or we can ask for our own double portion of restoration,’ she says. “Your restoration will be a process. It won’t happen all at once. Be patient with God’s timing and pay attention – it may have already begun.” Autumn advises us to trust that God knows exactly what He’s doing in all regards. “Your faith is that powerful, too. Satan isn’t after your stuff, health, marriage, or reputation – he is after your faith.  Cling to it, fellow soldier.  It is the most valuable thing that you possess.  Nothing is stronger,” Autumn exhorts us. 

TAKEAWAY

“My desire is for this book to be a resource and guide for anyone struggling to weather a silent season from God. When God is silent, we realize our faith may not be as robust and vigorous as we claim,” Autumn says. “Sometimes the point of His silence is to give us space for those questions to rise, so when He does speak, He can address them in His wisdom and truth.” Rather than mistaking His silence for absence, she reframes silence as a form of strengthening one’s ability to discern the voice of God. “This book is a response to where our minds go when God is silent—especially in what seems like the moment we most need to hear from Him,” she explains. “While the silence is very real, there is immense purpose in it—a purpose that can be hard to discern at times. He will use the hardest seasons of our lives to allow us to train our minds to search for His voice alone. No one else’s voice matters.”

To learn more about Autumn Miles, click the LINK!

To purchase her latest book, Holy Ghosted: What Job’s Pain Teaches Us About Surviving Spiritual Silence, click the LINK! 

CREDITS

Author, Holy Ghosted, 2026 (Charisma House) and three other books / Speaker / Founder, Autumn Miles Ministries, including The Autumn Miles Show podcast, since 2013 and The Blush Network, designed to challenge the way women think / Married to Eddie, four children