The Sacrifice of Silence, Praise and Vows

UV3306/10000 The Sacrifice of Silence, Praise and Vows
To You belong silence ( the submissive wonder of reverence), and it bursts into praise in Zion, O God; And to You the vow shall be performed.

Psalm 65 v 1

Spending time in awed silence at the feet of the Lord is a spiritual discipline with many benefits for our souls and our total well being. As we meditate on the person and the word and the deeds of the Lord, the presence of the Lord will be like a thick cloud upon us and we will experience a fire burning in our hearts. Even as we yield our spirits to Him, our egos, our burdens and anxieties in silence, He will answer us by the increase of our yield in every area of our lives. The abundance of blessings we experience thereafter, leads us to offer bursts of praise and worship. We experience the euphoria or ecstasy of oneness with the Spirit of the Lord.

Our intense need as well as intense joy prompts us to take vows or promises we make to the Lord. Once we make a vow, we should fulfil it. It is a test of our faithfulness. The patriarch Jacob, once he experienced the presence of the Lord and His constant guidance and protection, vowed to give a tenth of all that comes into his hands as produce or earnings. He erected alters to mark the great blessings he had received and to express his gratitude. Daniel and his compatriots took a vow not to eat of the food from the king’s tables as they were convinced it would defile them. The Lord honoured their faithfulness by making them healthier and ten times wiser than the scholars and administrators of the day.

As a daily practice, we should still our minds, our voices and our limbs to lie or sit still to listen to the footsteps of the Lord, the voice of the Holy Spirit, the stirrings in our souls. As the Psalmist David wrote, “Be still and know that I am God.” In stillness, the Lord manifested Himself to Elijah the prophet. When we are still our faculties, limbs, minds and bodies imitate death but our spirits and souls are fully alive to the Lord. We are shutting the world out, we are shutting our selves out, silencing all distracting noises and thoughts and our focus is completely on the locus of our lives- the LORD God. We have become the veritable temple of God, the alter and the living sacrifice. We experience a fresh anointing, an empowerment, a strengthening from deep within. The depth of our souls connects and communicates with the Lord. By reverential silence, effusive praise and vows, we are offering thoughts, words and actions as a wholesome offering like that of Abel to the Lord.