Early in his marriage, Pete Greig, co-founder of an international prayer movement called 24-7, experienced tragedy. Out of nowhere his wife Samie began experiencing epileptic fits. The couple soon discovered that Samie had an orange-sized tumor in her brain.

During this difficult time, Pete experienced the silence of God. His prayers during Samie’s epileptic fits were, by and large, to no avail. This book was birthed out of Pete’s frustrations.

No matter how hard we try to deny it, “[w]e all get hijacked eventually… The terror comes in many guises: a sudden trauma, a long-term illness, the loss of someone you love, the death of a dream” (16). For the sake of public perception, Christians are good at recounting stories about answered prayer. But we are not so good at sharing our disappointments. Yet, we must make some sense of unanswered prayer. Why? “It’s precisely because we believe so passionately in the power of prayer that we must also make sense of unanswered prayer” (25).

Pete uses Jesus’ experience from Gethsemane to Golgotha to the Garden Tomb as a pattern for understanding God’s silence. The questions for each holy day provide a context for questions that arise during difficult times:

• Maundy Thursday – “How am I going to get through this?”
• Good Friday – “Why aren’t my prayers being answered?”
• Holy Saturday: “Where is God when heaven is silent?”
• Easter Sunday – When every prayer is answered!

On Maundy Thursday, in the Garden of Gethsemane, Jesus was “overwhelmed with sorrow to the point of death” (Mark 14:34). Pete notes the simple honesty of Jesus’ prayer: “Abba, Father … everything is possible for you. Take this cup from me” (Mark 14:36).

Following Jesus’ example, Pete encourages us to remember who it is we are praying to – our Father! “We tend to assume that there is a necessary depth of spirituality to which we must aspire, a technique we are somehow lacking, or a key of mystical revelation that will unlock the miracles we require. But Jesus consistently taught His followers that the key to powerful praying was to simply understand that the one to whom they were praying was their Father in heaven” (45).

God’s silence is not an indication that God doesn’t care. God is our Abba, after all. In fact, God’s grief may be more than we can possibly imagine.

Also, God’s silence does not reflect upon God’s power. Jesus effectively combines a belief in God’s goodness and God’s sufficient power in his simple prayer: “Abba… everything is possible with you.” He did not pray, “Abba, Father, a few things are possible for You. I wish You were able to take this cup from me, but I know You can’t” (65).

Ultimately, we must learn that God wants us to have faith for healing and faith for dying. No matter how long we live, we must eventually learn to trust God in a different way – to trust God when everything falls apart. Do we have the faith “to die well, to die faithfully, to die peacefully, to trust God and to love God in [our] most frightening days” (98). Pete continues: “There is faith for miracles, but also for pain. There is faith for God’s will when it’s our will too, but there is also the grace to trust God when His will is not what we would choose” (99).

In the Good Friday section of the book, Pete attempts to give biblical answers to the intellectual problems of unanswered prayer by focusing on “three particular areas: (1) God’s world and the way it seems to work, (2) God’s will and the way it interacts with human free will, and (3) God’s war and the cosmic struggle between good and evil” (111). This is perhaps the weakest part of the book. Though Pete provides a wealth of possible answers to unanswered prayer, the section seems simplistic and formulaic. A reader looking for intellectual answers should also check out Jerry Sittser’s When God Doesn’t Answer Your Prayers and Greg Boyd’s Is God to Blame? Beyond Pat Answers to the Problem of Suffering.

That being said, Pete provides a number of helpful insights. Most importantly, we must realize that prayer is not simply getting our way all the time. Instead, prayer is “a powerful submission to the sovereign wisdom of God” (115). This means we must learn to conform our lives to the divine will rather than seek to get God to constantly and comfortably do our bidding. This is necessary to a growing relationship: “Growing into maturity – whether it’s in a romantic relationship, a child-parent relationship or in a relationship with God – always involves a steady process of recentering from our own priorities and preferences to those of the other” (200).

Like Jesus on the cross, our prayers of desertion (“My God, why have you forsaken me?”) must be accompanied with prayers of surrender (“Into your hands, I commend my spirit”). When we commit ourselves to God even in the midst of divine silence, we triumph over every evil power. In C. S. Lewis’ Screwtape Letters, a senior demon counsels a junior demon about this:

Sooner or later [God] withdraws, if not in fact, at least from their conscious experience … He leaves the [human] to stand on its own legs – to carry out from the will alone duties which have lost all relish…. Our cause is never in more danger than when a human – no longer desiring but still intending to do [God’s] will – looks round upon a universe from which every trace of Him seems to have vanished, and asks why he has been forsaken, and still obeys. (190)

Pete’s treatment of Holy Saturday is compelling. This is a holy day that is rarely considered in many churches, and yet its message to those experiencing God’s silence is powerful. Holy Saturday is “a day of confusion and silence” (193). Pete writes,

I guess it’s the one day in the entire year when the Church has nothing to say. And yet, although we know so little about it, Holy Saturday seems to me to describe the place in which many of us live our lives: waiting for God to speak. We know that Jesus died for us yesterday. We trust that there may be miracles tomorrow. But what of today – this eternal Sabbath when heaven is silent? Where, we wonder, is God now? (193)

The disciples must have experienced a roller-coaster of emotions on this holy day: “The disciples were scared, but they were also profoundly confused. Had they been cruelly misled for three years? Had Jesus been merely a prophet and not the Christ at all? What of all the miracles, all the proof? Hadn’t He predicted something like this? But surely God would not permit His Son to be crucified?” (203)

Having survived the grueling days of silence, Easter Sunday propels us into the glorious fulfillment of all God’s promises. We are reminded that every prayer for justice, healing, and peace will ultimately find its fulfillment in the resurrection glory of new creation. Revelation provides a beautiful picture of the prayers of the saints ascending to the throne (Rev. 5:8). Pete suggests that these prayers may represent all our unanswered prayers finally coming to fruition: “It’s awesome to imagine that our unanswered prayers – all the frustrations, the tears, the dashed hopes – are being stored up by God in those golden bowls and may, eventually, become our most powerful contribution to the world” (246).

With pastoral sensitivity and biblical wisdom, Pete Greig has provided a helpful resource for all those experiencing God’s silence. It may not provide all the answers – What resource could? – but it certainly gives much food for thought along with way. For those seeking to make sense of God’s silence, it is a welcome conversation partner.

Quotes excerpted from God on Mute: Engaging the Silence of Unanswered Prayer by Pete Greig
© Richard J. Vincent, 2007