While he thus spake, there came a cloud, and overshadowed them....And there came a voice out of the cloud, saying, This is my beloved Son: hear him.

—Luke 9:34-35

Not all silence is spiritual. Some Christians are silent because they have nothing to say; others are silent because what they have to say cannot be uttered by mortal tongues. We...will confine our remarks to the latter.

Where the Holy Spirit is permitted to exercise His full sway in a redeemed heart, the progression is likely to be as follows: First, voluble praise, in speech or prayer or witness. Then, when the crescendo rises beyond the ability of studied speech to express, comes song. When song breaks down under the weight of glory, then comes silence where the soul, held in deep fascination, feels itself blessed with an unutterable beatitude.

At the risk of being written off as an extremist or a borderline fanatic, we offer it as our mature opinion that more spiritual progress can be made in one short moment of speechless silence in the awesome Presence of God than in years of mere study....The exposure may be brief, but the results are permanent. TWP041-042

Very few of us know the secret of bathing our souls in silence. It was a secret our Lord Jesus Christ knew very well....We never really come to know ourselves because we cannot keep quiet long enough. Unknown

 

A. W. Tozer, Tozer on the Holy Spirit, (Camp Hill, PA: WingSpread Publishers, 2007), WORDsearch CROSS e-book, Under: "March 3— Silence—an Unutterable Beatitude".