Miguel de Molinos was a Spanish thinker and writer in the 1600s. He wrote about three kinds of silence: the silence of words, the silence of desires, and the silence of thoughts. These silences are unique and yet they are also connected. There is a progression to these silences. Each one leads to the next.

When you quiet the external voices around you, entering into a period of fasting from words and sound, a funny thing happens: you begin to notice all of this noise on the inside. You begin to notice all of the noise within you related to your desires. And that can be an overwhelming amount of noise. Those desires feed a noise of thought that borders on relentless. Even when we are quiet externally, we notice the cacophony of our internal noise.

If you’ve been practicing silence this week, you’ve likely noticed this.

Madame Guyon was a spiritual writer who lived during this same period of time. She wrote, “Outward silence develops inward silence. It is impossible to live in your inmost being where Christ lives without loving silence.”

We are right to begin by silencing our words. Only then can we attend to silencing our desires and silencing our thoughts. But this requires help from the Lord.

This is how we reach a place of obedience to the command of Psalm 46:10, Be still and know that I am God. I will be exalted among the nations, I will be exalted in the earth!

Most Christians are familiar with this verse, although we appropriate it in an odd way. It calls to mind moments of tranquility. We think this is a verse for morning coffee on the back deck of the chalet we’ve secured for a mountain getaway with our family. But the immediate context is warfare. The preceding verse states, He makes wars cease to the end of the earth; he breaks the bow and shatters the spear; he burns the chariots with fire.

The idea here is that we can stop all of our striving, all of our pushing and warring and bickering and battling. The phrase “be still” has a connotation in Hebrew of “release, letting go, going limp.” This is a text about conflict. And all our conflict can be released in the knowledge that God is sovereign. We can trust, as the verse says, that He WILL be exalted.

THIS is what it means to be still and know that He is God.

In this way, this verse is about silence — or more pointedly, about all the noise warring within us.

Outward silence is the first step toward inner quietude.

This makes silence a vital discipline. It keeps us living out of the center, living out of the sanctuary of the heart where the word of Christ dwells richly within us.

We often use our words to wield control. We use language to influence outcomes, to produce results, to persuade. (It’s not lost on me that I’m doing this even as I write these words.) But in silence, we give up that control. We release. Such silence is predicated on the conviction of Habakkuk 2:20, The Lord is in his holy temple; let all the earth keep silence before him. Being silent before the Lord puts us in the position of not being in control. We are just keeping silence before Him.

And we are giving the Lord a chance to speak.

As you enter into silence, notice what’s going on. Notice what’s going on inside of you. Notice how much internal noise you hear.

Distractions will occur. That doesn’t mean you’re doing it wrong; it simply means that you’re human.

I heard a story once about a young man who was speaking to his spiritual director. He was telling the director about how often he was distracted whenever he was praying in silence. In frustration, he said, “A thousand times I was distracted!”

The spiritual director replied, “Praise God! A thousand times you returned to God!”

That’s what we do in silence: we give God our undivided attention until our attention is divided. And whenever we find that our attention has drifted away from God, we gently turn our focus back toward Him. Even if we are distracted a thousand times, a thousand times we return to God! When you notice those distractions, gently redirect your attention back to the Lord and thank Him for the grace to be able to do so.

Silence will also be awkward at first. But we notice this as well. If you notice awkwardness, gently ask yourself, “Why exactly is this awkward? Why do I feel more comfortable when the room is filled with words? What does this say about me? What does it say about my relationship with God?”

I believe the Holy Spirit has a rich time in store for you as you enter into silence before the Lord.