The Silent Treatment

Have you ever made someone upset, whether you realized it or not and instead of them telling you they were upset they just didn't speak to you? Maybe they did tell you they were upset and still didn't speak to you. They gave you the silent treatment and expected you to read their mind and know what you did or what they needed. I was thinking about this today and I have to admit I despise the silent treatment. I would rather someone scream and yell at me, getting it all out of their system so then we could discuss it, than to just keep silent and say nothing at all. The silent treatment is like saying, you don't deserve to know what you did wrong nor do you deserve the right to defend your actions. I'm just going to ignore you and hope you figure it out! I'm not speaking about a silence when we know the best way to handle a situation and to keep peace is to remain silent. I'm speaking about the defiant, I'll just teach you a lesson silence.

I tried to relate this to how we/I can sometimes treat the Lord. By not spending time with Him each day in prayer how He must feel like He is getting the "silent treatment." Even if our intentions aren't to treat Him this way, if we are not putting into our relationship with Him what we would like to get out of it, I wonder if he is offended or disappointed. Our silence is our lack of spending time in prayer before the Lord. His word in 1 Thessalonians 5:17 says, "Pray without ceasing." That would mean God doesn't want the silent treatment. When we aren't getting our way and He didn't answer a prayer the way we thought it should be answered, we are still to continue to pray. He knows best and His will is best! Without praying continuously we are in essence giving God the silent treatment.