1. Choose a day this week to go apart to be with God in silence.  Go to Prairiewoods or another place of retreat and pray, journal, walk, and seek to hear God’s voice.
2. Bring the presence of God to the sick, the suffering, or the lonely.  Visit with someone who is struggling and practice intentionally leaving space in the conversation to be silent…listening for the voice of God together.
3. Create a sacred space in your home—convert an unused room into a prayer room; move a comfortable chair into your bedroom and designate it as your prayer chair; or claim a chair in your family living space by placing your Bible, a devotional, journal and some pens or pencils next to it.  Then spend 15 minutes each day this week in silence in your newly-created holy space.
4. Spend this week fasting from those things you voluntarily subject yourself to:  the car radio, TV, over-activity, unnecessary telephone conversations.  Do not allow anything but God to fill that space you’ve created.  Journal or talk with a spiritual friend about anything you notice in the silence.

Come to me, all you who are weary and burdened and I will give you rest.  Matthew 11:28
 
Search your hearts and be silent.  Psalm 4:4
 
But Jesus often withdrew to lonely places and prayed.  Luke 5:16

1. Bell was reading about a guy named Bernie Krause who records nature sounds for film and television.  He was saying that, in 1968, in order to get one hour of natural sound, like no airplanes, no cars, that it would take him about 15 hours of recording time, and he was saying that today, to get that same one hour of undisturbed sound, it takes him 2000 hours of recording time.  What does the Bernie Krause story have to say about how our world has changed?  What kind of noise do you have in your life?
2. Why is silence so hard to deal with? 
3. Do you ever surround yourself with noise intentionally?  If so, why do you think you do this?
4. Do you wish God’s voice would be louder in your life?  Does all the noise in our lives make it hard to hear God?
5. When was the last time you spent some time in silence?
6. Do you sometimes avoid silence because you’re afraid of what God might actually have to say to you?
7. Are you ever alone or do you always need somebody around you?
8. Does your schedule, your time, your life look like that of a person who wants to hear God’s voice?
9. What are some things in your daily life you could change to eliminate some of the noise?