Understanding the Silence: Why Doesn’t It Always Feel Like God is Near?
Is God angry with you? Was all that you used to feel just an emotion? Are you less significant than others who always seem to feel him? Let us talk about it.
Why do you find yourself sometimes far from the Holy Spirit’s presence? Why do you sometimes feel so distant from Him? There are some days where you sense the presence of the Holy Spirit. You can sense him in your emotions. Maybe even you can sense that physical manifestation of his power. And then there are days where you’re aware of him. Yet sometimes it seems that the Holy Spirit has abandoned you.
Now, we know he doesn’t do that. But what do you do in those seasons? More importantly, what is God doing in those seasons where you don’t feel like the Holy Spirit is with you? Where you don’t feel the sense of his presence?
4 Things God Is Doing When He Feels Distant
1. He Is Teaching You to Live by Faith
Well, first of all, he’s teaching you to live by faith. You can’t live by faith if all you’re ever doing is relying upon your feelings. Read this now in James 1:2-4. Dear brothers and sisters, when troubles of any kind come your way, notice here that we read, “When troubles come,” not if they come, when they come, consider it an opportunity for great joy. For you know that when your faith is tested, your endurance has a chance to grow. So let it grow.
Sometimes the emotional pain distracts you from the sense of his presence. And in those seasons where everything seems to be falling apart, nothing seems to be working. It’s one disappointment after another. You feel like something’s finally going to come through and then it doesn’t. You feel like you finally find someone you can rely upon and then you can’t. You feel like you’re just about to reach your destiny and then you don’t. In those seasons, it does feel difficult and it can feel like you’re abandoned. But this is where God is growing your faith.
You see, if all you ever rely upon is the emotional experience of God, if all you ever rely upon is the physical manifestation of his presence, like which you sense at revival meetings or in church services or even in your own prayer time perhaps are those moments where you can feel the Holy Spirit’s power. If all you ever rely upon is your feelings, as good as those feelings may be, then you’ll never learn to develop your faith. Faith is what remains when feeling fades away. Really, you’re maturing. You cannot mature without trials. You cannot learn endurance without resistance. So the pain of what you’re going through is actually perfecting your nature, perfecting your character, and it’s teaching you to live by faith. Your faith will become stronger.
- Initial Response: The way you respond to that trial at first may be fear, confusion, and you might feel as though this is some insurmountable thing that you’ll never be able to overcome.
- The Breakthrough: But then you do overcome it. You do endure. You do get past it. You do climb that mountain.
- The Transformation: And then on the other side of that trial, you come out purified. And your faith is stronger.
So the next time that a trial comes, maybe it’s about the same size of a trial. Maybe it’s similar to the last thing you went through. And now when it comes along, there’s this confidence and you say, “I’ve been here before. I can do this.” You’re no longer inconsistent. You’re no longer confused or wrapped up in yourself, all tense with emotion. But now because of what you’ve gone through, because of how God processed you, your faith has been strengthened. He is strengthening your faith.
2. He Is Drawing You Closer
The next thing he’s doing is he’s drawing you closer. Now, it is important to be careful with this terminology because you can’t get any closer to the Holy Spirit because he already dwells within you. You are one with the Holy Spirit. You’re not working for union with God; you’re working from union with God. So, you’re already united with God. Therefore, using the phrase “getting closer to God” is simply meant to meet people where they are in their thinking, helping you to understand that trials help you to become more aware of him.
So why does it seem sometimes like the Holy Spirit is hiding from us? Well, the Holy Spirit doesn’t hide. He doesn’t leave you. You may have lost the sense of his presence.
So when we tell ourselves things, sometimes we feel sorry for ourselves, don’t we? When you tell yourself things like:
- “Well, I’ve already tried to seek God and he just ignored me.”
- “I’ve prayed and I’ve prayed and I’ve prayed and I’ve prayed and God just seems to overlook me.”
- “I’ve already sought him but he’s turned his face from me.”
- “I’ve already prayed for this or prayed for that and God just never grants my requests.”
There’s this bitterness that begins to develop in the heart. There’s this subtle sense of entitlement that becomes offended in you, and really we have to begin to correct our thinking and submit it to the word of God. Because the word of God says if you search for me wholeheartedly, you will find me. That’s a promise. No disclaimers, no explanations. That is a promise that you can bank on. If you search for him wholeheartedly, you will find him. So that leads to the conclusion that if someone claims to have sought God and they didn’t find him, then they are lying to themselves. Let God be true and every man a liar.
Notice here, the Lord is not in the windstorm. If God was in the wind, the prophet would have no choice but to be blown away. God was not in the earthquake, the prophet would have had no choice but to be shaken. God was not in the fire, the prophet would have had no choice but to be burned. But God was in the whisper. And because he whispered, the prophet had to choose to respond to that voice.
In these seasons, you’re being driven to seek him. You’re being pushed to go after him. You’re focusing your mind now to become more attentive to him: “I want to know you, Lord.” And maybe God is using your reliance on emotion to cause you to seek him. In other words, he pulls that from you and now you’re saying, “I don’t feel him. He’s not near. I have to go seek him.” And there’s this holy desperation.
Desperation implies lack. Desperation means I’m missing something. Desperation means I’ve not been disciplined if I’m in a desperate situation. And yes, God can meet you in a desperate situation. And sometimes you find yourself in a desperate situation through no choice of your own. But generally speaking, as a lifestyle, there is spiritual hunger, not spiritual starvation.
When we talk about holy desperation, we are simply talking about a desire for God that’s unquenchable. You’re constantly going after him and you say, “Lord, I have to know you. I have to see your face. I have to hear your voice. I just want anything and everything to do with you. You can take all else. I just want you.” That’s what happens in those seasons where you feel like he’s pulling away. And that’s how you know he’s drawing you, because that holy desire is birthed in you now. To where instead of just saying, “Well, he abandoned me. Well, that’s it. I give up now.” No. There’s this fire in you that says, “I have to go after him. I have to seek his face.” And there’s this holy stirring that begins to drive you back to the place of prayer, back to devotion to the word, back to that place of no compromise.
Maybe you did get a little off. Maybe you compromised. Maybe you’re lacking in your time in the word, and maybe you’re lacking in your time in prayer. And now the Lord is using that lack of emotion, that lack of feeling, to put you back into place, to put you in check and say, “Hey, you were too reliant upon emotions. You were too reliant upon feelings. And now you’re being put in a position where you can sense your need for me.” And you seek him and you will find him.
3. He Is Purifying You
“Reap in mercy. Break up your fallow ground. For it is time to seek the Lord, till he come and rain righteousness upon you.” Seek him until he comes to rain righteousness upon you.
Do you realize that seeking God—and this is life-changing if you apply it—when you seek God, your sin nature weakens. So if you have some habit, some mindset maybe that you are trying to change, some attitude that you can’t seem to shake free from, if you have some darkness that surrounds you that you’re trying to break out of, then when you seek the Lord, that begins to fade away. You put Jesus first. Jesus becomes your focus. Jesus becomes your obsession. Jesus becomes the subject of your affection. And now as he’s your focus and you begin to seek him, there are layers of self that begin to fall away. You begin to shed the old nature.
This is why it is very difficult to pray at times. It may be that when you go to pray, you sense this tensing in your body where you can’t sit still for too long. Think about all of the ways that we treat our minds and think about all the ways that we’ve trained ourselves to just have everything instantly. The way we scroll through social media, the way we order our food and it comes to us, the way we travel fast and live fast and everything is fast-paced. So when you go to pray, this is a different experience now for the flesh. And the flesh starts to become weak. It starts to become bored. It starts to look for any distraction. This is why you’re distracted when you pray, because the flesh is too strong. And so the flesh starts to seek any opportunity that it can to escape that place of prayer because it is in that place of prayer that the old self becomes so weak that it cannot rule over you anymore.
So when you seek God, there is a purification. When you seek God, he’s molding you into his image. For every moment you are seeking him, you are being transformed. For every moment you are seeking him, something is happening in the realm of the spirit. For every moment you are seeking him, you are becoming more like Jesus. You are falling more in love with God. Whether you feel it or not, whether you realize it or not, whether you see the manifestation of that right away or not, something is changing. It is impossible to accomplish nothing in true prayer when you seek him because of maybe that sense that he’s drawn away. Now in that seeking there’s purification. So in the seeking you become like Jesus. It is in the seeking that the divine life of God begins to manifest in you and through you, transforming you to where you can say, “No longer I live, but Christ lives in me.”
And it’s that seeking that weakens the sin nature. It’s the seeking that takes the power of sin and causes it to become less and less and less to where now there’s less resistance when you pray. Now there’s less resistance when you go to read the word. That’s why when you read the word too, your mind is distracted. You’re bored. The word of God’s not boring, but the flesh is bored with the word of God. And so as you weaken that sin nature, the flesh through seeking God, now the word becomes alive. Now it’s life-giving. It’s vibrant. It’s filled with color. And you can’t get enough of it. You want to get to that place. It’s in the seeking. And you would not have gotten there, most of us, had God not allowed us to experience this sense of his distancing. And again, it’s not that he’s actually leaving us. It’s that he simply withdraws from the realm of the emotion, or at least the sense of him in the emotions, and withdraws from that physical manifestation that we can feel, and that’s where the testing begins.
4. He Is Testing You
When we feel like God is distant, it truly reveals character. Because when you feel like God is distant, maybe that’s the opportunity for the sin nature to say, “Now I can get away with it. I don’t sense his nearness. I don’t sense his presence. And so I’m a little more comfortable and compromised.” Now, what you do when you feel like God is at a distance reveals who you truly are in your character, in your nature, and God tests you in these moments.
He looks to see:
- Are they still faithful even when they feel like I’m at a distance?
- Do they still seek me as a discipline even when they don’t have some experience of ecstasy?
- Do they still obey me even when they don’t sense my hand weighing heavily upon them?
- Do they still trust me even when they don’t feel like I’m there in the room with them?
- Do they still walk as if I walk with them even when they’re not aware of my nearness?
He is testing you.
Psalm 105:19: “Until the time came to fulfill his dreams, the Lord tested Joseph’s character.” Think about Joseph. He had these dreams from God. And those dreams weren’t fulfilled right away. And in fact, he spent some time as a slave and then some time in prison before the dream finally came to pass. But all the while, he didn’t stop obeying God. He didn’t stop putting his faith in him. This season of your life, if you’re going through this, will reveal what you truly believe. And this season will purify your motives.
A Prayer for Strength and Endurance
Father, in the name of Jesus, we lift that one to you now who feels like you are a million miles away. We pray, Father, that you would teach them to live by faith and not by feelings. To live by confidence in your word and not confidence in their emotions.
Lord, we thank you that he that is joined to the Lord is one spirit with him. We thank you that you will never leave us or forsake us. We thank you that you are an ever-present help in time of need. We ask you, Lord, in this moment, to strengthen the one receiving this. Strengthen their faith. Give them the grace to endure these trials, this season, the disappointment, the heartache. Give them the grace to endure with their faith intact. Lord, not just barely surviving, but faith that thrives in the name of Jesus. Mature them, test them, purify them in this season. In the mighty name of Jesus, we pray. Amen.
