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When God Seems Far Away

Some believers keep seeking God and still walk in darkness. You pray, and your prayers seem to go unheard. You open the Bible, and the words seem dry. You sing with God's people, and your heart feels empty. The nearness of God you once knew is not felt now, and you wonder whether He has turned away from you.

6 Phases Through When God Seems Far Away

6 clear phases, each written for when God seems far away.

  1. C · Consider the Truth

    God Has Not Left, Though You Cannot Sense Him

    To see the season in which God seems far away as He Himself defines it, with its unanswered prayers, dry reading, and empty worship. God has not left you. He is never absent from His people; what you have lost is the sense of His nearness. That loss may come from His own hand in a faithful life, or from sin held on to, and Scripture does not let you guess which. Considering the truth begins when you let His Word, not the silence, tell you where God is, and when you are willing to have Him search you. Christ, forsaken on the cross as He bore the wrath of God for His people's sins, entered that darkness so that none of His own would ever be forsaken.

  2. H · Humble Your Heart

    Lamenting a Silence You Cannot Explain

    To help you bring the sorrow of God's seeming absence to Him in lament: prayers that seem to fall into silence, a Word that seems dry, and the memory of a nearness you no longer sense. Telling God that He seems far is not unbelief. Saints in Scripture prayed this way, and God kept their prayers in His Word for His people to pray. Humbling your heart means bringing the whole weight of this darkness to the God who seems absent, in the words He has given you. Christ, who knew sorrow Himself, has opened your way to the Father, and through Him your grief may come before God with neither self-reproach nor a hardened heart.

  3. A · Acknowledge and Confess

    Owning Your Own Responses While God Seems Far

    When grieving unto the Lord, you told Him of your thirst for Him and asked Him how long the darkness would last. Confession acknowledges the sinful and unbelieving responses to God's seeming absence, never the darkness, the heaviness, or the silence itself. Where the heart has answered with sin, pride has judged God by what it can feel and charged Him with leaving. Pride then makes the good desire to know Him near a demand that comfort or certainty come now, and trusts idols to secure it: your own devotional effort, your grip on how God must answer, or escapes that dull the emptiness. From there may come bitterness toward God, ceasing to seek Him, envy of other believers' joy, and any sin held on to that a search of your heart brings to light. Christ's blood bought your pardon, and your feelings neither add to it nor take from it.

  4. N · Nourish Your Soul

    Resting on His Presence, Not on What You Feel

    To help you receive God's comfort while His nearness is not felt, and to turn from any idol your heart has trusted in the dark. His comfort does not come first as a sensation. He gives what no sensation can: the promise of His Son, true of you whether you sense it or not. Nourishing your soul means feeding on His Word until you look to Him, and not to your feelings or your own effort, for what you need. Christ surpasses every feeling you have chased, because He has joined you to Himself for good.

  5. G · Grow in Wisdom

    Walking by Faith When You Cannot See

    To help you humbly accept God's dealings with you while His nearness is not felt and His reasons are not given. Acceptance does not mean calling the darkness good, ceasing to ask God for light, or concluding that you will never sense Him again. Acceptance takes Christ at His word about what you cannot see, and it leaves God's hidden purposes with Him. Growing in wisdom means living by what He has made plain, caring wisely for the body He made, and seeing this trial as one in which He proves your faith. In the darkness over Calvary God accomplished His wisest work, unseen by those who watched, and He calls you to rely on Him now when you cannot see what He is doing.

  6. E · Endure in Righteousness

    Seeking God Day by Day in a Dry Land

    To help you deliberately commit yourself to God and keep seeking Him while His nearness is not felt. Commitment is the inward decision to keep coming to God in prayer, in His Word, and among His people, without waiting for a feeling to return first. Commitment does not pretend that the darkness has lifted, and it earns nothing from God. The long silence tempts you to stop praying, to drift from the gathered church, or to give up hope. Enduring in righteousness means seeking God earnestly, holding fast with His people, praying at all times, loving others in their joys and sorrows, and waiting quietly for the LORD. Christ has promised to raise up on the last day every one whom His Father entrusted to Him, and you seek God in the dark relying on that promise, not on a feeling.

One Step, as the App Gives It

One assignment from the first phase on when God seems far away, as the app gives it.

From Change Pathways · When God Seems Far Away

Phase C · Consider the Truth

God Has Not Left, Though You Cannot Sense Him

Psalm 139:7–10
Where can I go to escape Your Spirit? Where can I flee from Your presence? If I ascend to the heavens, You are there; if I make my bed in Sheol, You are there. If I rise on the wings of the dawn, if I settle by the farthest sea, even there Your hand will guide me; Your right hand will hold me fast.

Think it through

In Psalm 139:7–10 David asks, “Where can I flee from Your presence?” and answers that in the heavens and in Sheol “You are there.” What does it mean for you that God is present in this season, even on the days you do not sense Him at all?

This week

Set Down Where God Is: Read Psalm 139:7–10, and then Psalm 139:11–12. Make two columns: in the first, write what you sense of God these days; in the second, what these verses say about where He is. Read the second column aloud to God each morning this week.

In the app, you write your answer and what you did here, and they stay private to you.

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What It Is, and What It Isn’t

Change Pathways is biblical help and a clear process. It isn’t a cure, and it doesn’t replace your church, your pastor, a counselor, or a doctor. It works best alongside them.

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