Do you ever feel that God is far away? Or maybe you always feel that way.
In the last few years, as I’ve been counseling people in distress, one issue that many of them bring up is the fact that they don’t feel close to God. And because they don’t feel God’s presence, they question whether or not He’s really there. They question their faith, their salvation, their sanity.
Some have experienced this closeness in the past and want to feel that way again. Others have never felt that connection and want to find out why not and figure out how to get it.
Today’s blog post will be the first in a series about what to do
WHEN GOD SEEMS FAR AWAY.
Having a close relationship with God is potentially the most exciting, fulfilling and significant of all human experiences. Yet few, if any, of us are strangers to feeling distant from God.
I’m talking about those times when we feel disconnected from our Creator, when spiritual activities that we think should bring us into a feeling of close fellowship no longer seem to work for us. We feel empty inside, alone, sometimes even abandoned; and it may seem like every attempt we make to connect with God ends in total silence or a feeling of His disappointment in us. We may feel too far off and too hopeless to even TRY to reconnect.
So we sit and wait for the feeling to find us.
If you’ve ever felt this way, you know how horrible it is. Lonely. Hopeless. Scary.
When we lose our awareness of God’s presence and His loving care for us, we may say we are spiritually DRY or experiencing DESERT times or that we are in the WILDERNESS. These times may sneak up on us gradually, or hit suddenly, like a slap in the face.
Either way, it’s a disconcerting experience.
Bette Midler recorded a song 20 years or so ago called, “From a Distance.” The chorus cries,
“God is watching us. God is watching us. God is watching us from a distance.”
That song was a huge hit, scoring a Grammy for Song of the Year in 1991.
Unfortunately, it reflects one of the popular misconceptions people have about God. They believe that God made the world, got it wound up, and then sort of let it go. And except for rare exceptions to the rule, we’re on our own. God got everything started ‘way back when’, but now God is “out there” somewhere, watching us from a distance.
Then out of the other side of our mouths we’ll say we believe that God inspired the writing of the 66 books we call the Bible, in which we are told in no uncertain terms that God is not just watching us from a distance at all, but rather that God is with us. God is right here, elbow to elbow with each one of us. In fact, God is even closer than that, because as Christians, His Spirit dwells within us.
We are permeated by the presence of God.
So God isn’t just near us, He’s within us. Not distant at all.
No doubt – our heads know that, and yet – we demand to FEEL it. With our senses, with a 6th sense. And I don’t have to remind you that feelings often speak much louder than facts.
Even some of our biblical heroes like David struggled at times to feel God’s love.
In Psalm 13:1 David cried out,
“How long, O Lord? Will you forget me forever? How long will you hide your face from me?”
Have you ever had the experience of feeling that someone who lives in the same house with you is far away from you? You can feel lonely surrounded by the people in your own house. Just because you look at each other across the breakfast table every morning doesn’t mean you’re close. I’m sure that my family sometimes thinks I’m far away even when they’re within ten feet of me, because I’m lost in some thought or hobby or project, and I can become so absorbed in things that I may as well be in China.
It’s the same way with us and God.
We say we want to be close to God, but instead, the things we do take us further away from God.
“I want to be a better person. I want to be more like Jesus,” we might say, and then we willfully and persistently make choices that take us further away from His example of a life of faith and love and compassion.
And as the years go by God seems further and further away.
What does “Near” to God Mean?
A friend of mine sometimes tells me that her daughter has gotten much closer to her as she’s gotten older. The mom lives here, in Washington. The daughter lives in Texas. They haven’t changed the frequency of their visits or phone conversations. They still lived 3000 miles away. So what did my friend mean?
She was speaking of the experience of knowing each other. She meant that her daughter was coming to know her more intimately and with deeper understanding and acceptance, that the barriers of thought and feeling between the two were disappearing, that mother and daughter were becoming more closely united in mind and heart.
When we sing, “Draw me nearer, nearer, blessed Lord,” we are not thinking of the nearness of place as if God had a magnet and we wanted to be pulled in, but of the nearness of relationship.
We long for an increasing degree of consciousness of God’s presence within us.
Being near to God is to experience that type of intimate relationship with Him.
What does it feel like to be far from God?
Again it’s not a physical distance we’re talking about, although that is part of it. Our human experience is as part of a physical world – we use all our senses to experience relationship with other people. We see them, we hear them, we touch them. Sometimes we smell them… Less often (hopefully…) we taste them.
We don’t experience God with those same senses, and sometimes it’s hard to get a grip on who God is and what it’s like to know Him. When we are in a period of being distant from God, the inability to experience Him through our 5 senses only makes our feelings of distance greater. We know he’s there and he cares and can comfort and strengthen us, but our human selves want to feel a touch attached to that comfort or see Him with our eyes, or hear Him with our ears. And we can’t. And so, He feels distant.
Why is SILENCE so Disturbing?
Most people are at least a little bit uncomfortable with silence. We try to fill the “empty” space with words to ease our discomfort.
What is it about silence that is so hard to bear?
- Silence as you and I know it can be very unsettling. Because we live in such a noisy world, when things get quiet, we get uncomfortable. Our senses are constantly stimulated and we become accustomed to that. If you find yourself coming home and immediately turning on the TV, whether you watch it or not, or turning on the radio as soon as you get into the car, without even considering whether you want to listen to it or not, or if you find it hard to be alone without some kind of noise to keep you company, then you probably are one of the many people who are uncomfortable with silence.
- Silence can be very intimidating Sometimes silence is used as a weapon. Silence can be used as a form of punishment or manipulation between two people. One person gets mad and won’t talk. They become silent to get their way, or to punish, because the other person is intimidated by the silence and gives in to what the other one wanted.
- Silence can be misunderstood Silence doesn’t necessarily mean anybody’s upset at all. It might mean both parties are in perfect agreement and neither feels the need to say anything. Or it can mean that there is simply nothing that needs saying. Couples who have been together for awhile often reach a point where they can enjoy being together in companionable silence. It’s enjoyable and comforting. But silence by itself is often misunderstood.
The truth about silence is that
silence can be calming and reassuring.
You see, when all that noise is gone we can discover God, much as Elijah did:
I King 19:11-12
11 The LORD said, “Go out and stand on the mountain in the presence of the LORD , for the LORD is about to pass by.” Then a great and powerful wind tore the mountains apart and shattered the rocks before the LORD, but the LORD was not in the wind. After the wind there was an earthquake, but the LORD was not in the earthquake. 12 After the earthquake came a fire, but the LORD was not in the fire. And after the fire came a gentle whisper. (or a STILL SMALL VOICE)
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.”
Psalm 107:30
What a blessing was that stillness as he brought them safely into harbor!
God wasn’t found in the middle of all the noise and commotion. He was in the still small voice. He is found when we are still. He is there when we are quiet.
In my next blog post I’ll talk about some of the potential CAUSES for the feeling of distance from God. We’ll look at
- Physical and emotional barriers
- How Satan deceives us
- Communication breakdowns
- How sometimes we prefer the distance
- We forget who we are
- How sin gets in the way
- We don’t know how to be still
- Unrealistic expectations we have of God
- And how we focus on feelings more than fact
See you next time!
Peripheral Wisdom 