WHEN GOD SEEMS DISTANT

God is real, no matter how you feel.

It is easy to worship God when things are going great in your life – when He has provided food, friends, family, health and happy situations. But circumstances are not always pleasant. How do you worship then? What do you do when God seems a million miles away?

The deepest level of worship is praising God in spite of pain, thanking God during a trial, trusting Him when tempted, surrendering while suffering, and loving Him when He seems distant.

Friendships are often tested by separation and silence; you are divided by physical distance or you are unable to talk. In your friendship with God, you won’t always feel close to Him.
Philip Yancey has wisely noted, “Any relationship involves times of closeness and time of distance, and in a relationship with God, no matter how intimate, the pendulum will swing from one side to the other.” That’s when worship gets difficult.

To mature your friendship, God will test it with periods of seeming separation – times when it feels as if He has abandoned or forgotten you. God feels a million miles away.
Of course, God doesn't leave us. He has promised repeatedly, “I will never leave nor forsake you.” But God has not promised “you will always feel my presence.” In fact, God admits that sometimes He hides His face from us. There are times when he appears to be MIA, missing-in-action, in your life.

Floyd McClung describes it: ”You wake up one morning and all your spiritual feelings are gone. You pray but nothing happens. You rebuke the devil, but it doesn’t change anything. You go through spiritual exercises…..you have your friends pray for you…..you confess every sin you can imagine, then go around asking forgiveness of everyone you know. You fast…still nothing. You begin to wonder how long this spiritual gloom might last. Days? Weeks? Months? Will it ever end? …it feels as if your prayers simply bounce off the ceiling. In utter desperation, you cry out, “What’s the matter with me????”

The truth is, there’s nothing wrong with you! This is a normal part of the testing and maturing of your friendship with God. Every Christian goes through it at least once, and usually several times. It is painful and disconcerting, but it is absolutely vital for the development of your faith. Knowing this gave Job hope when he could not feel God’s presence in his life.

He said, “I go east, but he is not there. I go west, but I cannot find him. I do not see him in the north, for he is hidden. I turn to the south, but I cannot find him. But he knows where I am going. And when he has tested me like gold in a fire, he will pronounce me innocent.”

When God seems distant, you may feel that He is angry with or is disciplining you for some sin. In fact, sin does disconnect us from intimate fellowship with God. We grieve God’s spirit and quench our fellowship with him by disobedience, conflict with others, busyness, friendship with the world, and other sins.

But often this feeling of abandonment or estrangement from God has nothing to do with sin. It is a test of faith – one we all must face: will you continue to love, trust, obey, and worship God, even when you have no sense of his presence or visible evidence of his work in your life?

The most common mistake we make in worship today is seeking an experience rather than seeking God. The look for a feeling, and if it happens, they conclude that they have worshiped. Wrong! In fact, God often removes our feelings so we won’t depend on them. Seeking a feeling, even the feeling of closeness to God, is not worship.

God’s omnipresence and the manifestation of his presence are two different things. One is a fact; the other is often a feeling.

(to be continued)

~ Ch.14 - When God Seems Distant - The Purpose Driven Life, by Rick Warren ~

Des Moines, Iowa
August 13, 2009