“God, where are you?”
I’ve prayed this desperate prayer through tears more often than I wish to recall. Whether it’s been sickness in my family, problems in my church, or my brokenheartedness over sin, there have been many moments in my life when God seemed gone. I’m willing to bet you can relate.
At some point in our lives (more likely many points), we’ll experience a feeling about God’s presence that’s at variance with the facts. In moments of pain, trauma, or sadness, our hearts will accuse God of being distant even while our minds remind us God is ever present. The dissonance between facts and feelings, presence and absence—if left unaddressed—can be discouraging at best or destructive to our faith at worst.
So what will you do when God seems gone?
Facts Alone Make You Stoic
When my life is falling apart, I reach for the solid footholds of truth. The facts of God’s Word can be immeasurably comforting, as they’re meant to be. But as one popular podcaster is wont to say, “Facts don’t care about your feelings.”
The dissonance between facts and feelings, presence and absence, can be discouraging at best or destructive to our faith at worst.
There’s a kind of sufferer who simply ignores or represses his emotions. This is one ditch I’ve fallen into many times. I’d simply look at myself in the mirror, confess some Scriptures over my life, and do my best to move on. The approach says, Does God feel far away? Well, he’s not, so fake it till you make it and keep going. Truth is true no matter how you feel about it, so believe and be on your way.
This approach has the appearance of wisdom. When your feelings accuse God, confessing Scripture is a great way to begin a journey out of the bog of depression. But there’s a problem: confessing truth without understanding the lies often leads to misapplying that truth.
For example, if I feel like God is far away, and I confess Scripture’s promise that he’ll never leave me, I’ve said something true. But if I don’t first take time to understand what my feelings are telling me, I may be confronting a lie I’m not actually struggling with. After some reflection, I might realize this feeling of God’s absence is making me deeply fearful. Since I tend to rush past times of reflection and move immediately to confrontation, I miss the opportunity to confess the scriptural truth that would help me grow.
When we rush past our emotions, we end up stoic—hard-hearted, acting as if our emotions don’t matter when our emotionality is a good gift from God.
Feelings Alone Make You Unstable
After a while, the stoic approach would break down and, losing all control, my emotions would take over. I’d allow myself to feel all my pain, sorrow, sadness, and fear and all the accusations those emotions make against God and others. I’d rage and cry and experience outbursts that ended up hurting me and those relationships I hold most dear. Perhaps you’re thinking, Well, Adam, you sound pretty unstable. That’s exactly the point. Instability is the outcome of hyperemotionality.
There’s a kind of sufferer who allows his emotions not just to be present but to be in charge. Wallowing in the muck of self-pity, he feels as if he has every right to do so. And he weaponizes the empathy of others, demanding they join him in the mud if he’s to truly feel “seen.”
Most Westerners are shaped by stories, songs, and sitcoms that exalt the expression of emotions as the truest way to be human. Yet this is the way of the world, not the church. When God seems gone and we rage, we end up in a worse spot than when we started.
Feelings and Faith in the Presence of a Faithful God
Time and trial have taught me these aren’t the way of wisdom.
The Bible gives us stories of great men who experienced an acute case of God’s absence. Habakkuk’s book begins after a long period of God’s silence, and he prays, “How long shall I cry for help?” (Hab. 1:2). David laments, “Why have you forsaken me?” (Ps. 22:1). These men were talking to God even while their emotional experiences of God were of absence and abandonment.
When God seems gone and my emotions are ablaze, he’s still at work and wants me to come to him.
When God seems gone and my emotions are ablaze, he’s still at work and wants me to come to him.
Realizing God’s work through our emotions was revolutionary to me. He wants me to be aware of my emotions, acknowledge them, and bring them to him—even when it feels like he’s not good, not listening, or not even there. And it’s what he wants you to do as well.
The false gospel of our culture’s obsession with identity demands we only express what feels most true to ourselves. We’re told such expression is the only way to be truthful and authentic. But that’s a lie. The people of God are invited to bring our worst experiences of God’s absence into the reality of God’s presence.
It may not feel like it’s working, and that’s OK. Feelings are only good at telling you how you feel. But once you see them and bring them to God, the facts of his Word will begin to move the needle in your soul. When he next feels close, you’ll know him better than you did before. Such a gift only comes when God seems gone.
The Gospel Coalition