The Chapel - Rediscovering God Changes Everything.

First of all, understand that this feeling is just that, a feeling. It is good to acknowledge that and allow yourself to experience and name it. Also, know that you are not alone in this feeling. It is not uncommon, and the sense that God is distant is well documented by some of God’s most powerful saints in the Bible. Listen to the words of King David in Psalm 42: “As a deer pants for flowing streams, so pants my soul for you, O God. My soul thirsts for God, for the living God. When shall I come and appear before God?” And David prays again in Psalm 13, “How long, O Lord? Will you forget me forever? How long will you hide your face from me? How long must I take counsel in my soul and have sorrow in my heart all the day?” And this was the king of Israel, a man after God’s own heart!

The question usually is not rooted in doubting God’s goodness theologically, but at times I may wonder about God’s goodness to me personally. We are finite, and he is infinite. There is no greater gulf in all of being than this, yet he calls us his children and tells us to look toward him as our Father, the provider and the lover of our souls. In our finiteness and fear of this sometimes overwhelming world, we can easily lose sight of his specific and personal goodness to each of us. He did not create you and your children to abandon you. He promises that he will never leave you or forsake you, and this is a promise without condition. It is not about how often you pray, how faithfully you serve, or how many pages that you read in your bible every day. It is about trusting what he has promised to you and your children personally, that he will never leave you or forsake you, no matter how you may feel.

There may be other issues feeding your fear that may require attention, and the enemy of our soul, the devil, will certainly take advantage of these fears and manipulate your feelings so that you begin to doubt God’s goodness to you personally. But this is a lie. The Lord is your shepherd, he will restore your soul. You need simply trust him and let him love you. The feelings of peace will follow. He does not require payment for his love.       

There are probably times when your children (particularly if they are small) feel distant from you simply by virtue of the fact that they are utterly dependent on you and you are so much bigger than they. This feeling will likely come and go in them until they grow big enough to stand with you and thus see you face to face. In the meantime, you pick them up or bend down to them so they can be close to your face despite their smallness. It is not up to them to relieve their own fears. They will sometimes have them and sometimes not. But it is you who remains constant in their world. So it is with our relationship with God until we see him face to face in heaven, when the distance between us and him has finally been traversed by his final act of redemption. Then will that peace which at times eludes us now remain forever and unbroken. Until then, we continue to hope for things unseen based on his promises and his real spiritual presence which never departs.