WHEN YOU CAN’T FEEL GOD’S PRESENCE

By Arnie Cole

There are seasons when life does not unfold the way you expected. A diagnosis changes everything. A relationship fractures. A long standing burden refuses to lift. You pray, but nothing seems to change. You open your Bible, but the words do not meet you the way they once did. You go to church, sing the same songs, hear the same truths, and yet you still feel a kind of distance you cannot explain.

You still believe, at some level. You haven’t renounced Christ or quit the faith. But God feels distant, and something in you has begun to waver.

Scripture does not gloss over this unsettling experience. The psalmists speak of it plainly: “How long, O Lord? Will you forget me forever?” (Ps 13:1). “Why, O Lord, do you stand far away? Why do you hide yourself in times of trouble?” (Ps 10:1). These are not the words of an unbeliever. Far from it. They are the words of David, “a man after God’s own heart” (1 Sam 13:14), in a particular season when he could not sense the Lord’s nearness.

In instances such as these, Scripture offers us an unshakeable truth: God may feel absent, but He is not. The Lord does not come and go. He is not present one week and gone the next. Christ has not withdrawn Himself from you, even if your awareness of Him may have grown dim. Our experience of His presence can be interrupted. And when that happens, it can unsettle us more than we expect.

In those moments, our thoughts don’t stay small or contained. We begin to question ourselves, but we also begin to question God. We wonder if we’ve failed Him or if He has, in some way, failed us. Some grow quiet and withdrawn. Others feel a rising edge of resentment. And for some, the questions go deeper still: Was my faith ever as solid as I thought? Have I misunderstood all of this?

That is where the danger lies: not in the feeling itself, but in how we respond to the feeling. When God feels distant, we can easily begin to drift. We may not abandon our faith, but we loosen our grip on what once sustained us. We open our Bibles less often. We pray less, or not at all. We f ill the silence with noise, distraction, or busyness. It doesn’t usually happen suddenly. It happens quietly, almost without notice.

Over time, that quiet drift can settle into something harder. A kind of simmering resentment toward God or even a low-grade cynicism. Not open rebellion, but a subtle lowering of expectation. We stop looking for God to work because we are no longer sure that He does.

That is why seasons like this demand more than head belief and can feel like they are stretching us beyond what we are capable of. They require acting in faith, one day at a time, even when our heart “isn’t in it.”

How can you act in faith even when you feel nothing, or worse, when you feel like pulling away?

YOU RETURN TO THE SCRIPTURES. You open them and read, even when your mind wanders. You stay with a passage longer than you want to. You let the words sit. Over time, they begin to shape you again, often in ways you do not notice right away.

YOU PRAY IN PLAIN SPEECH. You say what is true: you are tired, you are confused, you do not understand why this has not changed. You keep speaking to God even when the conversation feels one-sided. You refuse to step away.

YOU STAY CONNECTED TO GOD’S PEOPLE. You take your place in the room. You listen. You sing when you can. You let others carry what you cannot carry on your own.

YOU TAKE THE NEXT STEP IN FRONT OF YOU. Not a large step. The next one. You do what you know to do. You keep your word. You turn from what you know is wrong. You move forward in small acts of obedience.

None of this feels significant in the moment. It rarely does. But this is how a robust faith is formed.

Scripture prepares us for this kind of work. Paul writes that suffering produces endurance, and endurance produces character, and character produces hope (Rom 5:3–4). James writes that the testing of faith produces steadfastness (James 1:3). These are not quick movements. They take shape over time, often out of view.

Many believers—even the biblical writers and heroes of the faith—can point to seasons when God seemed distant, yet those were the very seasons that steadied them. Not because everything was “fixed” or they suddenly understood God’s ways, but because they learned to remain where they were.

That may be what is happening in your life, or the life of someone you love right now. If so, know this: The Lord has not stepped away from you. He is at work in ways you cannot measure from one day to the next.

So, my friend, keep the faith. Stay in the Word. Wrestle with God in prayer. Remain with God’s people. Take the next step, one day at a time. Because the Lord our God is not absent. And your faithfulness in this moment is not wasted.