Article
When God feels distant
On dry seasons, and why the feeling is poor evidence of the fact.
Almost everyone who has kept this up for any length of time has had a period where prayer felt like talking to the ceiling. It is common enough that the Psalms have a whole genre for it, which is worth knowing when it happens to you.
Psalm 42:11KJV
Why art thou cast down, O my soul? and why art thou disquieted within me? hope thou in God: for I shall yet praise him, who is the health of my countenance, and my God.
The psalmist is arguing with himself out loud. He does not resolve the feeling, and he does not pretend it away. He speaks to his own soul and tells it what he knows to be true while it is not currently believing it, which is a more useful model than most advice on this subject.
Some ordinary causes
- Exhaustion. A great deal of spiritual dryness is a sleep problem.
- Grief or a hard season, where everything is muted, not only this.
- Drift, where nothing dramatic happened and the days simply filled up.
- Something unaddressed that you already know about.
- Nothing identifiable at all. This also happens, and it is not a verdict.
Only one of those is about wrongdoing, and the honest thing is to check rather than to assume. The prayer for that is short and already written.
Psalm 139:23–24KJV
Search me, O God, and know my heart: try me, and know my thoughts: And see if there be any wicked way in me, and lead me in the way everlasting.
What tends to help
Keeping going at a smaller scale. A dry season is a bad time to attempt an ambitious plan and a good time to shorten everything: one psalm, one honest sentence, most days. Feelings are lagging indicators, and they tend to return quietly rather than announcing themselves.
What is the smallest thing you could keep doing through this? Make it smaller than you think it should be.