In my previous post, I wrote about the way God reveals himself through the Scriptures. I claimed that he meets with us when we seek him in the Bible and that he entices us to continue seeking him.
I’m guessing some readers finished that post and muttered, “yeah, right.” For many people what I described seems like a dream, completely divorced from their difficult reality. For these Christians, Bible reading is not joyful, but difficult. It feels much less like a meeting with a loving, fatherly God than it does a dry, drowsy duty. They gain no encouragement, conviction of sin, or measure of hope when they open the Word.
In short, it feels like God is absent.
If this describes your situation, you’re in good company. Not only do I have some good news for you from the Bible, but many Christians now and throughout history feel and have felt exactly the same way you do.
Is God Actually Absent?
For Christians, God is not absent. This isn’t to deny what people feel and experience, just to state the Scriptural reality: God has promised never to leave or forsake his people (Heb 13:5).
You may feel that God is distant or absent, and that is a common feeling and experience. But when God the Holy Spirit comes in our conversion, he does not leave. This presence of God himself is a down payment or a small taste of the full divine presence we will enjoy in the new creation.
So, God may not be absent, but it sure feels like he is sometimes. We might not be able to point to a specific cause behind this effect, but we can easily find similar expressions of this feeling in the Bible.
Lamenting God’s Absence
Prayer in the Bible comes in many flavors, including prayers of lament. A lament is simply an honest cry to God about the sorrowful parts of living life in a fallen world. And these parts include feeling like God is absent.
Hear the ways the psalmists pray.
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?
How long shall my enemy be exalted over me? (Psalm 13:1–2)My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?
Why are you so far from saving me, from the words of my groaning?
O my God, I cry by day, but you do not answer,
and by night, but I find no rest. (Psalm 22:1–2)But I, O Lord, cry to you;
in the morning my prayer comes before you.
O Lord, why do you cast my soul away?
Why do you hide your face from me? (Psalm 88:13–14)
These Biblical prayers do not fit our present condition exactly; however, they are all examples of saints who were expecting God to be present in their troubles and their experience is the opposite. (It has been helpful for me to realize that many of the psalms are psalms of lament; here is a list to consult.)
How to Handle God’s Perceived Absence in our Bible Reading
My basic advice when Bible readers don’t secure a take-home nugget every day was it’s okay and keep going. My advice in this post is basically the same, but with a few more specifics.
Pray. It is good for us to share our hearts with the God who already knows them. Use some of the language of the psalms of lament or put your frustration into your own words, but talk to God! Ask him: he has promised never to leave you, so why does it feel like he has?
Ask others to pray. As I mentioned above, this feeling is not unusual. If you take someone aside after church, you’ll almost always see a sympathetic smile in return. Enlist your Christian friends to ask God to make his presence real to you again.
Read with others. In the global west, we often individualize our relationships with God, but this doesn’t have to be! If you’re struggling to read or study the Bible on your own, perhaps a friend would be willing to read or study the Bible with you a few days each week. God may use this shared experience to meet with you more intimately.
Keep reading. The Bible is a treasure because it reveals God himself. Sometimes this treasure seems easy to access, like candy at Halloween. At other times, it seems entirely invisible. Talk with older saints and listen to their testimonies: these dry periods eventually come to an end.
