Every Christian will, inevitably, feel like God has gone missing for a season.
For some, the season is a matter of days or weeks. For others, a matter of months and years. Even King David, a man after God’s own heart (Acts 13:22), experienced seasons of spiritual dryness so intense that He asked of God, “Why have you forgotten me?” (Ps. 42:9).
The question is not if we will experience times of spiritual dryness, but what will we do in times of spiritual dryness. The Bible’s short answer: seek Him (Ps. 42, Jer. 29:13, Zec. 1:3, Matt. 5:6).
The question is not if we will experience times of spiritual dryness, but what will we do in times of spiritual dryness.
In the Screwtape Letters C.S. Lewis has the senior devil explaining to the junior devil that a Christian’s persistent pursuit of God in spite of feeling like God is missing is the tempter’s greatest defeat:
“Sooner or later He withdraws, if not in fact, at least from their conscious experience, all those supports and incentives. . . . It is during such trough periods, much more than during the peak periods, that it (the Christian) is growing into the sort of creature He wants it to be. Hence the prayers offered in the state of dryness are those which please him best. . . . Do not be deceived, Wormwood. Our cause is never more in danger than when a human, no longer desiring, but still intending, to do our Enemy’s will, looks round upon a universe from which every trace of Him seems to have vanished, and asks why he has been forsaken, still obeys.”
Can’t feel God? Seek Him. For “he is not far from any one of us” (Acts 17:27).