Faith & Doubt
God felt close for years and now there is just silence. Did I do something to cause it, or is this normal?
“How long wilt thou forget me, O LORD? for ever? how long wilt thou hide thy face from me? How long shall I take counsel in my soul, having sorrow in my heart daily? how long shall mine enemy be exalted over me?”
David wrote this while he was being hunted, long after he had been anointed king and long before he ever sat on a throne. The opening line is a complaint aimed straight at God, and the fact that Israel kept it in her hymnbook matters. The songs the community sang together made room for people who could not feel God anywhere. Your silence has company in scripture.
“(For we walk by faith, not by sight:)”
Paul wrote to a church in Corinth that prized visible proof: impressive speakers, obvious power, spiritual experience they could point to. He answers with a sentence about walking, which is what you do when the view is unclear. Faith for him was never a feeling that arrives on schedule; it was continuing to move in a direction you cannot currently see. Silence is not the same as absence.
A path forward
Keep the daily habits even while they feel empty: five minutes of scripture and a short prayer at the same time each day. Fidelity in a dry season is not pretending, it is showing up.
Write out the silence as a prayer, in the same blunt register David used. Tell God exactly how long it has been and how it feels, and do not tidy up the language.
Check the practical inputs before assuming a spiritual cause: sleep, grief, burnout and depression all flatten the sense of God's nearness. If several of those are true right now, talk to a doctor as well as a pastor.
Closing verse
“Let your conversation be without covetousness; and be content with such things as ye have: for he hath said, I will never leave thee, nor forsake thee.”
- Hebrews 13:5
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