Lost in the Wilderness: Rediscovering Your Spiritual Connection to God

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Why You Feel Far From God and the Secret Path Back Home

The Real Reason Your Faith Feels Numb and How to Fix It

It’s strange how the feeling hits you. One day you’re praying with some level of peace — maybe not fireworks, but steady — and then suddenly everything inside goes dim. Like somebody unplugged a lamp you didn’t even know was keeping the room lit. I felt that in late October (you remember when the weather got weirdly warm for a week?) while sitting in my truck behind A Touch of Home after closing. Ice machine humming, streetlights buzzing. And I remember thinking: Did God just walk off without telling me?

But here’s the part I wish someone told me twenty years ago:
Most of the time, that emptiness isn’t abandonment. It’s invitation.

A strange invitation, sure. One wrapped in silence and awkward emotions. But still — an invitation to go deeper than you’ve ever gone before. Most people don’t see it because, well, silence feels scary. It feels like judgment. Like maybe you’ve been kicked off the spiritual team.

But the real secret? The one you almost never hear in church bulletins or overly-polished devotionals?

Feeling far from God is often the first sign that He’s preparing you for the next stage of your growth.

Not proof you’re failing. More like proof He’s training you.

Let me show you what I mean. It won’t be perfect or linear — but neither is the spiritual life, right?

1. God’s “Distance” Is Sometimes a Compliment (Yes, seriously)

Most people never hear this because it sounds backwards. Up is down. Down is sideways. But think about it: when a child is learning to walk, a parent steps back. Not far, just enough for the kid to wobble forward on their own.

It’s trust, not abandonment.

And trust can feel oddly like silence.

We don’t talk about this much, partly because churches today (not all, but many) get nervous when nuance replaces slogans. And partly because we’ve been conditioned to think God’s presence = goosebumps. No goosebumps = failure.

But what if the lack of feeling is actually evidence that God believes you can now follow Him without training wheels?

It simplifies everything.

Instead of spiraling — “Did I mess up? Should I repent again for the same thing I repented for yesterday?” — you get to breathe. Exhale. Remind yourself:

God’s quietness doesn’t mean He left.

It might mean He thinks you’re ready to walk.

Try this:

Whisper, “Lord, are You trusting me with silence right now?”
Don’t force spiritual fireworks. Just keep doing the small faithful things — one verse, one act of kindness, one honest prayer, even if it feels flat.
Treat the quiet like a classroom. Not a courtroom.

2. Spiritual Dryness Is Usually Growth in Disguise

You know when athletes talk about “the wall” — that horrible moment when everything burns, aches, and your body screams at you to quit? Trainers say that’s the moment right before your strength actually starts to expand.

Spiritual life has a similar wall.

Nobody puts that on Instagram.

Every major figure in Scripture hit phases of loneliness or strange emotional fog: David with his wilderness days, Elijah under the broom tree, even Jesus during His forty days. It’s basically tradition at this point.

Yet we rarely mention it because growth wrapped in discomfort looks like regression. It feels wrong.

But the truth is almost insultingly simple:

Distance often means you’re being stretched, not punished.

It’s like outgrowing shoes. Painful, but a sign of movement.

Practical steps:

Ask yourself (yes, out loud if needed): “Is this discomfort a signal that something deeper is forming?”
Identify the area being stretched — patience, humility, courage, surrender. Growth always has a target.
Instead of adding ten new spiritual habits, focus on deepening one. (A single strong root holds more weight than a dozen weak ones.)

Sometimes the feeling that everything is going wrong is actually the signal that everything is shifting upward.

3. God Didn’t Stop Speaking — Your World Got Too Loud

This one might sting a little. It did for me.

There was a week back in early November — during election coverage overload — when my sense of God faded hard. I thought something was wrong with me. But when I sat quietly after closing the restaurant one night, all I could hear was the constant traffic of my own mind. Stress. Notifications. The thousand mini-fears buzzing like mosquitoes.

God wasn’t gone.

I was just crowded.

We forget that God speaks softly. Meanwhile, modern life shouts. When your soul becomes cluttered with noise, God’s whisper doesn’t vanish — it gets buried.

This insight doesn’t get talked about because digital noise feels normal. We’ve normalized chaos. We’ve normalized never being still long enough to hear anything but our own panic.

But the fix is easier than people assume.

Try these:

Ask: “What’s the loudest voice in my soul right now?”
Give yourself 5 minutes of silence daily. Five. Not fifty.
Pick one Scripture and repeat it slowly — let it push the mental noise aside.

You’ll be shocked how quickly the sense of nearness returns when the volume of life turns down, even slightly. It’s like adjusting dial settings on an old radio.

4. You Might Be Living on Borrowed Faith Instead of Firsthand Revelation

This one’s touchy, and honestly, I’m guilty of it too. We binge sermons, podcasts, reels, devotionals. It feels spiritual. It feels productive. And those things are good — until they replace actual relationship.

Secondhand spirituality cannot sustain a firsthand walk.

People don’t talk about this much because it threatens the whole “Christian content” industry, which is booming like crazy right now. But when’s the last time God spoke to you through Scripture without someone else holding the spoon?

Sometimes the distance you feel isn’t God drifting from you — it’s you drifting into everyone else's voice.

Try this:

Read one passage of Scripture without commentary. Ask God one question: “What do You want to show me today?”
Write down the smallest insight — even if it feels unimpressive. God grows intimacy slowly.
Resist the urge to run to YouTube or TikTok for someone else’s interpretation first.

It’s like eating: sermons are seasoning. The Bible is the meal.

5. The Distance Is Often a Call to Surrender (Not to Struggle Harder)

Here’s the one truth that knocked me over earlier this year when I was half-awake at 2:13 AM:

Most people try to fight their way back to God instead of fall their way back to Him.

We try harder. We get stricter. We build new systems and punish ourselves with “I should be better by now.” But surrender is the real doorway. Not striving.

Surrender feels terrifying because it requires letting go — your timing, your expectations, your sense of control. But every time I’ve stopped trying to “fix my spiritual life” and simply said, “Lord, I’m Yours even when I feel numb,” something softens.

Why don’t people talk about this? Because surrender sounds passive. But spiritually, it’s the deepest form of strength.

Practical steps:

Ask: “What am I gripping tightest right now?”
Offer it up — piece by piece.
Replace frantic prayers with grateful ones. Gratitude realigns the heart faster than self-criticism ever could.

A Final, Messy, Hopeful Call to Action

If you feel far from God, you’re not broken. You’re not late. You’re not spiritually defective. You’re being invited into a new chapter — one where faith grows quieter, steadier, more rooted.

Distance isn’t death.

It’s doorway.

Lean into the silence.

Let the noise fall away.

Return to Scripture for yourself.

And surrender (even clumsily) what you’ve been white-knuckling.

Say yes — even if your voice shakes — and you’ll realize God never moved. You just turned your head for a moment, and He’s been beside you the whole time, waiting for your eyes to lift again.