A Prayer for When You Feel Far From God

Some weeks you pray and it feels like the words go nowhere. You read your Bible and nothing lands. Church feels like a room full of people who all seem closer to God than you are, and you can't work out when the distance opened up. You're not losing your mind, and you're probably not losing your faith either — this is one of the oldest complaints in the book, and there's a lot of Scripture written from exactly this spot.

How long, O LORD? Will you forget me forever? How long will you hide your face from me? (Psalm 13:1, ESV)

Bringing this to God

In years of ministry, this is one of the questions I hear most, and it's rarely asked with anger. It's asked quietly, almost apologetically, as if the person feels they've failed some test. They haven't. Feeling distant from God and being distant from God are not the same thing, and Scripture treats them very differently. David wrote Psalm 13 as a king who loved God and still asked, "How long will you hide your face from me?" He didn't get a vision. He didn't feel better by verse three. But by the end of the psalm he says, "I will trust in your steadfast love" — not because the feeling changed, but because he chose to keep speaking to God through the feeling rather than around it. That's the honest place to start: not pretending the silence isn't there, but bringing the silence itself to God as the content of the prayer. James 4:8 says, "Draw near to God, and he will draw near to you." That's a promise about movement, not about mood. You can draw near with dry eyes and a flat heart. The nearness God promises isn't contingent on you feeling anything first. If this distance has gone on for months, alongside a heaviness that won't lift, low motivation, or numbness in most areas of your life — not just the spiritual ones — please also talk to your GP or a counsellor. Depression can mimic and deepen spiritual dryness, and Scripture was never meant to replace medical care. A pastor can sit with you in this; a pastor cannot diagnose you. What I can tell you from Scripture is that lament is a legitimate form of prayer. You are allowed to tell God it feels like He's not there.

The prayer

Lord, I don't know how to start this except to say it plainly: I feel far from You, and I don't like admitting that.

I've prayed and it's felt like nothing was on the other end. I've opened my Bible and the words have sat flat on the page. I've sat in church and felt like a stranger. I don't know if this is You being quiet, or me being distracted, or something else entirely — grief, or tiredness, or just a long season with no light in it. I'm not asking You to explain it right now. I'm asking You to hear it.

David asked You, "How long will you hide your face from me?" I'm asking the same thing tonight. I'm not trying to be dramatic. I just want to know You haven't forgotten me, even if I can't feel You near.

You said that You are near to the brokenhearted. I don't always feel brokenhearted — sometimes I just feel numb — but if there's a broken part of me under the numbness, meet it there. I don't need a feeling right now. I need to know it's true that You're still with me whether I can sense it or not.

Help me keep showing up — in prayer, in Your word, in the small ordinary places — even when it feels like nothing is happening. Let that be enough for tonight: that I kept talking to You, even into what felt like silence.

In Jesus' name, Amen.

When you have no strength for more

Lord, I can't feel You right now, but I'm still here, still asking You to be near. Don't let this silence be the whole story. Amen.

Verses to sit with

How long, O LORD? Will you forget me forever? How long will you hide your face from me?

Psalm 13:1

This is the opening line of a psalm David wrote and God kept in Scripture on purpose. Nobody edited out the desperation. If this kind of honesty made it into the Bible, it's not a failure of faith to feel it — it may be one of the more faithful things you can bring to God, because at least you're still bringing it to Him and not somewhere else.

The LORD is near to the brokenhearted and saves the crushed in spirit.

Psalm 34:18

Notice the direction of this promise: nearness to the brokenhearted, not to the composed or the confident. If you're reading this on a hard night, this verse isn't for someone else's grief. It's specifically pointed at the state you're in right now.

Draw near to God, and he will draw near to you.

James 4:8

This is written as a promise, not a suggestion with conditions attached to your emotional state. Drawing near doesn't require feeling ready. It can look like five honest sentences prayed with your eyes shut and your heart unconvinced. That still counts.

Where shall I go from your Spirit? Or where shall I flee from your presence? If I ascend to heaven, you are there! If I make my bed in Sheol, you are there!

Psalm 139:7-8

This psalm was written by someone who wasn't trying to feel close to God — he was almost testing whether he could escape God's presence, and finding he couldn't. Your sense of distance is real, but according to this, it isn't the whole truth about where God actually is.

Worth writing down

  • When did this feeling of distance start — was there a specific week, loss, or change, or has it built up slowly without a clear beginning?
  • Am I confusing 'I don't feel God' with 'I have stopped believing God is there'? Are those actually the same thing for me right now?
  • What has prayer or Bible reading usually looked like for me when things were going well — and what would it look like to do a smaller, honest version of that this week?
  • Is there anything alongside this spiritual dryness — low mood, exhaustion, grief, isolation — that might need more than prayer, like a conversation with a doctor or counsellor?
A Prayer for When You Feel Far From God
Photo by Emma Miertschin on Pexels

If you want to go further

The Valley of Vision: A Collection of Puritan Prayers & Devotions edited by Arthur Bennett

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Read next, from the author

The Blood of the Twelve

Eleven of the twelve men who walked with Jesus died for refusing to say He stayed dead. This book follows what happened to each of them after the Gospels end — what the earliest sources record, what is tradition, and where the two part company. Written by Pastor Aguinaldo Santos, available on Kindle.

About the author

Written by Aguinaldo Santos, a Brazilian believer living in the United Kingdom. He writes Daily Faith Walk in the evenings, mostly about the things he is working through himself. Questions or a prayer request? Get in touch.

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