As Christians, we will all have times
where God feels absent from us. I have found that many times in my life, and
I’m sure every Christian you ever meet will have too. The thing that we can
often think is that we are useless; and we wish we could be more like some of
the Bible characters who led great Christian lives. But God does not feel that
way about us; he doesn’t think we are bad because of it. It is part of being a
Christian.
The biggest myth about it all is the
thought that we “Just aren’t good Christians.” That isn’t true though, the
greatest Bible characters all had times when they felt distant from God, and
they will never be considered bad Christians. David, who was called “A man
after God’s own heart”, wrote a whole Psalm expressing how he felt distant from
God (Psalm 42). Solomon, who was the wisest and richest man in history, had
times where he went away from God. (That isn’t an excuse for us to stop
following God, though!) Paul obviously had times where he didn’t just feel
distant from God, he hated him; yet God forgave him and he went on to write
half the New Testament. And if that doesn’t convince you that even the greatest
Christians had their own struggles with feeling far from God, remember that
Jesus himself felt like God had left him in the Garden of Gethsemane. If God’s
own son temporarily felt like he didn’t care about him, then I think we can
safely say that, however distant we feel from God, we are not worthless because
of it!