When God Feels Distant

0:00:00 – (Steve Gray): Hey, have you ever been at the point where it’s hard to find God? Just where to go? Why is it so difficult? It’s like Elvis, you know, they say Elvis has left the building. Now you go to church and say, I think God’s left the building. Well, I’m going to answer that for you and explain the whole thing, why you feel that way. On the next More Faith, More Life podcast.

0:00:16 – (Steve Gray): We’re made for more than the status quo. I’m Pastor Steve Gray, and this is the More Faith, More Life podcast. This podcast is for Christians with an ambitious heart who want to be more for their family, do more with their career, and see more of God’s promises in their life. I’ve spent many years as a worship artist, minister, nonprofit leader, bold truth speaker, and most importantly, father and spouse. When I was in my early 40s, I was craving more.

0:00:44 – (Steve Gray): More from God and more from life. I’d done everything I was supposed to do. My life was good, but it wasn’t good enough. So I spent the following years diving into the word of God and searching for the biblical principles that would bring me closer to God and help my purpose and life flourish. That’s what I want to share with you. In every episode, you’ll get practical tools based on real life experiences that you can put into action to redefine your faith and ultimately your life.

0:01:16 – (Steve Gray): So if you’re ready to do more, subscribe to More Faith, More Life and hear an unfiltered biblical truth every week. It’s time to be and experience more.

0:01:27 – (Steve Gray): Hello everyone, and welcome to another More Faith, More Life podcast. Your voice of revival. That’s what I have been part of, revivals, true ones, extended ones, everyday ones, for years that they lasted three, three and a half years. So I’ve been in it a lot. And so I want to continue to add the voice of revival to the podcast of More Faith, More Life, which works too. More Faith is going to produce more life in you. So I really believe in walking by faith.

0:01:59 – (Steve Gray): It’s funny how in my own personal life I. And I wonder if it was this way in the Bible, folks. You know, Bible, our Bible heroes that we read now about them and we, we see Abraham walked by faith and all the people. And you read Hebrews chapter 11 and it talks about and by faith and by faith and by faith. And it names all these people. I wonder if while it’s happening, they’re saying, man, am I walking by faith.

0:02:29 – (Steve Gray): I have a feeling that it’s, it doesn’t work that way. It’s only then, as you do it, then other people look at you and say, you. You really have faith. You walk by faith and you go, I do. Well, I guess I do. I guess I do. Just, you know, you just don’t think about yourself like that. That’d be like Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John walking around trying to write the Bible at the same time saying, you know, I’m someday I’m going to be published.

0:02:57 – (Steve Gray): You know, you don’t feel, you know, I don’t think they felt like that they were in the mix of the greatest time in history, up to that time, at least, and. And maybe the resurrection, the greatest time. So, anyway, we want to get more faith, more life. It’ll produce it. But we also want to understand that we are in a season of God preparing on purpose, and we need it for a greater move of the spirit. Whether it’s traditional historical revivals, even the ones I was in, that went four days a week and five days a week, packed out from all over the world. They came for three and a half years.

0:03:38 – (Steve Gray): Both of them were three and a half years. One in the country, one in the city. Okay, but it might not be like that even at my church, maybe somebody else’s church. But it just could be that we experience a spiritual renaissance, a spiritual revival of the acceptance of God and God’s Word and holiness and how we need to live. And it begins to sweep, not because we’re pounding it into people, but just holiness or hunger for God just begins to sweep from coast to coast and up and down through our country. And all of a sudden we’re experiencing a revival where people are hungry for God and you can talk about God. And we’re seeing bits and pieces of that now, right?

0:04:19 – (Steve Gray): Yes, we’re seeing bits and pieces. So that means it’s a good time for you to get on board and grab hold and let me help you hear experiences. Real live. Real live people experiences in real revivals, but also what God is doing to prepare us for revival. All right, so I want to talk to you today about a danger that we have, and that is judgment. Because not only do we have bits and pieces and rumblings, that kind of a revival flavor is starting to creep into our culture. It is. You’re starting to hear politicians pray, say the name of Jesus, tell that they believe, you know, and other people. And even there’s kind of a upsurge in Hollywood right now, people trying to speak out and saying, you know, it’s time that we get to have our speech and not be blackballed. Because we want to be conservative, we want to be a believer, we want to say we believe in Jesus or whatever.

0:05:15 – (Steve Gray): So it’s happening. But on the other hand, there is the consequence of another group that are very anti Jew, anti-Christian, anti-word of God, anti-family, you know what I’m talking about? And they’re very vocal. And so what we’re in the. We’re in the middle of this kind of argument between. Feels like an argument, doesn’t it? And so I want to talk to you a minute about judgment, because most people who are nominal, just regular church folks, only know of one judgment.

0:05:46 – (Steve Gray): And that’s basically the end time, the last judgment, right? You know, the last judgment. And people be. They think people go to heaven, other people go to hell, but it’s not quite like that. But that’s. We don’t need to discuss that now. But the end time, the very last judgment, where we’ll all be judged and the earth will be judged. But that’s not true. There are judgments that happen a lot through history.

0:06:12 – (Steve Gray): In fact, if you read scripture and they talked about the return of Jesus, one of them was, Jesus returned, not visibly, but he came back in judgment. Remember when he was in the temple and he turned over the tables and, you know, and made a whip and everything and said, my house shall be a house of prayer. He was announcing a judgment. It wasn’t the judgment. He was announcing a judgment, but God wasn’t going to wait till the last day of the world, of this world as it is, to judge it.

0:06:47 – (Steve Gray): He’s saying one’s coming. So in 70 AD and thereabouts too, judgment came. Jesus came in judgment. Just like he came into the temple acting out judgment, he would now come and really pursue judgment. Okay? So there are many ways that judgment comes. And the church traditionally only teaches that last one. Or maybe, you know, make sure you don’t get judged after you die because you got to live good or else, you know, you’ll meet before Jesus or whatever and be judged.

0:07:20 – (Steve Gray): Okay? So I want you to understand that judgments come in increments or at times. And so there’s a judgment that, if I remember, I think in the 80s particularly, there were prophecies and stuff that God was going to judge San Francisco and California was going to fall into the sea. Okay, well, that would be catastrophic, right? Or remember when the hurricane hit, hit New Orleans some years ago, Remember that?

0:07:51 – (Steve Gray): And some preachers and some Christians said, see, judgment hit New Orleans, you know, okay, Judgments don’t always come in catastrophe. That’s why we miss them. And that’s why a lot of times catastrophes come. And it’s not really judgment. Nashville had a big ice storm and some people in Nashville had to go a long time, week or more or whatever without electricity. But are we going to say God judged Nashville because they got hit with an ice storm? I don’t think so.

0:08:22 – (Steve Gray): But what could happen to Nashville or San Francisco, California, New York, or whatever any place is that God brings another kind of judgment that we don’t, that we miss. And one judgment that is more dangerous than a catastrophe, we can clean up after a catastrophe. One that is more dangerous than a catastrophe is when God withdraws. He withdraws himself, he becomes distant, okay? And so it’s God stepping back, okay? God steps back and it’s a judgment. It’s a withdrawal, pullback, judgment. And he allows. Then when that happens, it’s very deceptive if you’re not on top of what God’s doing.

0:09:06 – (Steve Gray): You can deceive yourself with this. God draws back. So now you go to church maybe, or people go to church and, and they sing songs and they go through the motions and they have, you know, they listen to the sermon, but they don’t feel God and they don’t realize what, you know, God has left the building, so to speak. And they don’t realize judgment has come on that church or judgment has come on entire denominations. There were denominations in the 18, late 1800, 1800s from Civil War on that were experiencing great moves of revival and fire and holiness of God and that. That changed the nation and changed the atmosphere of our country.

0:09:49 – (Steve Gray): That then they, they became resistant and, and all of a sudden stopped listening to God and God withdrew from them and they began to diminish and diminish and diminish and they still are diminishing to this day, but it’s still going on. So it’s when God steps back, when he does now, you’re not really feeling him, okay, if I can use the word feel, noticing, feeling, conviction, excitement or whatever, it’s just kind of lazy, nominal Christianity. Okay?

0:10:21 – (Steve Gray): Now the deception in that is, well, if I’m not feeling anything really, or noticing anything about God, it’s just church or just Bible study at home or my prayer life or whatever. What happens is you feel like that God is not saying anything or, or concerned about anything, but he still is. It’s all of a sudden God steps back and it takes the restraints off of us. We don’t feel convicted, we don’t feel guilt. We don’t feel shame. We don’t feel conviction anymore. We can watch something, see something, do something, say something.

0:10:59 – (Steve Gray): Nothing fell. You know, the sky didn’t fall on me and fire didn’t come down. Yes, it’s okay, but it’s actually the consequence of what you’re doing has left. There’s no consequence to it. So you can say things in your marriage or do things or be dishonest or steal something, or just be a creep. You know you’re Christian, a creepy Christian, you know, you’re just a Christian, but nobody wants to be friends with you because you’re just kind of creepy and you’re just kind of harsh or whatever.

0:11:26 – (Steve Gray): Well, okay, you do it and you do it and you do it and you really know. This is not really what a believer, how a believer should act. But nothing happens. You don’t hear anything, you don’t feel anything. So all of a sudden you get like, must be okay because there’s no consequence. But the problem is when we come to so much resistance, when God meets resistance from us, God meets resistance, then he gives way to our insistence.

0:11:59 – (Steve Gray): That’s a good phrase to write down or remember the rest of your life. When he continues to meet our resistance, he gives in to our insistence. So in the book of, I think it’s Romans or whatever, first chapter, where he says God gave them over to the lust that they had and what they wanted. You know, he was speaking and they knew the Creator, they knew God as the Creator. But then he gave way, he gave in to their insistence that they’re going to live like they want, they’re going to worship created things or whatever. Or now we, you know, we insist, we’re going to love money, we’re going to live for ourselves, we’re still going to go to church, we’re still going to believe in God. I still believe in Jesus.

0:12:38 – (Steve Gray): I still believe that if I were to die today, I would go to heaven. But there’s, there’s not that where God is, is is trying to move by the power of Holy Spirit on your life. And you’re resisting. You’re resisting. I remember reading not too long ago in the Book of Acts, you know, Stephen was stoned. You know, they stoned and killed him. And before they liked everything he said. But then he rose up and he said this about them. You stiff necked, hard necked, stiff necked people.

0:13:06 – (Steve Gray): You always resist the Holy Spirit. There are people like that. There are people. It’s not that they, sometimes, it’s not that they go for it with all their might. And then they mess up and they resist a little and they go a little haywire. And then they come back and say, oh, what was wrong with me? I want to get back on track. And no, there are people, there are pastors, there are churches. There are denominations that continually resist the Holy Spirit, the direction God’s trying to take a church. And many of them in our day have gone haywire, completely the opposite of Scripture, and continue to be that denomination.

0:13:43 – (Steve Gray): So it’s with withdrawal, when God withdraws and it’s hard to recognize because there’s no collapse, there’s no calamity, there’s no sign. It’s like, okay, didn’t lose my job. In fact, you know, I resist God. I don’t want to really serve him that much. Maybe I don’t want to go to church. I don’t want to be generous. I don’t want to be a tither, for sure, you know, and all this just little things that are resisted. And you always do it.

0:14:15 – (Steve Gray): Or, you know, somebody, maybe you’re married to somebody that does. But there’s a constant resistance that you’re only going to go nominal, middle of the road, quiet, comfortable religion, and that’s it. And so God is trying to move you ahead to a greater life, a greater honor for Him, a greater output for you of the spirit of God. And you just resist, resist, resist. And it’s hard to recognize because you go, well, I didn’t lose my job.

0:14:42 – (Steve Gray): In fact, I got a raise this year. Must be okay with God. He blessed me. But the blessing was. The blessing was not the raise. Well, it could be a blessing, but that’s not what God was doing. No, God was working on your resistance and has withdrawn farther away from you. So he becomes less noticed. You hear him less if you ever heard him at all. You can’t hear God. You don’t feel God. You don’t have a hunger for God. You don’t want to seek God. You want to seek yourself. You want to serve yourself.

0:15:15 – (Steve Gray): Okay. And you think it’s okay because you think, well, I haven’t. There’s no judgment. And not realizing that the judgment is, where’s God? Or as I said, God has left the building. All right, where’s God? You go to church and there’s never a God event, you know, or occasionally you’ll have a guest speaker, maybe a guest evangelist, or a famous person will come to your church and speak. And everybody gets so excited for a week.

0:15:42 – (Steve Gray): And then everybody goes back to Nominal middle of the road, sitting on the fence, Broadway, not narrow way Christianity. And so this is the deception. This is so strange, but easy to understand. Okay, When God withdraws through judgment and he pulls himself back because he finally gives to what you insist on, and that’s a selfish, self-centered, self-serving life and you’re insisting upon it, he. Okay, go ahead.

0:16:18 – (Steve Gray): God did that with Israel. They got to where God wanted to be their king. Okay, he wanted to be the king. And. But they insisted and insisted and resisted God and insisted, we want to be like other nations, we want to have a king. So God says, all right, you get a king. I don’t recommend it, but if you’re insistent, I’ll give you a king. So he gave in to their insistence, to going the wrong way, to making a poor decision because God wanted to be king. Okay, so that’s another one.

0:16:47 – (Steve Gray): So here’s what happens then. So when we, we resist and then we don’t get a consequence and we don’t feel convicted, we don’t feel bad. I’ll just say that I don’t like the word shame. It’s a funny. This is funny for me because how many songs. I don’t know, Shame must rhyme with a lot of words because. But anyway, there’s a whole lot of Christian worship songs and songs that say, and he forgave me of my guilt and shame.

0:17:19 – (Steve Gray): And I’m thinking, really, I never, I, I can’t remember when I really saw that many. Hardly anybody that was really living in shame because of a God thing. They might live in shame because they, you know, they thought they were going to be married to this person forever and it fell apart and they got divorced. Now they’re, they’re kind of shamed that they’re divorced. You know, maybe they married twice and they got divorced and now they’re really ashamed.

0:17:43 – (Steve Gray): But no shame towards God. He forgave me my guilt and shame of how I lived in his presence. So recklessly, so stupidly so nominally so that. And really, you don’t see that many people with that much guilt. There’s a lot about guilt and shame in Christian songs. But we sing it. But we. You don’t. I don’t really see. I’ll just say it that way. And so what happens is when God withdraws, it’s deceptive because it feels like freedom.

0:18:11 – (Steve Gray): I don’t feel bad, I don’t feel guilt, I don’t feel bad. I don’t feel like, hey, I really need to repent, I need to forgive people. I Hold grudge, grudges. I lose my temper, and I need to fix that. Well, you do. You lose your temper, you hold grudges. You have unforgiveness in your heart. Maybe even right now. You’re, you’re, you’re, you know, you have people you’re holding things against and you’re offended by other people and all that, and you do it and nothing happens.

0:18:39 – (Steve Gray): So it feels like freedom. I guess I can get. I guess I can do it. I guess it’s okay to do it. And it’s not okay, because the reason you feel okay is because God’s so far away. And the Holy Spirit, which is the. Is the person of God that convicts us of sin, is stop acting. He stopped convicting. That’s why you feel freedom, not judgment. So at the same time, though, eventually it creeps into you feel like, you know, something’s what’s missing in my life, and that’s when you can start the journey back.

0:19:13 – (Steve Gray): What’s missing in my life. What’s missing is the presence of God, the voice of God, the love of God, the thoughts toward God, the desire for God, the wanting to serve God, the wanting to have Jesus active in your life. And so you have to begin to say, you know what? I don’t like living with no restraints. I don’t like living without any convictions. I don’t like living like whatever’s right for me, whatever’s right in your heart. Do whatever you feel, you know, in your heart. When I was in high school, the favorite phrase was, you can you get to do whatever you want, whatever makes you feel good, do it as long as it doesn’t hurt anybody else. Maybe that’s still true today, you know, whatever’s okay as long as it doesn’t hurt anybody else.

0:20:01 – (Steve Gray): But then you grow up and you realize that doesn’t work. Because when I serve myself constantly and do what only I think is right, what feels good to me, I hurt other people. I do hurt people. If you’re married now, you’re going to hurt your wife or husband. If you got children, they’re going to end up getting hurt. If you have that philosophy, whatever feels right to me as long as I don’t hurt anybody else. And I think it’s okay, you’re going to hurt other people. So it’s not going to be okay.

0:20:26 – (Steve Gray): And so this life with no restraint, no guidance, no feeling of the judgments of God, are saying, that’s not good, Steve. That is not good, Pastor Steve. That is not good. You need to go this way do that. And you have no restraints. You don’t feel that. You don’t hear that. You don’t sense that. You all of a sudden go like, I don’t like this. I don’t like feeling like I’m just drifting with nothing.

0:20:50 – (Steve Gray): No anchor. I need an anchor on my soul. I need something to drag the bottom of the pit to slow me down, to give me some good common sense and some good spiritual sense. So what happens then when we. We lose that restraint? God withdraws himself. Okay? We lose clarity. Things become unclear, and then things do happen because life just happens. It’s not that God’s striking you, and that’s why maybe God struck me and that’s why.

0:21:24 – (Steve Gray): That’s why I got a divorce or that’s why I lost my job. No, he’s withdrawn. But life still happens. You could still lose your job, you know, and then you lose your job and you don’t know why. And now you’re really angry. Angry because you have no idea. Why did I lose my job? I didn’t do anything wrong. I didn’t. But, you know, you be. You lost something, you know, There was a reason. There’s a reason.

0:21:47 – (Steve Gray): Because we need good workers today. If you were an excellent worker, you wouldn’t lose your job. Unless. Unless they just go bankrupt and run out of money or something. But if it’s personal, everybody else has still got a job, but you don’t. There’s a reason. And you. You lose clarity. I don’t know why I did. I. I have no idea why I thought I was doing everything great. So when God withdraws, we lose our wisdom, we lose clarity. We stop seeing clearly right. And now there’s barely any right from wrong.

0:22:16 – (Steve Gray): Everything’s negotiable. We see that in our country today, don’t we? Where we have not just people in the streets. We’ve got politicians and mayors and governors that are saying, well, I don’t care what the law says, I’m not going to do it. I don’t care if this is what’s illegal’s happening here. My state’s not going to do it. We’re not going to arrest them or we’re not going to follow. So all of a sudden, right and wrong means God’s withdrawn. If God was on the scene, you know right from wrong. If God’s on the scene, you want people to obey laws. You want.

0:22:49 – (Steve Gray): You want to have the safety of laws. Okay, okay. But anyway. And all of a sudden, the boundaries blur. Where’s the. There’s no boundaries. You know, we’re all talking soft. There’s no. Especially in church. Now all of a sudden you go to church and you go to church and you go to church and there’s no mention of boundaries. It’s all soft speech about poor you and God loves you and it’s not your fault.

0:23:16 – (Steve Gray): Just keep trying, keep praying, keep trying, keep giving. But you know, okay, I’m joking on that one. But keep trying, keep going, try again. Don’t give up on God. God still loves you. He’s going to work it out. You know, the exaggerated one is that is when they’ll preach in. But your blessing is just around the corner. And I’ve had people turn a lot of corners and never find the blessing because they.

0:23:41 – (Steve Gray): The blessing around the corner. It happens around the corner because you change something. On this side of the corner, something changed. And so next thing you know, your conscience gives way and you’re drifted from God. And now you’re giving in to your personal appetites, right to where now you used to just want to be faithful to your wife or you wanted to be a good dad, and that’s what your hope in life. And now you’re drifting. You’re not spending time with kids. You just want to watch tv.

0:24:11 – (Steve Gray): You just want to entertain yourself with sports. You’re starting to, you know, notice other women more now, and you’re starting to want them to get attention from women. We occasionally, in our church, we’ve had men show up and all they do is catch women, try to talk to the women after, you know, after the service. You got to slow them down. So all of a sudden now you’ve given way to your appetites and you don’t know how to quit. You got bad habits.

0:24:37 – (Steve Gray): You’re whatever that is. We don’t need to. You just got some bad stuff going on. And now you don’t know how to give free. Okay? And. And now you give way where you would have been convicted and said, I got to make some changes. When conviction stops, you give way to an explanation. Excuse me. Now you’re explaining yourself. Now you’re explaining why you’re that way. You’re explaining why it’s not your fault. You’re explaining how you got to be that person.

0:25:07 – (Steve Gray): So that’s what happens. There is a judgment where God withdraws and backs away. And it feels like freedom. But we need to get back to the living God and to the presence of God. And if you start moving that direction, you hear this message today and understand that not all judgments cause catastrophe. Some just cause silence. Well, if you got something out of this, you can get plenty more like this at https://stevegrayministries.com.There’s books, there’s sermons, there’s all kinds of teaching. There’s all, all the podcasts and everything like that and you can get those there.

0:25:42 – (Steve Gray): You can also decide to give a donation. As you say, I want to see this thing keep going. If you do, it’d be great. If you don’t, we’ll probably still keep going. I’m not going to be they’re going to take us off the air. You know, excuse me, but we’re going to keep going. But for your benefit, you need to invest in something that’s changing lives and that’s really making sense in a country in our nation that has a lot of nonsense, right?

0:26:09 – (Steve Gray): So tell your friends about it, subscribe and until next time, bye-bye.