Does God Feel Distant? What Spiritual Dryness Reveals

Blog by the Unhurried Living Team

Spiritual dryness is not a sign that you have failed or that God has withdrawn. Alan Fadling and his guest Kyle Strobel, professor of spiritual theology at Talbot School of Theology and co-author of When God Seems Distant, explore how seasons of spiritual dryness are often the terrain where intimacy with God deepens rather than disappears. When prayer feels thin and Scripture feels quiet, something more is happening than absence.

Why Growing in Grace Feels Like Going Backward

For many Christian leaders, there is an unspoken expectation that faith should feel progressively cleaner, clearer, and more confident the longer you walk with God. Kyle Strobel calls this a misunderstanding of developmental spirituality (the reality that growing in grace involves seasons that feel like regression, not progress). Paul described believers as moving from milk to solid food in 1 Corinthians 3, but what nobody warns you about is how disorienting that transition feels from the inside.

Kyle draws on the story of Israel's Exodus as a picture of this pattern. God gathered his people out of Egypt with spectacular signs and unmistakable nearness. Then he led them into the desert. Deuteronomy 8:2 names the purpose plainly: God led Israel through the wilderness to show them what was in their hearts. That desert was not punishment; it was formation. The same pattern appears in the disciples' experience with Jesus. After Peter's great confession in Mark 8, Jesus immediately began speaking about his death, and the disciples were left bewildered, unmoored, and exposed.

Jonathan Edwards, Kyle notes, wrote near the end of his life that he believed he was a better Christian in the first two or three years after his conversion than he was decades later. What looked like spiritual advancement was actually a deeper encounter with how much he needed Jesus. Growing in grace, it turns out, is not about accumulating spiritual achievement. It is about discovering ever more clearly the depths of your need, and finding that Christ's righteousness is sufficient for every one of those depths.

The practical step here is simply this: name what you are actually experiencing in prayer today, without dressing it up. Bring the real thing, not a performance of what you imagine faith should look like.

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What Spiritual Formation Looks Like Through Dry Seasons

The conversation between Alan and Kyle turns pointedly to the ways Christian leaders try to escape spiritual dryness rather than receive what God may be doing within it. Kyle names two dominant temptations. The first is the pursuit of passion: the impulse to manufacture the emotional intensity of early faith through more exuberant worship, more activity, more effort. The second is moralism: the quiet belief that if you could just get your spiritual behavior into better shape, God would return the feelings of nearness.

Kyle is gentle but direct in naming both of these as forms of avoidance. Chasing passion mistakes an immature phase of faith for the standard. He uses the image of a couple married sixty years who decides what their marriage needs is the excitement of dating again. There is something fundamentally misread in that. Affection, unlike passion, does not burn hot and quick. It becomes the bedrock of a life. Spiritual formation through seasons of spiritual dryness is often precisely the work of moving from passion to affection.

Moralism is subtler and, Kyle suggests, more dangerous the longer someone has been a Christian. Dietrich Bonhoeffer warned that many believers who believe they are talking to God are actually talking to themselves, constructing a manageable deity who simply wants them to be good. The relief they feel when they comply is not intimacy with God; it is the satisfaction of a performance. Spiritual formation cannot happen through performance because transformation requires being truly seen, known, and received, not applauded.

The small step for today: sit with the question Kyle poses directly in the conversation. Ask yourself honestly whether you are drawing near to God or managing your image of faith.

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How Faith Struggles Become the Path to Deeper Love

The final movement of this conversation carries the weight of everything that preceded it. Alan notes that when Kyle and co-author John Co close When God Seems Distant, they land not on a technique but on a reality: we are not transformed by striving (intellectual, moral, or ministerial) but by love. Faith struggles, when received honestly, are the very place that love becomes concrete rather than theoretical.

Kyle draws on John 17:26, where Jesus prays not merely that the Father would love his disciples, but that the Father would give them the love with which he loved Jesus. This is not a sentimental request. Jesus is asking that the same love poured out between the Father and Son be internalized in his followers. Paul echoes this in Romans 5, describing the love of God poured into our hearts by the Holy Spirit. And Galatians 2:20 grounds it in the paradox that is the shape of genuine faith struggles resolved: it is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me.

Kyle describes transformation not as a mechanical process but as a soul being recharacterized in love. He invokes Jonathan Edwards' language: God enlarges his life toward us, drawing us into the very fellowship of the Trinity. Spiritual practices are not techniques for self-improvement in this frame; they are what the tradition called means of grace (ways of receiving a love already given). The invitation Alan and Kyle extend is not to try harder but to rest more fully in a love whose depths, as Kyle puts it, are unfathomable.

For Christian leaders navigating spiritual dryness in a context where they cannot always be honest about it publicly, Kyle's counsel is specific: find a spiritual director. Not someone who needs you to have answers or maintain your image, but someone trained to sit with you in the presence of God and help you find him in the middle of the mess.

The step for today: find one person you can be honest with about where you actually are with God right now, not to find answers, but simply to not navigate it alone.

What Spiritual Transformation Through Suffering Looks Like in Practice

A Place to Keep Walking

Spiritual dryness does not have to be navigated in silence or shame. What Alan Fadling and Kyle Strobel make plain in this conversation is that these seasons are part of a long tradition of honest faith, and that the Christian who names their experience openly, seeks accompaniment, and releases striving into love is not losing their faith. They are growing in grace, in the deepest, most costly, and most sustaining sense of that phrase.

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Frequently Asked Questions

Q: How do I grow in grace? A: Growing in grace is less about acquiring more spiritual knowledge and more about discovering how deeply you need what God has already given. Kyle Strobel describes it as an ever-widening awareness of your need for Jesus, grounded in the reality that grace is not a doorway you passed through once but the ongoing self-gift of God in Christ. Spiritual practices, in this frame, are means of receiving that gift rather than techniques for self-improvement.

Q: What is spiritual dryness in Christianity? A: Spiritual dryness refers to seasons when prayer feels hollow, Scripture feels quiet, and the emotional nearness of God seems to have receded. Rather than indicating failure or divine displeasure, the Christian tradition (including figures like Charles Spurgeon, Jonathan Edwards, and Richard Sibbes) recognized these seasons as normal dimensions of mature faith. They are often the terrain where God does some of his deepest formative work.

Q: Why does God feel distant sometimes? A: God can feel distant for many reasons, but Kyle Strobel points to a key dynamic rooted in developmental spirituality: as believers mature, God often withdraws the early consolations of faith not to punish but to form. Deuteronomy 8:2 describes God leading Israel through the wilderness to show them what was in their hearts. The felt distance is not evidence of absence; it is often the very place where a deeper, less feeling-dependent intimacy with God is being cultivated.

Q: How can a pastor or ministry leader navigate spiritual dryness without losing credibility? A: Kyle Strobel speaks directly to this in the episode. He acknowledges that many leaders cannot be transparent about their dryness with their congregations or elder boards, and he does not pretend otherwise. His counsel is to find a spiritual director (someone with training who does not need the leader to perform) who can sit with them in honest presence before God. He also encourages leaders to read from the tradition, which has named and normalized these seasons for centuries.

Q: Is it possible to mistake moralism for spiritual growth? A: Yes, and Kyle Strobel suggests this is one of the most common substitutes for genuine intimacy with God. When believers respond to spiritual dryness by trying harder to be good, they often create a God they can navigate rather than the God before whom they can be fully known. Dietrich Bonhoeffer warned that many Christians who believe they are speaking with God are actually speaking with themselves. True spiritual formation requires showing up in prayer as you actually are, not as you imagine a good Christian would appear.