When God Seems Distant
Coauthors Kyle Strobel and John Coe title their latest book When God Seems Distant: Surprising Ways God Deepens Our Faith and Draws Us Near (BakerBooks, 2026). Currently, Kyle Strobel directs the Institute for Spiritual Formation at the Talbot School of Theology – Biola University. While John Coe serves as a professor at the same school. First, Kyle and John stress, we have a choice to make. Let the Lord shape our lives or try to use Him to get what we want. Above all, we find immense freedom in a deeper journey with the Lord in truth. Furthermore, concern with the truth serves as an invitation into something deeper. So, uncovering the truth need not ruin your day!
Therefore, to grow in the Lord, we must recognize the ways we avoid God. Hence, even when God seems distant, desert and desolation are gifts from the Lord. Yet, when original equations of life with God fail us, we find it tempting to just replace one factor with a new one. Rather than change the equation itself. Because the Lord wants us to know His grace, mercy, and kindness in increasing degrees. However, God’s work to mature us often runs contrary to both our expectations and earlier experiences. Exactly why we fight against it. Thus, to advance in the school of abiding requires that we walk into and through our false assumptions and expectations.
Ultimately, Kyle and John point out, we need to seek the Lord wherever we find ourselves. But we must fight the desire to turn God’s guidance into a formula to follow on our own. Without needing to walk by faith. In contrast, affections serve as deeper and more profound desires in the Christian life. An abiding disposition of the soul. As a result, when God seems distant, the only possible path of faith involves walking with the Lord into our sin, pain, and brokenness. Above all, the authors underscore, we have nothing to lose in handing our life over to Jesus. But everything to lose when we refuse.
However, it’s tempting to reject the pain of maturity for the path of moralism. In addition, the authors note, all Christians find themselves tempted by moralism — the logic of the flesh. Always, it’s our temptation to do the work only God can do. Conscience, though, is not the problem. Instead, the problem centers on our tendency to take God’s gifts and use them according to the flesh. Rather than the Holy Spirit. Consequently, spiritual formation is never about tacking upgrades to an already decent person. And a massive difference exists between using God to fix your life and know that Christ is your life.
In conclusion Kyle and John emphasize, we truly flourish only when we embrace the Lord. Because no foothold exists in us. We find only shifting sand in autonomy. Jesus calls us to Himself in the truth of our neediness so that we can be filled by His love. So, the authors exhort, when God seems distant, don’t attempt to escape the desert or try to fix your life. Rather, offer yourself to the Lord and seek to walk by faith.