How to Get Closer to God When You Feel Distant: Bible Verses and Ways to Pray

Psalm 13, for when God's face seems hidden

The passage Bible Nudge offers for waiting is Psalm 13:1-2:

How long, Yahweh? Will you forget me forever? How long will you hide your face from me? How long shall I take counsel in my soul, having sorrow in my heart every day? How long shall my enemy triumph over me?

A short prayer of complaint, it opens with questions about delay and about God seeming hidden, and turns toward trust only later, in verse 5: "But I trust in your loving kindness." Somebody who felt God's face was hidden said so to God, and the words were kept in Scripture. You may say them the same way tonight. Waiting on God's timing reads the psalm for a long wait.

Something to do with it: read verse 1 aloud once, as it stands. Then answer the psalm's question in a line: "What have you been waiting for longer than you expected?" If you tried to pray earlier and stopped, praying the psalm's own words counts as praying.

Reading slowly: lectio divina and the Examen

If you have no words for prayer tonight, you can let a passage supply them. Lectio divina, Latin for “divine reading,” is a way Christians have long read Scripture slowly. A medieval monk, Guigo II, named its four stages: reading, meditation, prayer and contemplation. Pope Benedict XVI, in Verbum Domini (2010, paragraph 87), puts them as questions: reading asks “what does the biblical text say in itself?”, meditation asks what it says to us, and prayer asks “what do we say to the Lord in response to his word?”

Here is a simple way to follow those four stages tonight. Take a short passage; Psalm 143:5-8 is a good one, because the person praying thirsts for God in a dry place: “I spread out my hands to you. My soul thirsts for you, like a parched land.” Read it aloud once, slowly. Read it again and stay on the line that catches. Think about what it meant for the person who prayed it. Then say one sentence to God about where you are, in your own words, and stay quiet for a minute. The Catholic Catechism (2705-2708) presents lectio divina as a form of meditation and says plainly, “The required attentiveness is difficult to sustain,” so a wandering mind is expected, and you can simply return to the line.

The Examen comes from Ignatius of Loyola. Ignatian Spirituality describes it as a prayerful review of the day, including noticing where you experienced consolation and where you experienced desolation. If you want to try it, look back over today and name the moments that felt closest to settled and the moments that felt emptiest, then say them to God as they were. The page’s section on the dark night of the soul says more about what Ignatius meant by those two words.

Short prayers, silence and your own words

When even a passage feels like too much, several traditions keep prayer very small. Each tradition describes its own way.

In the Orthodox tradition, the Jesus Prayer is printed as: “Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me, a sinner.” The Orthodox Church in America connects it with continual prayer, repentance and attention to the presence of Christ, with humility and perseverance. Those Orthodox writings treat it as prayer rather than a technique for producing visions or emotional certainty. It can be said on a walk, or at a sink, in one breath.

Contemplative Outreach describes Centering Prayer as “a receptive method of silent prayer that prepares us to receive the gift of contemplative prayer.” Its method uses a sacred word, a single chosen word, as a symbol of consent to God’s presence and action. When thoughts arrive, you return to the word without judging them.

Quakers wait in silence together. Britain Yearly Meeting’s Quaker Faith and Practice says people may find “answers from yourself or from God” there, and adds, “Don’t feel restricted by the silence, it is there to set you free from the pressures of life.” The practice waits for inward guidance and leaves room for a meeting in which nothing in particular is felt or said.

In Jewish practice, the Breslov tradition teaches hitbodedut, speaking with God privately, directly and in your own language. Teachings gathered under Rebbe Nachman of Breslov connect it with solitary conversation, confession, gratitude and personal expression. That fits the hidden-face passages below, where the people who felt God’s face was hidden spoke to God anyway. If you find silence harder than speech, this is a form of prayer with no script to get right.

"Hide your face" runs through the Bible

The settings differ, which helps if you are afraid the distance is a verdict. In Psalm 27:9 one person prays, "Don’t hide your face from me." In Psalm 44:24 a whole community asks, "Why do you hide your face, and forget our affliction and our oppression?" In Psalm 102:2 an afflicted person prays, "Don’t hide your face from me in the day of my distress." Isaiah 8:17 says, "I will wait for Yahweh, who hides his face from the house of Jacob, and I will look for him." These four give no reason, and each is said to God.

Two passages give one. In Deuteronomy 31:16-18 Yahweh tells Moses the people will have "turned to other gods," and says, "I will hide my face from them." Micah 3:4 addresses rulers who "made their deeds evil." Jewish tradition calls this hester panim, "the hiding of the face"; the Encyclopaedia Judaica ties it to Deuteronomy 31.

Psalms 42 and 43, from somebody who used to feel close

"As the deer pants for the water brooks, so my soul pants after you, God. My soul thirsts for God, for the living God." The speaker remembers "how I used to go with the crowd, and led them to God’s house, with the voice of joy and praise" (42:4), and now prays from "the land of the Jordan, the heights of Hermon" (42:6), far from the temple. At 42:5, 42:11 and 43:5 the refrain returns: "Why are you in despair, my soul? Why are you disturbed within me? Hope in God!" Matthew Henry and the Catholic NABRE notes both read Psalm 43 as continuing Psalm 42.

The memory of closeness, the distance and the hope sit in one prayer from one person, and the refrain is something you can say to your own soul, in your own voice. Grief that comes back months later reads 42:9-11 for grief.

"Why are you so far?" Words Jesus prayed

Psalm 22:1 reads, "My God, my God, why have you forsaken me? Why are you so far from helping me, and from the words of my groaning?" Verse 11 asks, "Don’t be far from me, for trouble is near." In Mark 15, at the ninth hour, Jesus cries "Eloi, Eloi, lama sabachthani?" Matthew Henry, Reformed, calls the words an expression of "the depth of his suffering"; Cornelius a Lapide, Catholic, says Christ quoted the psalm in agony and to point to the whole psalm's movement. The words "so far" were prayed by David and by Jesus, and you can pray them too. What the Bible says about loneliness reads it for loneliness.

Is this the dark night of the soul?

John of the Cross, a Catholic Carmelite, in The Dark Night (Book I, chapter 9), calls one stage "this night and purgation of sense," gives "three principal signs," and separates it from "indisposition or melancholy humour, which oftentimes makes it impossible for the soul to take pleasure in anything." Ignatius of Loyola's Spiritual Exercises call it "desolation," "darkness of soul, turmoil of spirit," a person "sad and separated, as it were, from his Creator and Lord" (317), and rule 322 gives three causes: being "tepid, lazy or negligent," a trial, and learning that consolation is a gift.

The Catholic Catechism says, "Another difficulty, especially for those who sincerely want to pray, is dryness" (2731). The Reformed Westminster Confession says assurance may be "shaken, diminished, and intermitted," naming a particular sin and a temptation among the causes, and also "God’s withdrawing the light of his countenance, and suffering even such as fear him to walk in darkness and to have no light" (18.4). Fr Stephen Freeman, for the Orthodox Church in America, calls "the absence of any feeling" a common feature of prayer. Mother Teresa's letters, in Come Be My Light (2007), describe decades of interior darkness.

Each lists more than one cause, weighted differently. John of the Cross himself sets the dark night apart from melancholy, which is why the question of depression goes to a doctor, below.

The still small voice, and what to do if it stays quiet

Elijah’s story at Mount Horeb is the best-known place where Scripture speaks of a quiet voice. In 1 Kings 19:11-13, Yahweh passes by Elijah in a great wind, then an earthquake, then a fire: “Yahweh was not in the wind,” “Yahweh was not in the earthquake,” and “Yahweh was not in the fire.” Then: “After the fire, there was a still small voice.” The Hebrew phrase, qol demamah daqqah, can be read literally as “sound of a thin silence.” When Elijah hears it, he wraps his face in his cloak and stands at the cave entrance, and the voice asks the question it asked before, “What are you doing here, Elijah?”

Commentators read the scene differently. Matthew Henry takes the quiet voice as God’s effective word to Elijah after the dramatic signs, followed by renewed work, and Reformed commentary generally reads the scene as Elijah being sent back to his work. Rashi and Radak, on Sefaria, read the sequence as God’s presence not being identified with the wind, quake or fire, with the quiet sound as the point where Elijah responds. What the story does show is a man in a cave being asked a plain question and given room to answer it twice.

If it stays quiet, the traditions above say a few things worth knowing:

• The Catholic Catechism (2726-2728) names dryness, distraction and discouragement among the difficulties of prayer, and treats them as difficulties rather than as proof of failure, in its section on objections and difficulties in prayer.
• Orthodox guidance points toward patience, humility, short prayer and counsel from an experienced spiritual father, and cautions against chasing extraordinary experiences, as the Orthodox Church in America describes.
• Ignatian guidance allows that a person may keep up their usual practice while in desolation, and advises against making major changes then, according to Ignatian Spirituality.
• Quaker waiting leaves open that nothing particular will be felt or spoken.

Some traditions say outright that nothing needs to be forced. You can also tell a pastor, priest, rabbi or spiritual director how long it has been, and ask what they have seen. If everything has gone flat and not only prayer, the section further down on a doctor is the place to go first.

Two verses people send, in their chapters

Isaiah 59:2 reads, "your iniquities have separated you and your God, and your sins have hidden his face from you." The prophet addresses the whole people about bloodshed, lies and injustice, in a chapter that moves to their confession, "We look for light, but see darkness" (verse 9), and ends with "A Redeemer will come to Zion" (verse 20). Matthew Henry reads it as the nation's sins blocking its prayer, and the Catholic Haydock commentary as the people's sins.

James 4:8, "Draw near to God, and he will draw near to you," is written to a community quarrelling and coveting, whom James calls "double-minded." Beside them sit Acts 17:27, where Paul tells the Athenians God "is not far from each one of us," and Psalm 145:18, "Yahweh is near to all those who call on him." Bible verses for guilt and shame is for anyone who knows what they did and wants to come back.

If you drifted and wonder whether you can come back

One person wrote on Reddit's r/Christian, "I want to get closer to God again; I feel distant from Him and it makes me feel guilty but I don't have long-term consistency." Another, in an r/Christianity post on Reddit, wrote, "I feel like a moron for reaching out to Him because I always wait until I’m rock bottom to even consistently reach out."

In a story Jesus told Pharisees and scribes, a son comes home, and "while he was still far off, his father saw him, and was moved with compassion, and ran, and fell on his neck, and kissed him" (Luke 15:20). What the Bible says about shame reads the parable. Hebrews 10:22, "let’s draw near with a true heart in fullness of faith," is written to people told they have "boldness to enter" (verse 19).

If you can name when it started, some pages stay with that: a prayer that went unanswered (when the answer is no or nothing), a death (grief and healing), leaving a church behind (moving to a new place), or a new baby and no sleep (overwhelmed moms).

Researchers have measured this

Julie Exline and colleagues, in Psychology of Religion and Spirituality (2014), list a "divine" struggle, strain in the relationship with God, among six kinds of religious and spiritual struggle, measured in college and community samples, and report earlier data that "when people admitted to being angry at God, about half received stigmatizing responses from friends and family." Richard Beck and Angie McDonald's Attachment to God Inventory (2004) measures how anxious or avoidant people feel toward God. If you describe this to a pastor, you are describing something known.

Questions people ask

What do I do when it feels like God is distant? Start small and say it to God as it is. Psalm 13, Psalm 143 and Psalm 63 (“I will earnestly seek you. My soul thirsts for you,” Psalm 63:1) are prayers of people who long for God in a dry or waiting place, and you can pray them the same way. One person wrote on Reddit’s r/AskAChristian, posted 2025-12-16, “Bring it to God instead of waiting until you feel more spiritual.” Then try one of the practices above for a week, a passage read slowly or a one-line prayer, and talk to someone you trust. If you have also lost interest in things you used to enjoy, see a doctor.

Why does God feel so distant from me? The Bible and the traditions that read it give more than one answer, and none of them is a verdict on you. Psalm 88 ends without relief, “You have put lover and friend far from me, and my friends into darkness” (Psalm 88:18), and it is still a prayer in Scripture. The Catechism lists dryness among the ordinary difficulties of prayer, and the dark night section above sets out how John of the Cross, Ignatius and others weigh the causes. Psalm 139:7-12 describes a speaker who cannot get away from God’s presence, and Acts 17:27 says God “is not far from each one of us,” and both describe God’s nearness, whatever it feels like tonight.

How do I reconnect with God after being distant? The parable of the son who comes home, above, shows a father who runs out to meet him while he is still far off. For the daily part, the practices above are ways to begin. Another poster in the same Reddit thread on r/AskAChristian, on 2025-12-16, wrote, “Closeness isn’t a constant feeling, it’s a steady relationship that keeps going even when the feeling fades.” Tanya Luhrmann’s work among Vineyard evangelical Christians, in When God Talks Back (2012), reports that prayer practices can train attention toward a sense of God’s presence. It describes one community.

What does the Bible say about feeling distant from God? It says it in the first person, to God. Psalm 13 asks “How long?” and “How long will you hide your face from me?” Psalms 42 and 43 remember closeness and carry the distance with the refrain “Hope in God!” Psalm 22 and Psalm 88 give the words to people who feel forsaken, and Psalm 88 gives no reassuring turn. Psalm 13 ends in trust while Psalm 88 ends in darkness, and both are kept in Scripture, so the Bible does not require every prayer of distance to end the same way. The sections above go through each passage with the verses around it.

When everything has gone flat, not only prayer

The United Kingdom's NHS calls depression "more than simply feeling unhappy or fed up for a few days," with symptoms from "lasting feelings of unhappiness and hopelessness, to losing interest in the things you used to enjoy," and says "If you experience symptoms of depression for most of the day, every day for more than 2 weeks, you should seek help from a GP," a family doctor. In the United States, Mayo Clinic lists "Loss of interest or pleasure in most or all normal activities" and says to see a health care provider.

One Reddit poster on r/Christianity wrote to "People who are depressed, broken, feel far from God, or that the silence is deafening." If that sounds like you, talk it through with a doctor and with a pastor or priest you trust, in the same week. Psalm 13 can be prayed on the way to either.

Where to go next

If you are having thoughts of ending your life, please reach a person tonight: 988 in the United States, 9-8-8 in Canada, Samaritans on 116 123 in the United Kingdom and Ireland, Lifeline on 13 11 14 in Australia, and Find A Helpline everywhere else.

Tonight, say Psalm 13:1-2 with the verses around it once, as your own prayer. For something else, Bible Nudge can take it in your own words and suggest one passage. Find a passage.