Submit yourselves therefore to God. Resist the devil, and he will flee from you. Draw near to God, and he will draw near to you. James 4:7-8a
There are times when God seems silent. I remember my freshman year in college when I had a crisis of faith. I was sitting in Sunday school one morning, and a doubt crept into my mind: what if all of this is fake? What if God isn’t actually real? What if I’m wasting my time and I could be out having fun instead of sitting in church? Sure, I had questioned God’s reality in the past, but for whatever reason, the doubts took root that morning. What followed was an intense several days of questioning my whole purpose in life and seeking to understand if I was throwing my future all away. What I eventually realized is that I had a choice. Either my faith in God could be built on the circumstances of the moment (I don’t feel God’s presence, so He must not be there) or on a solid belief that God’s presence was there regardless of how I felt. Sometimes our enemy, the Devil, tries to plant doubts in our minds, but when we resist those doubts, he does flee. And when we draw near to our heavenly Father, He draws near to us. After my period of doubt I continued reading, praying, and following God’s ways even in the midst of uncertainty. I found that my gracious, heavenly Father was not far off; He was waiting for me to draw near to Him.
If you feel far from God, don’t give up pursuing Him! What you will find is that when you draw near to Him, He will draw near to you!
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