Beach Read: "When God Seems Distant"

What if the problem isn’t that God has left you—but that he’s leading you somewhere you never expected to go?

Few experiences are more unsettling for a Christian than the feeling that God has become distant. You pray, read Scripture, attend church, and try to stay faithful, yet the warmth and certainty you once felt seem to disappear. When that happens, many of us immediately assume we’ve done something wrong. We begin searching for the mistake, wondering why God feels absent and how we can get back to where we used to be.

In the first episode of our short summer series, Beach Reads for Real Life, listen in as John Tinnin talks about the book When God Seems Distant: Surprising Ways God Deepens Our Faith and Draws Us Near by Kyle Strobel & John Coe. The authors challenge the assumption that the Christian life should be a steady climb from one spiritual high to the next. Instead, they show how God often does some of his deepest work in seasons of uncertainty, silence, and longing—times when we can’t rely on feelings and are invited to trust him in new ways.

What makes this book so refreshing is its honesty. Rather than offering quick fixes or formulas for getting God back, it gives language to feelings many believers experience but rarely discuss. The authors invite us to stop treating the spiritual life like a self-improvement project and begin seeing it as a relationship that often grows through vulnerability, dependence, and surrender. For anyone who has ever wondered why God feels far away, this book offers both comfort and a different way of understanding the journey. 

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