Where Is God’s Presence When Life Falls Apart?
Even when we can’t sense Him, God stays close to us when we are suffering. Sometimes grief, pain, and exhaustion can dull our ability to sense His presence. Although, it may sometimes feel like He is absent, if we pull in close enough to notice, we can sense His presence in many ways both small and large.
He may be in the gentle breeze, the feeling of peace, or the call from a friend. We may read a verse at the exact right moment. Or He may wrap us in the warmth of His manifest presence like a blanket. I have never once asked Him for encouragement without receiving it in one way or another.
The LORD is near to the brokenhearted (Psalm 34:18).
This article is part of my series on knowing God’s presence. If you are just beginning, start with the main guide, What Does God’s Presence Feel Like? How to Recognize It Daily.
I was twenty-one years old, a young mother, and my husband had left. I had moved back in with my mom and dad because I had no other option; I had no money for gas, for diapers, or formula.
One night I was on a curvy, dark, rainy mountain road in southern Oregon. I was crying and could barely see the road in front of me between the windshield wipers. I don’t even remember what I said to God.
I do remember what came next.
Something like a huge, gentle, giant hug from my Creator Father wrapped around me. The Comforter Himself held me in that car on that mountain road, and I knew I was not alone. I knew I was loved. The peace that settled over me had no earthly explanation.
It has been 40 years and I still remember that moment in the car. Your creator father loves you and wants you to experience his comfort even in the middle of hard times.
Friend, if you are in a season of suffering right now, I wrote this article for you.
Where Is God’s Presence When You Are Suffering?
The short answer is that He is right where He promised to be. He is with you.
The psalmist David wrote, “The LORD is near to the brokenhearted and saves those who are crushed in spirit” (Psalm 34:18).
Your pain does not push God away. Your confusion does not offend Him. Your tears do not make Him uncomfortable. If anything, Scripture tells us that suffering draws His attention and His compassion closer.
God is omnipresent, which means He is everywhere at all times. You cannot go anywhere that He is not already there.
David wrote, “Where can I go from Your Spirit? Or where can I flee from Your presence? If I ascend to heaven, You are there; if I make my bed in Sheol, behold, You are there” (Psalm 139:7–8).
Yet there is also what I call His manifest presence, the felt nearness your heart recognizes as His love, His peace, and His warmth.
I describe this more fully in What Does God’s Presence Feel Like?. Suffering can cloud your ability to sense His manifest presence without removing His actual nearness.
Your inability to feel God right now is not evidence of His absence. It is often evidence of the sorrow and pain you are carrying.
Why Does God’s Presence Feel Hidden in Hard Seasons?
Grief, exhaustion, and prolonged stress overwhelm the senses. Just as physical pain can block your ability to taste food or enjoy music, soul-level pain can dull your spiritual awareness.
We live in a fallen world, and that world presses down hard on our hearts that were made for a perfect Eden.
The clutter in the soul I write about in Why Can’t I Feel God’s Presence? applies here in an intensified form.
Suffering piles fresh layers of hurt, fear, disappointment, and confusion on top of whatever was already there. Over time, those layers can form a heavy blanket over the heart.
Sometimes we are the ones who pull away. Pain has a way of convincing us that we need to handle things on our own, that God is too busy or too far away to help with this particular mess.
We withdraw into survival mode and try to carry the weight by ourselves. Yet the very moment we pull back is the moment we need His presence most. He is still reaching for you, friend, even when your instinct is to go it alone.
The heaviness you feel is the cost of living in a world still groaning for redemption (Romans 8:22).
God’s face is still turned toward you. His compassion still surrounds you. The weight on your heart comes from the brokenness of a fallen world, and He grieves it alongside you.
God also uses these difficult seasons to see if we will continue to believe and trust Him when everything around us says otherwise.
Hard times grow our faith in ways that comfort never can. Yet we rarely see that growth while we are in the middle of it. The seed does not know it is becoming a tree. We only see how much we have grown when we reach the other side and look back.
Then we can truly recognize how God was there all along, working on our behalf in ways we could not perceive at the time.
What if the silence you hear is the sound of God at work in an area of your heart you are not yet aware of?
What if His hiddenness in this season is the soil in which a deeper root is forming? A seed germinates underground, unseen, before it ever breaks the surface. A photograph develops in the darkroom, and the image appears only when the process is complete.
Some of God’s deepest work in our lives happens in the seasons when we cannot see or feel Him at all.
What Does God’s Presence Look Like in the Middle of Pain?
On the dark, rainy mountain road in southern Oregon, His presence showed up as my Comforter, tangible, unmistakable, and overwhelming in His tenderness.
There have also been seasons in my life when I could not feel His manifest presence at all. I remember a dry season that stretched on and on for years. I thought it would never end. One day I was walking up the stairs in my house, and I just said out loud, “God, can You just send some kind of encouragement?”
I was exhausted and honest.
Not long after that, a friend called and invited me for a visit. God did not answer with goosebumps or liquid love that time. He answered with a phone call.
And this is what I want to emphasize here, friend. I have never once asked God for encouragement and had Him fail to respond.
Every single time I have asked, He has sent encouragement in one way or another. Sometimes it arrived as His manifest presence. Sometimes it arrived as a person, a word, a Scripture, a letter, a phone call, or an open door.
That is what God’s presence can look like in the middle of pain. It may arrive as:
- Unexplained peace in a moment that should have no peace
- Strength you did not have five minutes ago
- A thought or Scripture that drops into your mind at the exact right moment
- A friend who calls or shows up when you need it most
- A feeling of strength and peace to face the difficult
- A quiet, steady knowing that you are held, even when your emotions say otherwise
In the joyful seasons, we look for the feeling of God’s presence. In the hard seasons, we may need to look for the evidence of God’s presence. Both are real, and both are Him.
Biblical Examples of God’s Presence in Suffering
David in the cave. When David fled from Saul and hid in a cave, he had no army, no throne, and no visible hope.
He cried out, “I pour out my complaint before Him; I declare my trouble before Him” (Psalm 142:2).
He told God exactly how desperate he felt. And God met him there.
Jesus in Gethsemane. Even the Son of God experienced anguish so deep that He asked the Father to remove the cup of suffering (Matthew 26:39). He sweat drops like blood. God sent angels to minister comfort and strength to Him for what lay ahead.
Paul’s thorn. God did not remove Paul’s suffering. He gave him something more, His own presence and grace as the answer.
Paul wrote, “He has said to me, ‘My grace is sufficient for you, for power is perfected in weakness'” (2 Corinthians 12:9).
God’s grace (empowerment) was the provision, even when healing was not.
I have walked through my own hard seasons, and I have sat across from many precious believers in theirs. Some received the dramatic encounter. Others received the quiet phone call. Both came from the same faithful Father.
If you want to read more about the different types of suffering believers face, I walk through four of them in Why Does God Allow Suffering? Faith When Life Is Hard.
How Can You Open Your Heart to God’s Presence When You Are Hurting?
When suffering has drained your capacity, a full devotional routine may feel impossible. That is okay. God does not require a performance from you. He asks only that you come to Him honestly, just as you are.
Here are four simple steps you can practice, even in the hardest season.
1. Give Him Your Troubles Honestly
Tell God exactly what you feel. Include the anger, the confusion, and the disappointment. David did this throughout the Psalms. He did not tidy up his emotions before he prayed. He poured out his raw emotions and trusted God to hold them.
Honesty with God is the door to intimacy. He can handle your tears, your frustration, and even your anger. What He does not want is your silence.
If you need words to start with, I put together a collection of Prayers for Hope and Strength in Hard Times that may help when your own words feel empty.
2. Start with One Verse, Not a Chapter
When your heart is heavy, one phrase of Scripture is enough. You do not need to study your way through pain. You need the Living Word to speak to your spirit.
Try Psalm 23:4, “Even though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I fear no evil, for You are with me.”
Sit with that one line. Let it rest on your heart. Read it slowly and try to sense your Lord’s Spirit behind the words. You can turn it into a simple prayer from your heart.
This is the same exercise I teach in my main guide on God’s presence, but here it is scaled for a heart that is weary. Just take one verse, and that is enough.
3. Notice the Smallest Evidence of His Care
Gratitude may feel impossible right now. I understand that. Even so, ask God to open your eyes to one small sign of His care today. It may be an unexpected moment of peace, a smile from a stranger, a beautiful flower, a pet’s love, or a kind word from another person.
Think of something you are thankful for today.
Write it down if you can. Over time, those small evidences begin to form a trail of His faithfulness that your heart can follow back to trust.
4. Let Other Believers Carry the Fire
When your own ember has grown cold, the warmth of others can reignite it. Do not isolate yourself in this season. Let someone pray for you, sit with you, or simply be present.
Think of Moses in the battle against Amalek (Exodus 17:11–13). As long as Moses held his arms up, Israel prevailed. When his arms grew heavy, the battle turned. So Aaron and Hur sat him on a stone and held his arms up for him, one on each side, until the victory was won.
Moses did not lose the battle because he grew weary. His friends held what he could no longer hold alone.
Ask God to help you find people and churches who can encourage you. A glowing ember that joins itself to other flaming coals will catch fire and burn hotter than it ever could alone.
Does Suffering Bring You Closer to God?
This is an honest question, and it deserves an honest answer.
Suffering is never enjoyable, and I will not dress it up with a bow. Some trials resolve beautifully on this side of heaven. Others do not.
God’s presence is a guarantee that you will not walk through the valley alone. It is a guarantee of His love, His grace, and His faithfulness to you personally.
Yet many believers, including me, have experienced a depth of God’s presence in the hard seasons that we never found in the comfortable ones.
Job said it this way, “I have heard of You by the hearing of the ear, but now my eye sees You” (Job 42:5).
His suffering did not produce more information about God. It produced encounter with God.
The Apostle Paul put it plainly,
“We also exult in our tribulations, knowing that tribulation brings about perseverance; and perseverance, proven character; and proven character, hope; and hope does not disappoint” (Romans 5:3–5).
I have clung to those words in seasons when hope felt like a thread.
“Hope does not disappoint,” I have whispered to myself more times than I can count. And He has always proven Himself faithful.
Riches perish, but love, faith, hope, character, and integrity last forever. When we learn to hold on and are sustained by God’s grace through the hard times, we come to a place where we experience our Lord in a way we only previously heard about.
If you are ready for practical strategies to stand firm through a long trial, read How to Stand in Faith in Hard Times.
For more of God’s promises to hold onto in this season, see 34 Inspiring Bible Verses About God’s Presence and Bible Verses About Strength in Difficult Times.
My Prayer for You
Dear Lord Jesus, I lift up my friend who is reading these words right now, the one whose heart is heavy, the one who has been crying out to You and hearing only silence. You see every tear. You know every fear. You understand the weight of the disappointment, the grief, and the confusion they carry.
I ask You, Lord, to break through the silence right now. Send Your Comforter to wrap around them the way You wrapped around me on that dark mountain road. Where they feel abandoned, show them You are near. Where they feel numb, stir even the smallest flicker of Your peace in their heart. Where they have lost hope, speak Your Word to their spirit and remind them that hope does not disappoint.
I ask You to send encouragement to them today in a way they will recognize as coming from You. You have never failed me when I asked for encouragement, and I believe You will not fail them. Meet them right where they are, Lord. You are faithful, and You are good. In Jesus’ name, Amen.
FAQs About God’s Presence in Suffering
A: God is near to the brokenhearted (Psalm 34:18). His presence does not leave you in suffering, though your ability to sense Him may be dulled by pain, grief, or exhaustion. His nearness in the hard season may arrive differently than in the joyful season. It may come as unexplained peace, quiet strength, or the love of others.
A: Suffering overwhelms the senses the way physical pain blocks your ability to enjoy food or music. The weight of grief, fear, and disappointment can dull your spiritual awareness. Sometimes we also pull away from God in hard seasons, convinced we need to handle things on our own. His face is still turned toward you. He may be using this season to grow your faith and do deep work in an area of your heart you are not yet aware of.
A: Many believers have experienced a depth of God’s presence in their hardest seasons that they never found in comfortable ones. Job said, “Now my eye sees You” (Job 42:5). Suffering can deepen encounter with God, though the timeline is rarely ours to control and the process is never painless.
A: Start with honesty and tell God exactly what you feel. Sit with one verse rather than a whole chapter. Notice the smallest evidence of His care around you. And let other believers carry the fire alongside you. Isolation deepens the silence, and community can break it.
A: David poured out his raw emotions to God throughout the Psalms. Honesty with God is the door to intimacy. He can handle your anger, your tears, and your questions. What He does not want is your silence.
AUTHOR BIO
Dr. Cynthia K. Johnson is the cofounder of Deeper Walk Ministries, Inc. and the author of How to Practice the Presence of God, When Thank You Isn’t Enough, and The 90-Day Spiritual Awakening Journal.
Cynthia K. Johnson is an ordained minister and author passionate about equipping believers for a deeper relationship with God. She has served as an associate pastor, a leader in Christian education, and a director of a faith-based women’s rehabilitation center. Dr. Johnson holds a Bachelor of Arts in Education/English, a Master of Divinity, and a Doctor of Church Ministries and Leadership. She and her husband, Howard, live in Northwest Florida.
ARE YOU LONGING FOR MORE OF GOD’S PRESENCE?
If you want more teaching and practical exercises to practice the presence of God, I have a whole book to help.
How to Practice the Presence of God is a step-by-step guide for the Christian who is hungry for more intimacy, more connection, and more clarity in hearing God’s voice.
Knowing God’s Presence Series of Articles
- What Does God’s Presence Feel Like? How to Recognize It Daily (Main Guide)
- Why Can’t I Feel God’s Presence? 6 Reasons and the Way Back
- The 3 Secrets to Knowing God
- The Surprising Secret to an Intimate Friendship With God
- 34 Inspiring Bible Verses About God’s Presence
- What Does God’s Voice Sound Like?
- Where Is God’s Presence When Life Falls Apart? (You Are Here)
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