Does God Withdraw His Presence from Me?

Ask Pastor John

Desiring God

John Piper, Unknown, 163859, Pastor, Ask, Theology, Desiring God, Religion & Spirituality/christianity, Christianity, Religion & Spirituality, Questions

4.8 • 3.8K Ratings

🗓️ 27 March 2025

⏱️ 10 minutes

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Summary

God promises never to leave us nor forsake us, but sometimes the Bible says he withdraws his presence from us. How can those both be true?

Transcript

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0:00.0	Well, on Monday, we heard from Elina, who wrote to express her struggle with feeling like an outsider to the faith, treating the Bible as literature and Christianity as a social culture without a personal relationship with Christ.
0:15.8	She asked how she can move from this place of spiritual detachment into a genuine relationship with Christ and a close
0:22.7	walk with God. This is a very common question that we get every day now in the inbox.
0:27.6	How can I have a genuine relationship with God? How do you get one? How do you know you have one?
0:32.8	How do you keep it? And as you develop this relationship with God, you can expect to meet another question at some
0:38.8	point along the way. Eventually, you'll ask, why does God sometimes withdraw his presence from us?
0:46.8	This topic of abandonment actually comes up as we wrap up our Bible reading for the month of
0:50.5	March. Maybe you're still catching up to those readings. That's fine.
0:54.8	That's what I love about the grace period in the Navigator's Bible reading plan, those final
0:58.3	days of the month when we can catch up. And I know a lot of you also appreciate that
1:02.2	feature and helps encourage you along the way month by month. Well, if you are caught up with the
1:06.7	month of March and our March readings, you will know that we just read two interesting
1:10.8	texts that seemed to conflict with one another. On the 25th, we read the promise that God will
1:16.3	never leave us or forsake us in Matthew 2820. But on the 22nd, three days earlier, we read the
1:22.8	psalmist cry out to God, don't leave me. That was in Psalm 69.17. So does God abandon us sometimes or not?
1:32.4	This question about desertion is a big one. And Pastor John joins us over the telephone today to take this question up from Michaela, who writes in this.
1:40.7	Pastor John, hello, and thank you for taking my question. In an early episode of
1:44.6	APJ, and this was early way back in ABJ 19, which is over 12 years ago, ABJ 19, there you said
1:51.7	that God sometimes withdraws his presence from us. How does that not contradict God's new
1:57.6	covenant promise to us that he will never leave us or forsake us as we read in
2:03.0	Hebrews 13, verse 5.
2:05.9	I love that kind of question because to me, the best questions are how things fit together.
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