How do we respond when God feels distant from us?

Several versions of that question have come in recently from listeners on the topic of

spiritual desertion.

I can boil them down to three categories basically first.

Spiritual desertion is an experience of God hiding his face from the believer.

But in the great text on contentment and how we live free from the love of money, we

are given a glorious promise.

One we have repeated several times at APJ.

We should cultivate material contentment in this life because God has promised us, quote,

I will never leave you nor forsake you."

As Hebrews 13.5.

So how does desertion relate to this promise that we will never be forsaken?

Secondly, does the Bible tell us why God deserts believers?

So we read into the experience of desertion something we have failed to do or need yet

to do.

And what has his absence felt like to you, Pastor John, personally?

And then third, in the famous desertion Psalm of Psalm 22, we read that God does not

hear the Psalmist prayers and refuses to deliver him from his distress, hence the felt

desertion.

And yet the Psalmist still delights in God in verse eight.

So what does it look like to delight in God in felt desertion?

So Pastor John, there's a mix of questions for you all under this label, this umbrella

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