About 4 minutes to read
I feel nothing, and God is silent
A man can fear the Lord and obey him and still walk in the dark with no light at all. Isaiah says so, and tells him what to do there.
Who is among you that feareth the Lord, that obeyeth the voice of his servant, that walketh in darkness, and hath no light? let him trust in the name of the Lord, and stay upon his God.
Isaiah 50:10 (KJV)
Lean your whole weight on your God while you cannot see him. The Confession builds on this verse in 18.4, and says such believers are never left without the seed of God and the life of faith. Out of that the Spirit may revive assurance in due time, and meanwhile he keeps them from utter despair, even on the days they feel hopeless. David once said in his haste that he was cut off from before God’s eyes, and God heard his cries all the same (Psalm 31:22).
Psalm 88 never turns toward the light, even at the end, yet in its first line Heman calls the Lord the God of his salvation. In Psalm 77 Asaph asks whether the Lord has cast him off for ever. Then he stops reading his own heart and starts remembering what God has done, and he goes back to the night Israel crossed the sea.
Thy way is in the sea, and thy path in the great waters, and thy footsteps are not known. Thou leddest thy people like a flock by the hand of Moses and Aaron.
Psalm 77:19-20 (KJV)
No one could trace God’s footsteps in the sea that night. He led them the whole way through.
The darkness is in my body too
Sometimes the heaviness is in the body as much as the soul. Grief or illness or depression can settle on the mind and make God himself feel far away. Soon after Elijah watched fire fall from heaven on Carmel, he lay down under a juniper tree and asked God to take his life. God did not argue with him. He let him sleep, and sent an angel with bread and water, and let him sleep again.
And the angel of the Lord came again the second time, and touched him, and said, Arise and eat; because the journey is too great for thee.
1 Kings 19:7 (KJV)
The word of the Lord came later, at Horeb. Sleep and food came first. If your heaviness has lasted for weeks and changed your sleep or your appetite or how you see yourself, tell your elders and see a doctor. God works through means (WCF 5.3), and medicine is one of them, as the angel’s bread was. Needing it is not a failure of faith. If you have had thoughts of ending your life, tell someone today. In the United States you can call 988 or text 988 at any hour. Elsewhere, call your local emergency number.
While you wait
Do Not Fight This Alone
A page cannot sit with you or pray over you. Tell your pastor or an elder what you are afraid of. Keep sitting under the preached Word, and if you are a communing member, do not stay away from the Lord’s Table while your doubts are being answered. The Larger Catechism says it was appointed for the relief even of weak and doubting Christians (Q&A 172). Safe in His Keeping gives a few things to do while you wait for the fear to lift.
If you cannot tell whether you have ever come to Christ, do not wait to settle it. Come to him now. He promised to cast out none who come (John 6:37), and the gospel is set out for you in full.