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(Hebrews 13:5) I will never leave you. 

As Christians, we all believe God exists. However, we often wonder where God is during difficult and painful times in our lives.

We feel abandoned.

We feel like God doesn’t care about the struggles and pain we are going through.

We begin to question the Bible’s promises of His covenant faithfulness.

We don’t feel His presence, so we conclude that He is absent. We feel totally alone.

Feelings and emotions are very powerful.

God created our feelings, but in our fallen condition, they can often overwhelm us.

Our problem comes when we determine God’s presence by our feelings alone.

In other words, we assume God is only present when we feel Him. However, feelings—especially painful emotions—can often numb our inner lives.

We feel empty.

Our feelings can cloud our sensitivity to the Holy Spirit.

Many times in my life and ministry—sometimes for a season of days or even a week—I have not felt the immediate presence of God.

At times, I thought God had withdrawn His presence from me to test whether I would follow Him even when I did not feel Him.

It has often been through these “dry” times that I became stronger in the disciplines of faith, obedience, and perseverance.

Nothing sustains me more than the direct presence of the Holy Spirit in and upon my life.

The longer we walk with God and spiritually mature, the less we trust our feelings and emotions as proof of what is real.

We become more aware that our feelings and emotions can be very deceptive.

They can quickly rise and fall like a roller coaster.

Mature Christians do not deny emotions; we simply understand them better.

God created us to experience feelings and emotions, but as mature Christians, we do not let them control our thoughts or decisions.

As we mature spiritually, we develop a deep confidence—a mindset rooted in the biblical truth that God will never leave us.

He is always present with us, even if we do not feel Him.

Through a disciplined spiritual life, we may not feel God, but we remain fully confident that He is present with us.

Let us allow biblical truth to sink deep into our minds.

Let us allow biblical truth to shape our thinking patterns and how we see all of life.

When we do, it is biblical truth that dominates our way of living—not our feelings and emotions.