The Quiet Season: What to Do When You Can't Feel God Anymore

Finding Hope and Faithfulness When Spiritual Life Feels Dry, Distant, and Empty Despite Your Best Efforts

Michael Patterson woke up on Sunday morning feeling the familiar weight of obligation rather than anticipation as he prepared for church, recognizing with quiet despair that worship services which once filled him with joy now felt like performances he attended without genuine connection to what the songs declared so confidently about God's presence and love that others seemed to experience authentically while he merely went through motions that memory claimed had once meant something real before the dryness began months ago without warning or explanation. He still prayed daily because discipline maintained what emotion no longer motivated, yet his prayers felt like words disappearing into empty space rather than conversations with Someone who listened attentively and responded tangibly through the sense of presence that had characterized his spiritual life for years before this quiet descended gradually like fog obscuring landscape that existed somewhere beyond the mist theoretically even though sight could no longer confirm what faith once made visible clearly. Michael had done everything the Christian self-help books recommended for reviving dying spiritual passion: he increased his Bible reading, attended additional prayer meetings, confessed every sin he could identify, played worship music constantly, and asked friends to pray for breakthrough that everyone assured him would arrive soon if he persevered faithfully through the temporary valley that testing created before victory emerged triumphantly. Yet months passed without the breakthrough materializing, and Michael began wondering whether something had broken fundamentally in his relationship with God or whether he had committed some unconfessed sin that blocked access to divine presence the way unpaid bills might suspend utility service until accounts settled properly. The most troubling aspect involved watching other believers describe their vibrant experiences with God while feeling increasingly like an outsider who had lost access to something everyone else possessed naturally through better faith or greater devotion that comparison suggested Michael lacked despite his sincere efforts to maintain spiritual practices that should have produced the connection that absence contradicted painfully.

This article explores what spiritual writers across centuries have called the "dark night of the soul" or "spiritual dryness," helping you understand why faithful people experience seasons when God feels absent, what these periods reveal about spiritual growth that emotional highs often miss completely, and how to navigate the quiet season in ways that deepen faith rather than abandoning it through misinterpreting dryness as divine rejection or personal failure. Let me walk you through this territory carefully, because understanding what is happening during these difficult seasons makes all the difference between interpreting them as abandonment or as invitation into deeper relationship that transcends emotional experience entirely.

First, Let Me Explain What Spiritual Dryness Actually Means

Before we explore how to navigate spiritual dryness, I need to help you understand what this experience actually involves, because many believers misinterpret these seasons through assuming that absence of feeling equals absence of God rather than recognizing that the feeling and the reality operate somewhat independently from each other in ways that emotional Christianity often fails to teach adequately. Let me break this down carefully so you can distinguish between several different experiences that people sometimes confuse incorrectly.

Spiritual dryness describes a season when your usual sense of God's presence, the emotional warmth or joy or peace that characterized your prayer life and worship experiences previously, seems to have vanished despite your continued faithful practice of spiritual disciplines that connection should maintain theoretically. You still believe intellectually. You still pray and read scripture and attend worship. You have not consciously turned away from God through choosing sin deliberately. Yet the feelings that once accompanied these activities have disappeared, leaving you going through motions that feel mechanical rather than alive, dutiful rather than delightful, empty rather than fulfilling despite your sincere desire for the intimacy you remember experiencing before the dryness began mysteriously.

Now here is what I want you to understand clearly: this experience differs significantly from clinical depression, which is a medical condition affecting brain chemistry that professional treatment should address through therapy and sometimes medication that biological factors require correcting medically. Depression affects all areas of life, not just spiritual experience, and includes symptoms like persistent sadness, loss of interest in activities generally, changes in sleep or appetite, difficulty concentrating, and feelings of worthlessness that exceed normal discouragement. If you are experiencing these broader symptoms, please consult a mental health professional, because spiritual practices alone cannot resolve medical conditions that biological intervention requires addressing properly. Organizations like the National Alliance on Mental Illness provide excellent resources for understanding when professional help becomes necessary appropriately.

Why Faithful People Experience Spiritual Dryness

Let me help you understand why even deeply committed believers experience these quiet seasons, because grasping the reasons prevents you from interpreting dryness as punishment or abandonment when actually it often indicates spiritual growth into maturity that transcends emotional dependence on feeling God's presence constantly. Think of this like learning to trust someone's love even when they are not physically present providing constant reassurance. Early in relationships, we need frequent contact and explicit affirmation to feel secure. As relationships mature, however, we develop trust that remains stable even during periods of physical separation or when circumstances prevent the usual expressions of connection we have grown accustomed to receiving regularly.

Similarly, spiritual life often begins with what mystics called "consolations," where God provides abundant emotional experiences that prayer feels rich, worship feels transcendent, and divine presence seems tangible almost physically. These consolations serve important purposes early in faith development through building attraction to spiritual life and establishing patterns of practice while motivation feels strong naturally. However, God's ultimate goal involves developing believers whose faith rests on commitment rather than on feeling, whose obedience continues when emotion withdraws, and whose trust remains firm when experience provides no confirmation that relationship continues beneath the surface that feeling usually makes visible immediately. The quiet season, then, represents an invitation to mature faith that believes without seeing, that loves without feeling warmth constantly, and that trusts despite absence of the sensory confirmation that spiritual infancy required for maintaining connection that growth now sustains through deeper roots than emotion provides temporarily.

What Saints and Mystics Teach Us About the Dark Night

Let me show you how Christians throughout history have understood and navigated spiritual dryness, because recognizing that faithful believers across centuries have walked this path before you provides tremendous comfort when you feel isolated in your struggle with God's seeming absence. The sixteenth-century Spanish mystic John of the Cross wrote extensively about what he termed "the dark night of the soul," describing seasons when God withdraws the usual consolations that beginners enjoy so that believers might learn to love God for who God is rather than for the feelings that relationship with God produces pleasantly.

John explained that spiritual dryness often arrives precisely when believers have progressed beyond beginner stages but have not yet developed the mature faith that the next level requires possessing firmly. Picture this like when children learn to ride bicycles. Initially, parents run alongside holding the seat to provide stability while children gain confidence through feeling supported securely. However, at some point, parents must release their grip so children can develop the balance that independent riding requires building through their own effort rather than through continued dependence on external support that growth now makes unnecessary. The moment when parents let go feels terrifying to children who suddenly realize they are riding alone without the security they had grown accustomed to receiving constantly. Yet this release represents not abandonment but rather confidence that children have developed capacity for independence that readiness makes appropriate finally.

Similarly, spiritual dryness often signals that God trusts you enough to walk by faith rather than by sight, to continue faithful practice when emotion provides no reward, and to maintain relationship through commitment rather than through the feelings that initially attracted you to spiritual life naturally. The medieval mystic Meister Eckhart taught that God sometimes hides divine presence so that believers might discover whether they love God or merely love the gifts God provides temporarily. This distinction matters enormously because mature faith requires loving God for who God is rather than for what God gives or how God makes us feel subjectively through experiences that come and go unpredictably across spiritual life's long journey toward union with divine love ultimately.

Practices That Sustain You Through the Quiet Season

Continue Faithful Practice Without Demanding Feeling

The most important response to spiritual dryness involves continuing your spiritual practices faithfully despite absence of the emotional rewards that previously accompanied them naturally. Let me explain why this matters so much. When you maintain prayer even when it feels empty, when you attend worship even when it feels mechanical, when you read scripture even when it feels dry, you demonstrate that your faith rests on commitment rather than on feeling. This continuation teaches your soul something crucial about love's nature that infatuation never learns adequately because early-stage emotions require no discipline to maintain when feelings flow freely without effort. However, continuing to show up when feelings withdraw develops the kind of faithful love that marriages require surviving through difficult seasons, that parenting demands maintaining through exhausting phases, and that friendship needs demonstrating during periods when connection feels strained temporarily. Your faithful practice during dryness builds spiritual muscles that emotionally-rich seasons never develop because challenge creates growth that ease never demands producing necessarily. Think of this like physical exercise, where gains come precisely through continuing movement when it feels difficult rather than when it feels effortless naturally.

Focus on Service Rather Than Sensation

During spiritual dryness, I encourage you to shift attention from seeking experiences of God to serving others through practical love that faith expresses tangibly regardless of how you feel internally. This redirection serves several important purposes simultaneously. First, it moves you out of the self-focused introspection that dryness often creates through constant monitoring of your spiritual state and searching for feelings that withdrawal makes elusive increasingly. When you focus on meeting others' needs through volunteering, helping neighbors, supporting struggling friends, or working for justice, your attention shifts from your own inner experience to the concrete ways that faith operates in the world through action rather than through feeling exclusively. Second, service often reconnects you with God's presence through different channels than emotional experience provides directly. Jesus taught that whatever we do for the least of these we do for him, which means that serving others becomes a way of encountering Christ's presence even when traditional spiritual practices feel empty currently. You may not feel God in prayer, but you might sense divine love flowing through you as you comfort someone grieving, feed someone hungry, or advocate for someone marginalized through systems that injustice perpetuates systematically. This active dimension of faith grounds spirituality in embodied reality rather than in subjective feelings that come and go unpredictably throughout life's changing seasons inevitably.

Read About Others Who Have Walked This Path

Let me suggest that reading about how faithful Christians throughout history have navigated spiritual dryness provides tremendous encouragement through showing you that this experience represents normal territory in spiritual life rather than indicating something wrong with you personally. The writings of Teresa of Avila, John of the Cross, Thomas Merton, Henri Nouwen, and many others describe their own struggles with God's seeming absence and the wisdom they gained through persevering faithfully despite prolonged periods when prayer felt barren and worship felt empty despite their deep commitment to religious life vocationally. Mother Teresa's letters, published posthumously, revealed that she experienced decades of spiritual dryness where she felt no sense of God's presence despite her tireless service to the poorest of the poor in Calcutta. This revelation shocked many people who had assumed that someone so devoted must enjoy constant consolation, yet her example demonstrates powerfully that faithful service continues even when feeling withdraws completely. Reading these accounts helps you recognize that spiritual giants struggled with the same experiences that you face currently, which normalizes your struggle rather than making you feel defective for experiencing something that excellence never eliminates entirely from spiritual life's long journey toward maturity.

Practice Gratitude for God's Past Faithfulness

When you cannot feel God's presence currently, I recommend focusing deliberately on remembering times when God's faithfulness was evident clearly in your life through provision, protection, guidance, or answered prayer that memory can recall even when present experience provides no such confirmation. This practice follows the pattern we see throughout scripture where God's people are repeatedly instructed to remember past deliverance as foundation for trusting present faithfulness even when circumstances feel overwhelming currently. The Israelites set up stones of remembrance after crossing the Jordan River so future generations could ask what these stones meant and learn about God's faithful provision that history demonstrated concretely. Similarly, keeping a gratitude journal where you record specific instances of God's faithfulness provides tangible evidence that you can review during dry seasons when present experience offers no such assurance naturally. This practice does not involve pretending to feel grateful when you do not, but rather involves choosing to acknowledge intellectually what God has done previously even when you cannot sense what God is doing currently. Research shows that gratitude practices benefit mental health significantly, and spiritual traditions have recognized for millennia that remembering God's past faithfulness sustains hope during present difficulties that perspective transforms when memory widens the timeframe beyond immediate experience exclusively.

"Spiritual dryness teaches you that God's presence does not depend on your ability to feel it, just as the sun continues shining behind clouds even when you cannot see its light directly. The quiet season invites you to trust what you know rather than what you feel, to walk by faith rather than by sight, and to discover that God remains faithful even when experience provides no confirmation of what belief maintains through commitment rather than through emotion exclusively."

Common Mistakes That Prolong Suffering During Dry Seasons

Now let me explain several responses to spiritual dryness that actually make things worse rather than better, because avoiding these mistakes will help you navigate the quiet season more gracefully. Think of these as pitfalls that many people fall into naturally when feeling God's absence, yet that wisdom learns to recognize and avoid deliberately once you understand their counterproductive effects clearly.

The first major mistake involves blaming yourself for the dryness through assuming that you must have done something wrong or that your faith must be deficient somehow because others seem to experience God's presence while you do not currently. This self-blame creates a vicious cycle where guilt compounds the already difficult experience of dryness, adding unnecessary suffering to what is already challenging enough without additional burdens that judgment imposes heavily. Let me be clear about this: spiritual dryness often arrives not because you have failed but rather because you have progressed to the point where God invites you into deeper maturity that transcends emotional experience entirely. Blaming yourself misinterprets what is actually happening and prevents you from receiving the gift that dryness offers through teaching faith to rest on commitment rather than feeling exclusively.

The second mistake involves trying to manufacture spiritual feelings through intense effort, whether by increasing spiritual disciplines dramatically, attending every possible church service, or constantly listening to worship music in attempts to force the emotional experiences that once came naturally without such desperate measures. This approach treats spiritual life like a machine where correct inputs must produce predictable outputs, yet relationship with God operates more organically than mechanically in ways that formulas never capture adequately. While maintaining faithful practice matters enormously, as I explained earlier, frantically multiplying activities to recapture feelings usually produces exhaustion rather than connection because it approaches God as a problem to solve rather than as a Person to trust through difficulty patiently.

The third mistake involves isolating yourself from community through shame about your struggle or through comparing your experience unfavorably with others who seem to possess what you lack currently. Spiritual dryness tends to produce feelings of being uniquely defective or of being the only person struggling while everyone else enjoys rich spiritual lives that your brokenness prevents accessing personally. However, isolation during dryness cuts you off from the very support that navigating it requires utilizing appropriately. Sharing your struggle with trusted friends, spiritual directors, or pastors who understand spiritual dryness from their own experience or from studying Christian spiritual formation can provide tremendous encouragement and guidance that solitary suffering never discovers independently. Resources from places like Renovaré offer excellent guidance on spiritual formation that includes navigating difficult seasons wisely.

The Surprising Ways That Dryness Deepens Faith Paradoxically

Let me help you see how spiritual dryness, despite feeling like regression or abandonment, actually creates opportunities for growth that emotionally-rich seasons never provide as effectively. This may seem counterintuitive initially, but I want you to understand how the absence of feeling can paradoxically strengthen faith in ways that presence of feeling never accomplishes fully.

First, dryness purifies your motivation by revealing whether you seek God or merely seek the experiences that God provides temporarily. Think about how this distinction operates in human relationships. If someone only spends time with you when you give them gifts or make them feel good but disappears when you have nothing to offer or when interaction requires effort without immediate reward, you would rightly question whether they actually care about you or merely about what you provide instrumentally. Similarly, spiritual dryness invites you to examine whether you love God for who God is or whether you primarily love the feelings, answers to prayer, sense of purpose, or other benefits that relationship with God provides practically. This examination is not meant to condemn but rather to mature faith that ultimately seeks God rather than God's gifts exclusively.

Second, dryness develops perseverance and character that difficulty forges more effectively than ease ever accomplishes naturally. The Apostle Paul wrote that suffering produces perseverance, perseverance produces character, and character produces hope that does not disappoint. While spiritual dryness differs from the suffering Paul primarily had in mind, the principle applies similarly because continuing faithful practice when it brings no immediate satisfaction builds the kind of steady commitment that sustains spiritual life through all seasons rather than only through pleasant periods when motivation flows freely without discipline. Athletes understand that strength develops through resistance rather than through effortless movement, and spiritual strength develops similarly through practicing faith when it requires effort rather than when it feels easy naturally.

Recognizing When the Season Begins to Shift

Let me help you notice signs that the quiet season may be shifting gradually, because these transitions often happen so subtly that you might miss them if you expect dramatic sudden change rather than gentle gradual transformation. Spiritual dryness typically does not end through spectacular breakthrough but rather through slow emergence like dawn arriving gradually rather than switching on like electric light suddenly.

You might notice that prayer, while still not producing strong feelings, begins to feel less empty, less like talking to a wall and more like conversation where you trust someone listens even without obvious responses confirming reception immediately. Or you might find that scripture passages that seemed dry for months suddenly speak to your situation directly in ways that feel personal rather than merely historical or doctrinal abstractly. Small moments of gratitude might arise spontaneously rather than requiring deliberate effort to manufacture artificially.

Perhaps most significantly, you might recognize that your faith has become less dependent on feeling and more grounded in commitment, less focused on emotional experiences and more oriented toward faithful living, less anxious about whether you sense God's presence and more confident that God remains faithful regardless of what you feel subjectively. This shift itself indicates that the quiet season has accomplished its purpose through teaching you to trust what you know rather than what you feel, to walk by faith rather than by sight, and to love God for who God is rather than for how God makes you feel temporarily. When this maturity emerges, the dryness may lift gradually, or it may continue while no longer troubling you as deeply because you have learned that God's presence does not depend on your ability to sense it emotionally.

From Dryness to Deeper Trust

Michael Patterson from our opening story eventually stopped searching desperately for the breakthrough that books promised and trying to manufacture the feelings that had disappeared months earlier without warning or explanation. Instead, he simply continued showing up to prayer each morning despite the emptiness, attending church despite feeling disconnected, serving in the homeless ministry despite receiving no spiritual high from the work itself. He stopped interpreting the dryness as punishment or abandonment and began viewing it as a season whose purpose he might understand only in retrospect after it passed finally.

Gradually over many months, Michael noticed subtle shifts he would have missed entirely if he had been focused on dramatic transformation that expectation demanded experiencing suddenly. Prayer still felt different from before, less emotionally rich perhaps, but somehow more honest, more real, less dependent on feeling a certain way and more focused on simply being present with God however that presence manifested currently. He found himself less anxious about his spiritual state and more simply committed to faithfulness regardless of emotional rewards that continuance might or might not produce eventually. The desperate edge had softened into patient trust that God remained faithful even when Michael could not feel divine presence providing confirmation that experience usually offered previously.

Two years after the dryness began, Michael could not identify exactly when it ended because the transition happened so gradually that no single moment marked the shift definitively. He still did not experience the emotional intensity that had characterized his early years of faith, but he had learned something more valuable than emotional highs could ever teach about God's faithfulness that transcends feeling, about faith's nature that commitment sustains when emotion withdraws, and about love's depth that continues serving even when reward feels absent temporarily. The quiet season had taught Michael that God's presence does not depend on his ability to sense it, that faith means trusting what he knows rather than what he feels, and that spiritual maturity involves loving God for who God is rather than for the experiences God provides temporarily. The dryness had felt like curse while enduring it, yet looking back Michael recognized it as gift that deepened his faith in ways that unbroken consolation would never have accomplished as effectively. He still preferred the seasons when God felt near tangibly, but he no longer feared the quiet times because he had learned through experience that absence of feeling never indicated absence of God, that dryness never meant abandonment, and that continuing to show up faithfully when it feels difficult builds the kind of faith that survives anything life brings eventually across the long journey toward the union with divine love that this life only begins but that eternity will complete fully.

Additional Wisdom for Navigating Spiritual Dryness

Let me offer some additional insights that can help you navigate your quiet season with greater peace and understanding. These perspectives have helped countless believers through similar struggles and can provide framework for interpreting your experience more constructively than despair would allow naturally.

First, recognize that spiritual dryness often coincides with significant life transitions or stress that depletes emotional resources generally. Major changes like career shifts, relocations, relationship struggles, health challenges, or caring for aging parents can drain the emotional energy that rich spiritual experiences require accessing naturally. This does not mean that God has abandoned you or that your faith has failed, but rather that your human capacity for feeling anything deeply may be temporarily diminished through exhaustion that circumstances create unavoidably. In such cases, being gentle with yourself and maintaining simple practices like brief prayers or lectio divina may serve you better than demanding intense spiritual experiences that current capacity cannot sustain realistically. Organizations like Contemplative Outreach offer resources on contemplative prayer practices that work well during dry seasons when traditional approaches feel overwhelming or unproductive.

Second, consider whether your understanding of God's presence has been too narrow, focused exclusively on emotional warmth or peace while missing other ways that divine presence manifests through your life consistently. God's presence operates through conscience that guides moral decisions, through relationships that provide support and challenge growth, through beauty that moves you aesthetically, through justice work that aligns with divine purposes, and through countless other channels beyond emotional feelings during prayer or worship exclusively. Expanding your awareness to recognize God's presence through these diverse expressions can help you realize that God has not actually been absent but rather present in ways your previous framework did not recognize adequately.

Third, examine whether certain theological beliefs might be contributing to your distress unnecessarily. For instance, if you believe that constant emotional closeness to God represents the only normal or acceptable state for mature Christians, then any dryness will seem like catastrophic failure rather than normal spiritual rhythm. However, if you understand that spiritual life includes seasons of consolation and desolation, closeness and distance, emotional richness and dryness, then you can navigate these variations with greater equanimity through recognizing them as normal rather than as indicating something wrong fundamentally. Resources from The Gospel Coalition and Desiring God can help you develop more biblically balanced theology around spiritual experience that relieves unnecessary pressure to feel certain ways constantly.

When to Seek Additional Support

While spiritual dryness represents normal territory in Christian life that most believers navigate successfully through the practices I have described, certain situations warrant seeking additional support beyond personal spiritual disciplines alone. Let me help you discern when reaching out for help becomes important rather than optional.

If spiritual dryness accompanies significant symptoms of depression including persistent sadness, loss of interest in activities you normally enjoy, changes in sleep or appetite, difficulty concentrating, feelings of worthlessness or guilt, or thoughts of self-harm, please consult a mental health professional immediately. These symptoms indicate clinical depression that requires professional treatment through therapy and possibly medication, not just spiritual intervention exclusively. Mental health conditions and spiritual experiences can overlap without being identical, and treating one appropriately does not diminish the other's importance or reality.

If the dryness persists for many months or years without any sense of movement or growth, and if you feel increasingly despairing about ever reconnecting with God, consider meeting with a trained spiritual director who specializes in helping people navigate difficult spiritual terrain. Spiritual directors differ from counselors or pastors in that they focus specifically on your relationship with God and on discerning how God might be working in your life through various experiences including dryness. Organizations like Spiritual Directors International can help you find qualified spiritual directors in your area who can walk with you through this season with wisdom gained from training and experience.

If your faith community responds to your honest sharing about spiritual dryness with judgment, simplistic advice, or pressure to pretend everything is fine, consider seeking out a different community or at least finding some individuals within or beyond your current church who can provide more understanding support. Not all Christian communities understand spiritual formation equally well, and some operate primarily from frameworks that view all spiritual difficulty as failure rather than as normal developmental territory. You need companions who can validate your struggle while also encouraging faithfulness, not people who either dismiss your experience or make you feel defective for having it.

Living With Mystery and Trust

Ultimately, spiritual dryness invites you into deeper relationship with the fundamental mystery of faith itself, which involves trusting what you cannot see, continuing when you cannot feel, and believing despite absence of confirmation that certainty demands receiving regularly. This invitation may feel more like loss than gift initially, yet throughout Christian history, mature believers have consistently testified that their most significant spiritual growth occurred during seasons of dryness rather than during periods of emotional abundance that required less faith to sustain.

The quiet season teaches essential lessons that you will need for the rest of your spiritual life:

• That God's reality does not depend on your ability to feel divine presence constantly. Just as other people exist whether or not you currently sense their presence, God remains faithful whether or not your emotions confirm that faithfulness moment by moment.
• That commitment sustains relationship more reliably than emotion does over the long term. Marriages survive not through maintaining constant romantic feelings but through choosing faithfulness when feelings fade temporarily, and spiritual life operates similarly through seasons that vary considerably emotionally.

As you continue navigating your quiet season, remember that you walk in company with faithful believers across centuries who have discovered that God meets us not only in emotional richness but also in dryness, not only in light but also in darkness, not only in answers but also in questions, and not only in presence that we feel but also in faithfulness that we trust despite what we cannot sense immediately. The journey through spiritual dryness is difficult, but it need not be faithless or hopeless when approached with the wisdom that mature Christians have developed through their own struggles with seasons when God felt distant despite their sincere devotion and continued practice.

Resources for further exploration of spiritual dryness and growth include works by Richard Foster, Dallas Willard, Ruth Haley Barton, and other spiritual formation writers who address these themes with theological depth and pastoral sensitivity. Their books, available through InterVarsity Press and other publishers, can provide companions for your journey through the quiet season toward the deeper trust that God invites you into through this challenging but ultimately formative experience.