What to do if I don't feel God's presence in prayer. We will talk about how to get through this
dry spell, that maybe some of you are experiencing in your prayer life. Before we touch on this
topic, my name is Vlad. For those of you who are tuning in for the first time, I am a pastor of
HungryGen church, as well as I release books, and blogs, and audiobooks and all other stuff. And all
of that information is on my website, and all of this stuff is actually available free of charge.
Now concerning prayer, prayer is very important for every Christian. Every Christian cannot exist
without prayer. Prayer is like breathing. I mean you can't be a Christian without prayer. Prayer is
very important. But a lot of people have a hard time with prayer and some people don't know how
to pray, some people don't know what to say during prayers. And some people just hit this dry spell,
or honestly they don't feel anything for a very long time and they give up on prayer. I believe
if prayer is something that you experience God's presence in, you will be addicted to it, and it
will become consistent and you will be drawn to it, and it will not be a discipline, it will be
a delight. But a few things I want to share with you. Number one is that prayer is much about God
as it is about you. Many people think that prayer is about me feeling God. Have you ever thought
about the fact that prayers about God loving on you? Did you know that God loves you so much, it's
why He wants to have a relationship with you. If you were ever in love with somebody, you know like
you wanted to be with them because their presence made all the difference in your life. Being very
close to them made you feel so good. Did you know that God loves us more than any boyfriend would
ever love his girlfriend, that any wife will ever love her husband, any parent will ever be able to
love their child? God invites us into His presence because He actually loves us. That's huge.
So prayer is not just about you coming and feeling God. It's about God loving you so much He wants to
be with you. So it's less about you, more about Him. So don't think about this feeling that you
get from Him. What about God getting, I know this is not probably proper theology, what about God
getting a feeling from you? What about God getting a joy, delight and pleasure for you being in this
presence? Now it's not about you. Again, it's about Him. It's about bringing Him glory, honor
and joy. The other part is that prayer is as much about discipline as it is about delight. So many
people feel like that if prayer is a discipline, then it's bad. Like somehow God gets this like bad
vibe from us if we're coming in because we have to, versus we get to. Like sometimes prayer is a
discipline, and other times it's a delight. And so when for a season of your life it's a discipline,
don't think that you love God less because you kind of are pushing yourself to it. Your love
for God is not determined by how you feel, because God sees one thing about you, that sometimes we
don't realize, is that you're not just a spirit. You also live in a body and you have a soul, and
there's so many other components, external factors that are playing and affecting your feelings. It
could be your physical body. It could be a season that you're going through, certain trauma that
you're dealing with. And so just because you're grinding through it, it does not mean that you
don't love God and you don't have hunger for God. In fact it shows a lot about your discipleship,
if you're able to do the right thing for the right reason, as an act of discipline, until it becomes
a delight. Now if all you do is you pray out of discipline, not out of the delight. Then yeah,
there are certain things that we need to check. Probably you need maybe add some fasting into it
and really kind of experience that breakthrough. So you can get that relationship or get a
revelation about God's love and relationship that you have with Him, or there are things that need
to be tweaked and changed. But if for a season you go through discipline, it's completely fine. Now
another thing that I want to mention is that God doesn't just reward your breakthrough in prayer,
He rewards your prayer. In Matthew 6:6 Jesus says, "But you, when you pray, go into your room, and
when you have shut your door, pray to your Father who is in the secret place; and your Father who
sees in secret will reward you openly." I love the fact that Jesus says that God sees you in prayer.
Like so many times we don't feel God In prayer. If I could say, we don't see Him in prayer, and Jesus
says when you're in secret, He sees you. So take comfort in the fact that when you don't feel Him,
He sees you. When you don't see Him, He sees you, and not only He sees you, He says He will
reward you. That's crazy. Sometimes we go into prayer, we're so focused on experiencing God,
that we forget sometimes that God sees what we're doing, we're praying. We're not "feeling it,"
and God says, "I'm gonna reward you for showing up." Now we're not praying for the reward. Please
don't, don't take this the wrong way. Our motives are pure, and Jesus was very clear about that.
We're with pure motives. We're not doing it for people, nor are we doing it for the
reward. We're doing it for the relationship. But He promises that I know you're gonna do
it for a relationship, but I just want to let you know that I'm going to reward you still.
Because He's your Father, He loves you so much. I want to encourage you, when you don't see Him,
He sees you. I love the story in Genesis 16:13, where Hagar you know was running
from her mistress, Sarah. And the angel of God came to her, and he tells her, return back to
your mistress and submit to her. He's like you know, humble yourself and I'm gonna bless you.
And then at the end, Hager says this, "And then she called the name of the LORD who spoke to her,
You-Are-the-God-Who-Sees; for she said, 'Here I have seen Him who sees me.'" I love this,
because I think that's what happens a lot of times during prayer. We're actually not
seeing the One who sees us, we're not feeling the One that loves us. But if you linger long
enough and if you don't give up, you will see the One who sees you. You will have a reward
for praying in the secret place. Sometimes it happens in prayer, sometimes it happens later,
and because we don't see the connection between the reward and what we did, that drew God's
attention, we get discouraged. But don't give up, God is a faithful God. I love the fact that
Bartimaeus was blind and he couldn't see Jesus, yet Jesus saw Bartimaeus,
before Bartimaeus saw Jesus. And it's kind of like how we are sometimes in prayer. We could be blind,
in the sense that we're blind to the fact that God is with us. We're blind to the fact that,
somebody needs to hear that. We're blind to the fact that God is pleased with us.
We're blind on the fact that His love is with us, His presence is with us, because we don't feel it.
And Bartimaeus, though he couldn't see Jesus, I love this, the Bible says,
"He heard about Jesus." So I want to encourage you, when you don't feel the presence of God,
feed on the promises of God, feed on the Word of God. See Bartimaeus, when he couldn't see,
he heard. And a lot of people, what they do is they, when they don't feel God, they give up. They
get so discouraged, they're like, "Oh, that's it. God doesn't love me." Don't do that. "Oh,
that's it. I'm not gonna pray anymore." Don't do that. When you can't see, here. When you cannot
feel, feed yourself on God's promises. Tell your soul, "God is with me." David did that.
David talked to his soul. Why would he do that? Because you are not your soul, you are a spirit,
and so don't let your soul come up with all these conclusions. No. God's Word is true, not what you
feel. "Oh, but it's been a few months." It doesn't matter. It does not change the fact that God loves
you, and He sees you. He is with you. "Oh, but I don't feel Him." Then hear Him. If you
don't see Him, hear Him, and then time came when Jesus opened his eyes. And I believe that if you
stay with the Lord, stay with the promises of God, build your faith, feed your faith,
feed yourself on God's faithfulness, feed yourself on what God has done in your life, remind yourself
how good He's been. And if you have nothing in your life that reminds you of the goodness of God,
look at the cross, because that is the greatest declaration of God's love for each and every
one of us. For God so loved the world. Not that He healed you, not that He gave you a husband,
a job, or helped you to finish school, or gave you a ministry. It's that He gave His Son. That is a
confirmation. Not how you feel, not your mood. But God's act on the cross. Giving His Son is
the proof that He loves you. So if you can't see it right now, hear it. Feed your spirit,
feed your faith, feed on the faithfulness and the promises of God. Don't live on feelings,
and then feelings will come. But Bible says Bartimaeus saw, and then he followed. And I
believe in Jesus name, that you will come out of that dry spell, dry season and you will see the
One who sees you, because you're hearing the One you're not seeing. You're feeding on Him, even
though you're not feeling Him. Now, the Bible says in Hebrews 11:6 that without faith it's impossible
to please God, but he who comes to God must believe that He is, and He's a rewarder of those
who diligently seek Him. Man this has been huge in my prayer life. God rewards us, when we seek Him.
Sometimes we think that God will reward us, you know, right there when we find Him. People think
that if you seek God you will always find Him, but sometimes God will reward you for seeking
Him. God will bless the pursuit, God will bless the hunger. Blessed are those who hunger and
thirst for righteousness. It says of David, that I found the man who is after My heart. The Bible
doesn't claim to say David had God's heart, he was in pursuit. God wants you to be in pursuit. God
wants you to hunger. God wants you to thirst. But hunger, thirst, pursuit, it's not a cute feeling.
It's painful. Hunger is painful, seeking is not fun. It's intense. Being after something
is not easy, and God says, "For the very act of pursuit, seeking, pressing in. I'll reward you."
And sometimes you know how God rewards us? By letting us find Him. Now, I understand God is
not lost. I'm not trying to communicate that. God is with us, but you know that intimacy,
that closeness, that breakthrough, that experience of God. That my friend, is always available.
God delights in our pursuit of Him, as much as we delight in our experience of His presence. And so
I just really want to encourage you to feed on God's faithfulness, feed on His promises when
you don't feel His presence and don't give up. And don't think you don't love God, just because you
are enduring prayer, instead of enjoying prayer. There are seasons where we're in the spiritual
warfare, there are seasons where God is forming faith within us, He's developing endurance, He's
building us stronger in the spirit, and He can't do that if we always feel Him. And sometimes it's
a test. You know there was a time in the Bible, I think it was Hezekiah, that God says He withdrew
His presence or He withdrew Himself, to see what Hezekiah would do. And so don't fail the test, and
you know when you're taking the test in school, what happens when the teacher is silent? You know
the point is not to make a noise or make a big scene. It's to remember everything the teacher
taught you when the teacher was speaking. So begin to remember everything God has done, everything
God has said up to this point. And when you don't see Him, hear Him, when you don't feel Him,
feed on Him. But don't give up, because remember, He loves you. That's why He wants to spend time
with you. He's not punishing you by inviting you to prayer. This is not some kind of a rule or
ritual that you have to do. He's simply loves you, and go with that attitude. God is not lost, go to
be with Him. Don't just go looking for Him, but always pursue closer intimacy with Him, because
He loves that because it's an expression of our love for Him. Thank you for watching this video. I
hope this brought an encouragement to your prayer life. Hey share this with somebody. Let me know
in the comments below what stood out to you, as well as hit thumbs up to this video. And I want
to remind you that I do have a prayer e-course on Vlad school that you can take, and you can
take your prayer life to another level. As well as other videos that you can listen, watch, and read
on blogs as well to help you take your prayer life to another level. God bless you. Until next time.
Thank you.