This is Part 6 of the 16-part Kingdom of God series.
Why can we spend our days doing things for God and still struggle to simply be with him? For me, the answer was ministry. I could teach grace and still had very little intimacy with God.
I knew the language of relationship. But most of my life was built around being useful. Sitting with God with nothing to get done felt like wasted time. If I am honest, it also felt a little risky.
Table of Contents
When good ministry crowds out intimacy with God
I spent a year and a half in therapy. Somewhere in there I saw how much of my walk with God ran on performance. In one exercise, I imagined sitting on a couch with Jesus. On the coffee table in front of us were the things I wanted to be: a good husband and father, a faithful steward, a ministry leader whose work bore fruit.
For several sessions, I could not look at him. My eyes kept going back to the table. My therapist kept asking me to picture his face, and I couldn’t do it.
Eventually, I asked, “What do you want from me?”
In that imagined scene, he moved close, put his arm around me, and swept the items onto the floor. What I experienced him saying was simple: “Zach, I want you. I want a relationship with you. We will go do all of those things together. But first, I want you.”
Everything on that table was still good. Being a husband, a dad, a pastor. But I was so busy getting those things right that I couldn’t picture God wanting me without them.
Ministry made it hard to see. Working hard for God is easy to defend. I never asked if the work was a way to keep him at arm’s length.
The work has deadlines. People need answers. There is always a good reason to give the work the next hour. Sitting with God has no deadline and no checklist. I never decided to avoid him, and I kept picking the work anyway.
The God you preach and the God your body expects
I meant every word I preached about God’s generosity. I still came to him like he was waiting on better numbers. I told tired people he welcomes the weary, and I didn’t go to him tired myself.
Pressure showed me the gap. When things got hard, I reached for more work before I ever reached for grace. Being useful had become my ticket in.
Psychiatrist Curt Thompson describes a similar gap in The Deepest Place: someone can sincerely believe God loves them while struggling to experience that love. Good theology can hide that gap. Thompson’s opening chapter looks at how we receive love, in our bodies and in our relationships.
That does not make our feelings the final judge of God’s character. His faithfulness stands when we cannot feel it. Still, it is worth asking what we expect from him, especially when it doesn’t match what we say we believe.
In When the Story of Fear Shapes the Christian Life, I wrote about fear and scarcity. This one is about the work I hide in when being with God feels uncertain, because good work makes a good hiding place.
When service takes the place of being a son or daughter
Henri Nouwen helps me understand why that hiding place can feel so natural. In his teaching on belovedness, he describes the pull to build an identity around what we do and how others regard us. Ministry gives you both, and calls it faithfulness. Nouwen’s “Being the Beloved” sermon locates our identity in God’s love before our activity.
Nouwen calls it the first love. God loved me before anyone thanked me for anything. I need that love on the way into the work and in the middle of it.
That is harder than it sounds. Finished work tells me I did my job, while prayer gives me nothing to show, and I can’t impress my way into it.
Nouwen understood prayer as a repeated return to that prior love. In his teaching on prayer and the first love, receiving God’s love matters because human affirmation cannot bear the weight we put on it.
Taking a day off doesn’t fix this. I could rest from the work and still grade my standing with God by it. When being needed feels more solid to me than being loved, service has taken the place of being a son.
Then even faithful work comes with an unspoken request: let this be enough. From the outside it looks the same. Inside, I’m trying to earn a welcome Christ already gave me.
Why another book cannot do all the work of knowing God
Psychologist Todd Hall distinguishes the beliefs we can consciously explain from the relational expectations we bring with us, often without noticing them. His account of relational spirituality gives language to the gap between affirming God’s love and learning to trust him with ourselves.
That explains how I could write a good sermon on prayer and not pray. Sermon prep is something I can master, and bringing God my own disappointment is much harder.
Study matters. Scripture corrects our assumptions about God, including the ones we have learned through painful experience. But I can read a passage and keep God at a distance the whole time. Even my reading can turn into prep for someone else.
Paul prays that the church would “know the love of Christ that surpasses knowledge” (Ephesians 3:17–19, ESV). He asks for the Spirit’s strengthening so that believers, together, can comprehend Christ’s love more deeply.
I can teach that passage and still need what Paul is praying for.
Paul prays for a whole church, and the pastor is in it. I need people to pray for me. I don’t have to turn it into a sermon illustration afterward.
Christian spiritual formation includes this slow learning: bringing our actual lives into relationship with the God Scripture reveals. For me that means bringing him the things I usually leave out: the impatience, the disappointment I never prayed about, the need that embarrasses me.
What changes when ministry no longer has to prove your worth
Here is what changed for me. Criticism still needs a careful answer. A budget shortfall still needs a plan. Neither one tells me whether God wants me near.
I can admit a mistake now without building my defense first. A project can fail and I still have my place with God. I still own the failure, and I don’t face it alone.
My prayers got more honest. I used to pray about what a pastor ought to care about. Now I tell him I want credit, or that I resent an interruption, or that I’m disappointed in him.
Please don’t make this one more test to grade yourself on. Anxiety, fatigue, and spiritual dryness can have many causes. They deserve care and do not establish that someone has replaced God with ministry. Nor does growing trust remove every difficult feeling.
What changed is that I can be honest with God before the work is done. I can need him before I’ve made myself useful again.
The branch cannot supply its own life
Jesus gives this relationship a shape in John 15. Speaking to disciples who will bear witness to him, he says, “Abide in me, and I in you” (John 15:4–5, ESV). The branch bears fruit through its continuing life in the vine.
Fruit matters in this passage. Jesus speaks about obedience and love, about his words remaining in his disciples, and about the Father’s care. Abiding involves our whole response to him. It includes the costly faithfulness of continuing with him when obedience is difficult.
Yet the branch cannot become fruitful by becoming independent. There is no point at which the disciples become so competent at serving Jesus that they can draw their life from the service itself. Their dependence continues.
That one stings if you are used to being the helper. I got good at the work and bad at receiving. I preached dependence and treated my own need as an interruption.
Paul’s language of adoption offers another way to approach God. Christians have received the “Spirit of adoption as sons,” through whom we cry, “Abba! Father!” (Romans 8:15, ESV). The Spirit brings us before God as his children. Our access to the Father rests in Christ, and we learn to live from that belonging.
In Romans, that belonging comes with suffering, and in John, abiding comes with obedience. Neither one asks me to quit the work, and the welcome stays in the middle of it.
Beginning again with the God you have been serving
The experience in therapy did not finish this work for me. It helped me recognize something I had been able to hide inside good intentions. I could devote myself to serving God while struggling to believe he wanted a relationship with me apart from what I produced.
Seeing that hurt. I grieved how many years I’d treated God like a board I had to satisfy. It was also a relief to say it out loud.
Don’t turn this into another assignment. Start your next prayer with the distance you feel. Find a pastor or friend who will catch you when you start explaining yourself and heading back to work.
You don’t have to make it a meaningful moment. Some mornings it will feel ordinary and some mornings hard, so come anyway. You’re his kid.
There is a distance between the God we talk about and the God we know in practice. Intimacy with God often starts right there. Tell him about the distance. You don’t have to fix it first.
Questions about intimacy with God
What does intimacy with God mean?
Intimacy with God means knowing him as a person who wants a relationship with you and letting him know you as you are. It grows through prayer, Scripture and honest conversation with him about your life, including the parts that feel distant or unfinished.
Can ministry get in the way of intimacy with God?
Yes. Serving God is good work, and it can also become a way to stay busy around him without spending time with him. When your sense of worth depends on what you produce, prayer with nothing to get done can start to feel like wasted time.
What does the vine and branches passage teach about knowing God?
In John 15:4–5, Jesus describes himself as the vine and his disciples as the branches. A branch bears fruit because it stays connected to the vine, and the fruit of ministry depends on that same connection to Christ.
How can a busy ministry leader grow closer to God?
Start your next prayer by telling God about the distance you feel, without trying to fix it first. Ask a pastor or trusted friend to point it out when you start explaining yourself and heading back to work. Keep coming on the mornings that feel ordinary or hard.
Previous: Part 5: When the Story of Fear Shapes the Christian Life
Next: Part 7: Who You Are in the Kingdom: Identity as the Story God Tells About You
StoryQuest is a formation partnership for ministry leaders ready to explore the inner life beneath their leadership. If this distance feels familiar, you are welcome to explore it with us.
