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When Have You Felt Ignored by God?

Forget that whole one-set-of-footprints-on-the-beach-that's-when-I-was-carrying-you bit. That's a cute story, and sure, parables are meant to instruct and get us thinking about the broad reach of God in our life, but let's get real: we've all felt God's complete and total abandonment. Yes, we're interested in what you learned by getting on without God, but we're even more interested in what was happening when you realized that--for whatever reason--God wasn't there for you.

When Have You Felt Ignored by God?

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After years of trying to get pregnant my husband and I finally has our prayers/wishes answered. We got pregnant with not one baby, but twins. Sadly they didn't make it even two months. After the miscarriage I lost ALL faith in a christian God. I personally couldn't accept that there was a higher power that would do this to me. I hit rock bottom, and soon I started learning about other religions. I found one that resonated with me. This particular religion wasn't something I thought I'd go for, but honestly all their beliefs were things I already believed in. My family wasn't raised religious, but we did have our own personal beliefs and they were strong. I don't feel that I need to name what my religion is, because I believe its a personal journey. One that I hold close to my heart.

Everyday I think of what could have been. Everyday is a battle. However, everyday I remind myself of the silver linings in life, no matter how small and I get through. One of which is that if you lose your "God" It's not the end of the world. It just might be putting you on a path to find the right God for you!

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When I feel the most ignored or abandoned by God its usually after some great trial. I have learned to continue in the faith and wait for my answer. But that lesson learned was and in some ways still is being taught.

Almost 2 years ago I left the the church that I had been attending and serving for a pretty long while. Church politics took full view over the actual reason for being there, and I couldn't understand why someone so loving and gracious could ever allow his own followers to be the most argumentative and indecisive people ever.

Rather than become like those excusing the destructive behavior of others and more importantly themselves, I dropped off the map. I lived a life that was not a testament of God and His grace; I lived godless.

The funny thing about that was everything I did was in the hopes of being able to fulfill my desires for tranquility and inner wholeness. I did all sorts of mind altering drugs and drank til the sun came up. All in the hopes of being at peace.

But even that was short lived. Eventually the people that I surrounded myself with disgusted me (perhaps because they were an image of what I was), and I hopped on a bus to Pittsburgh. I thought this would be my great escape. A way for me to reset my life. And it only took a few months for me to realize that God was and has always been there with me, He was just silent. I say that because by His grace in my life I was spared from so many dangerous situations while I lived lawless. I was looked after and cared for because he promises that. Without any problems I was able to find a place to stay and a job pretty quickly in my new hometown. And because He desired me to have a real relationship with him outside of the norm, He has lead me to study monastic life with a modern twist that's a partnership with the seminary around the corner from my house.

Many of us will realize His presence in different ways, but my way is just by seeing patterns. I look back through my own history and am able to see just where God was at work. And if I follow that path I can see the lessons which were brought about from those times. I also believe that God confirms his presence in quirky ways, like me moving a block away from the seminary that I would later attend. But so often we get wrapped up in our days that we fail to recognize the truth that He was with us all the while, whether we believe it or not.

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When at my weakest, I do wonder if he has turned his back on me.

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all the time. prayer is like calling a friend that you know never calls you back

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God ignored me when my mom died. Why should a 35 y.o. woman with 2 kids die? It wasn't her time. She died 2 weeks after I got confirmed (a time where Catholics embrace religion the most). I lost my faith knowing "God" was not going to do anything for me. I would have to do it all myself. I did. I also know the satisfaction of believing in myself. Not believing in a proxy for believing in myself.

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When I heard my daughter yelling down the hospital corridor that my 4y.o. grandson was dead. We knew he was going to die his body rejected the organ. I lost God that day.

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I have felt like God has ignored me most of my life or hasn't been there at all. I guess I have learned that I don't have much faith in anything. Maybe that is why God isn't there for me...?

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the real question is when havent you? I feel most people blame their god ignoring them when they didnt or dont want to take responcability for themselves

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I don't think there is such a thing as a God - the all mighty ruler over our lives, hopes and dreams. I view this life more like a possibility for me to take different chances and set my own goals and reach them. Life is a joyride which you either enjoy or get sick of and try not to get too involved in it. You can only feel as crappy as you set out things to be. I like a quote by someone I don't remember who though "If it is not good, it is not the end".

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I have before. I think everyone has at one point in their life or another. But, really, He never ignores us, we just don't always get the response we'd like.

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Feeling abandoned by God caused me to re-think and re-evaluate what it means to have faith - what it means to be spiritual - WHY I choose to pursue a spiritual path. It helped me to look again at the fear-based beliefs of my Christian experiences and to see how deeply ingrained some of them still were. It helped me to step again toward understanding that faith/spiritual practice is not a reward system. I still struggle, but ultimately my spiritual practice is stronger. I have learned to look within rather than without. I do not believe in hell - and I don't really believe in heaven - not in the Christian sense of the word. Feeling abandoned by God/Creator/Great Spirit - whatever label you choose to apply - helped me to find the center again.

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I was raised in a non-religious house. We would give thanks (to no one in particular) for our food, and that was about it as far as my religious education went. When I was a sophomore in high school, one of my friends recruited me for his baptist youth group. I loved the new group of very friendly, accepting friends, and was surprised to see a lot of the "cool" kids from my school there.

I got super into the whole shebang for about 6 months. As only a teenager can, I changed my entire worldview to accord with the one preached by our youth minister, and enforced by the judgement and gossip of all my new friends. The friends I had before, and again after, I was briefly a JF later told me how uncomfortable it was to watch me do mental gymnastics in order to attempt to give a presentation that, as dictated by my new belief structure, denounced stem-cell research, without contradicting my deeply-held enlightenment/rationalist values.

My affair with organized religion ended abruptly at my first ever youth camp. I had been troubled by the fact that even though everyone around me seemed to FEEL God, raising their hands and crying and whatnot during services, I definitely felt nothing. In the weeks before the retreat I tried my hardest to establish some sort of connection with the divine. I prayed so hard. I genuinely reached out with my heart and BEGGED for the touch of god's love. I truly felt everything that my youth pastor said I was supposed to feel. But I got nothing back.

I knew what I was waiting for, because I had experienced it once while meditating in a meadow in the high sierras, and nothing that happened in church was even close to close. The final night of youth camp, I was looking around the room, and nearly everyone was bawling, holding their hands up, dropping to their knees, etc., in response to the service. I again wondered what was wrong with me that I couldn't feel a thing.

I felt ignored by god. I had given him everything he asked for. I had stepped down out of my skeptic's comfort zone and allowed myself to bathe in the bottomless waters of uncritical belief. In spite of my most deeply-rooted impulses, I had briefly incorporated something that is quite obviously unreal into a world-view that otherwise stands on a foundation built of personal experience. In return I got silence. The cold shoulder.

Wait a second! Wasn't it just 6 months ago that there was no shoulder? Did I ever notice its absence? No. So why was I stressing over its temperature?

It hit me like a ton of bricks, and all of a sudden the whole scene was so hilariously absurd. In an instant the wailing faces were no longer in communication with their creator. They were just kids from my school, trying desperately to belong to another clique.

If there is a god, I'm glad he ignored my pleas for attention. I don't like the person I was becoming during those 6 months, and I feel like I dodged a bullet in quickly realizing that I don't fit in with the faithful.

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I think God is big enough to not be worried that I'm ignoring (insert pronoun).

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I didn't realize it when I was yet instilled with the doctrines of God and religion I learned at religious school, but always. Always God hasn't been there for me. When asked in Hebrew school probably around third grade, when I feel God, I didn't come up with one true thing. Needless to say, now I don't believe in God... I believe in myself and making my happiness and life become what I want it to be. If the bad happens, sure it has happened and will continue to happen, I just need to bear on. This doesn't mean I am being ignored by God.

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The God? yes

The Goddess...she's always been there.

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Every time I pray. I feel like I am just talking with m y eyes closed. I ask him to watch over me and keep my dog and my Grandma and My friends up there safe, and I feel like nothing has changed since I have been asking him these things.

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The first time I felt ignored by God was when I was in third grade, playing Super Street Fighter 2. Even then, I wasn't so sure I was being ignored. I came from a godless (yet superstitious) household. Yet, for whatever reason, the idea of God existing compelled me. And as cheesy as it may sound, in spite of my atheistic Buddhist upbringing, I kinda always felt like God was around. Anyway, back to the video game. The first time I prayed was while I was up against Sagat. It was simple childish prayer. "God, if you really do exist, please let me beat Sagat, then Bison after that." Right after the prayer, I fought against Sagat. Then lost. Then lost again. Again and again, I lost. I can't remember how many times I lost, but I hit a point where I threw down my controller and threw a tantrum, using a whole lot of cuss words. I even recall saying, "God, f- you! f- you! GAH!!" or something along those lines. oh yeah, replace f- with the real word, because I was a thug, playa (well half seriously, I was poor and heavily influenced by my much older cousin who was raised in the hood in Oakland).

Anyway, I told myself that God didn't really exist, because how could God let such a horrible thing happen to me, to allow me to lose to Sagat after asking Him specifically to beat that stupid video game character. I mean His existence to me was on the line! So at the ripe old age of eight, I decided to get more sophisticated with my answers as to why God was such a jerk (well mainly, to prove to the world that God isn't real). Not sure why it was the most natural path, but I got into philosophy. I started reading about the Greco-Roman greats, like Plato and Aristotle, then worked my way up toward modern and post-modern thinkers. Sadly enough, I didn't find anything compelling enough to prove to me, much less to move me to prove to the world that God isn't real. I learned about dark caves and light, perfect circles, the original thinker who was famously attributed as the man who came up with the "why? why? why?" thought process, and even about truth being a woman. Yet nothing was compelling enough. Nothing held up with perfect proof. Just great ideas clothed in nice logic and reason. In fact, after 9 or so years of searching, I was more compelled that He was real. So at the riper old age of 17, I raised up my hands to receive God, and felt an undeniable feeling that He was there. It was probably not just a feeling, but a everything-makes-sense-right-now kind of feeling/thought. I'm a 27 grownup now, with a wonderful wife roughly 18 weeks pregnant. And though I've accepted Jesus to "mess" with my life (yeah, throw eggs at me now, since I said Jesus, and everyone has a problem with Christians (well so do I)) ten years ago, I still constantly search and question, and I often pray feeling ignored by God. But on the flip side, I get epiphanies where the thoughts don't make sense without God. And beauty (natural, scientific, artistic, etc.) still moves me like candy moves a child.

Anyway, not saying it should be obvious that God exists. There's a reason why so many can conclude God does not exist while just as many others can conclude the contrary. And depending on your sources, you can think either (or both) groups give crappy excuses for either position.

But if you're perfectly honest with yourself, and of the possibility. Go ahead, and try praying. If you're lucky, it'll consequently lead to you throwing a tantrum, cussing up a storm, telling God to go to proverbial hell. And if you're even more lucky, you'll end up on a pretty awesome journey, touched.

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Every Sunday

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I went to a christian high school (recruited for the football program) and there all I saw was people confident in their faith while I was still searching for who knows what. When I felt "ignored by god" it was because i just could not bring myself to believe in one. No matter what I did or who I surrounded myself with faith never came to me. I think its that idea, when a person cannot bring themself to believe is when they fell the most ignored. It also becomes the basis for exestentialism the idea that once the base idea of god is taken away what does our existence become?

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I assume that we are talking about the Judeo/Christian God of Abraham, Jesus Christ thing. I can say that after 30 years of being a Bible Reading, God Loving individual I have all sorts of feelings. When i was a teenager I felt emotional and very intimate with God, When I was very young I felt distant but hopeful and protected by this God. When I was early 20's i felt constantly ignored and unheard and forgotten. In the ministry of the church, I felt sickened by God. and in my children I feel the beauty of God. I think that my feelings are meaningless and change with the wind. My decisions will stay on a course of a biblical world view, but I expect very little from God himself. I do what I can and I ask for help. I don't however look to see if that help was actually provided. Its all pretty crazy, but it stays constantly interesting :)

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I'm not hardcore into the Christian scene, but I do believe in God & when my mom gets the sudden urge to reconnect with God, we go to a Baptist church. I feel like a lot of the times my prayers aren't always answered in a way I expect. But to be fair, I don't keep in touch with Him as often as I should. However, even when I'm frustrated I feel like He can hear me & is listening even after long periods of silence.

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I felt ignored by God this last summer. I lost my job, my house and went into bankruptcy. My wife lost her job and then after seven years of trying to have kids she got pregnant. We were really happy, despite being very worried about how we would make it all work. Then on the day when we went to see the ultrasound pictures of our baby, we found out that the fetus had stopped growing at 5 weeks. It was extremely difficult watching my wife crying in the ultrasound room. We were devastated, to say the least. We took some time to heal and eventually my wife found another job. I decided that at 38 years old I needed to go back to school, because my industry had become completely obsolete. My wife got pregnant again. Then one day she called me on the way home from work and said she was bleeding. I got to see the miscarriage this time in the bottom of the toilet. We were both really down and upset. It had been a really difficult summer and we both questioned why all of this was happening. I felt completely lost and wasn't sure where to turn. Somehow we made it through. It wasn't until months later that I realized that it was because of God that I survived those difficulties. No one ever said God was going to fly down from heaven and give us a bowl full of cherries. Life is difficult. Nothing is handed to you in life. You can choose to go it alone or you can take the hand of God. I don't believe that God is never there for us. We may decided to go it alone, or life may get really hard, but God is there, it's up to us to decide if we want his help or not.

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I think when one feels further or even ignored by "God" they feel detached from their conscience because of our ever-changing routine lives. It's a way to to our half of the work. it's 50/50

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You learn more from your trials than your successes. This is how God teaches us.

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He has ignored me countless of times but I still believe him. Blind faith which I've been taught ever since I was young.
The one time I actually wanted something from God was when I wanted him to kill my grade 7/8 teacher. Never happened.

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Think about this:
The helicopter carrying Stevie Ray Vaughan and friends
*(just for lack of a better example, o.k.?)
Now, if God ignored that, who the $#@% am I to think I'd even register as a
bright enough blip on some cosmic radar to qualify as something to ignore?
Please...

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When I was a Catholic, I constantly felt ignored by God. When I discovered Paganism, that stopped. I began seeing God all around me, rather than looking skyward and praying to an old man in a White Beard. Works for some, just not me.

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I don't think it's that we're "ignored by God". I think we're just ignoring ourselves. We need to stop viewing this "god" and a separate entity because then we'd feel like he's always ignoring us

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It's why I'm an atheist. Why would He just let things sprawl out uncontrollably like this? I'm a huge fan of spirituality, searching for meaning and carving out a purpose in life... but I just can't accept that an all knowing, ever present and forever loving God would let the world pan out in the horrific way it has.

But meh, maybe that's just me.

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Aha....many times -.-"

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Often- sometimes to often to mention. :)

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what?

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I feel that asking one omnipotent God to take care of everything is asking too much; it's too singular. Rather, if I feel the abandonment of a particular aspect of God (or to put it in polytheistic terms, a particular god) I find it productive and even comforting to ask: which god is asking for something now? Which god is demanding attention and care? What face of God, when honored and contemplated, will teach me something in this moment?

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No, God is there. He has a plan. Whatever happens in your life is part of His plan. So he can never ignore you.

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I went through the desert for about 7 years. I had put my faith and identity in an human idol and that idol was taken away from me. It was a nightmare of hating God, killing God, ignoring God, disbelieving in God, feeling abandoned by God - fed by fear, pain, and massive amounts of alcohol. I very nearly didn't survive. I didn't want to survive. But I finally came to the end of myself and my hatred. What did I feel? I didn't care as long as I had a drug (alcohol) to numb me out and the past to fuel the hate. What did I learn? I don't do life well without the love of God in my life. And always be on the lookout for creating false idols. I still can lean that way, and must always be awae.

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I've found that most often when I've felt ignored by God it was because I was the one who had walked away.

It's interesting how we don't want God "interfering" in our lives or stepping in to "fix" things when we're off exploring our own will or greater glory; but let happen out there in a field of our own by choice and it's all, "Where is God now? I'm just so abandoned! God just doesn't love me.".

It's a bit like a spoiled child complex where we think we can do what we please but when our choices freely made lead to disaster it's the parents' fault for not following us around to auto-rescue us from our own freedom/self determination.

We want the freedom when we're having fun; then cry for mommy/daddy to come take charge when our own choices lead to folly. And if they don't, they don't love us.
The number one reason for getting upset at God . . . is because God didn't follow our directions!

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The moment 9/11 happened. I am now an atheist.

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I think feeling this means you are missing the point.

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The time that stands out the most was when I went in to see a priest in an effort to try and strengthen my faith. He didn't say these words to me but this is what I heard, "f*ck off, the pews are full and the baskets are heavy" I'm pretty sure he didn't actually say that but that is what I took away as I decided upon a path of expressing my wrath on God the same way He expresses His wrath on others; by not expressing love.

It took me a while to learn that responding to expressed love is as important as transmitting it, so if I wasn't doing my part, it was just like a sound wave being expressed outwardly with nothing to reverberate against.

I feel most abandoned by God when I empathise with others who need Him and can't see, feel or hear Him but then I realise I am belittling Him by trying to project a humanity into Him which just isn't realistic. I'm here to fulfill that role on His behalf so whenever I think, "Where the heck are You? Someone needs You!"...well...that's my job. Stop yapping' and start doin'!

I don't succeed at most things I try to do but every once in a while it happens...and when it does...it gives me the desire to want to do it again, no matter how many times I fall first.

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I feel ignored when I ignore him.

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Never!

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when i didn't get a paying job for almost a decade. But there are things i learned during that time.

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God is never there for me because he doesn't exist so I don't feel ignored. I feel empowered that I am responsible for my own success and failure in life.

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I've always felt that God didn't give 2 flyin' f***s about me until recently, when I realized that he was always there. I just didn't...I didn't realize how worse that things could of turned out. Like when my dad damn near beat me to death when I was 9, I could have lost my ability to talk, could have been paralyzed, but none of that happened. I'll just feel a little numb on my right side for the rest of my life. Or when I got shot when I was 16. Could have busted my fermal artery and bled to death, but nah. Now I just walk around with a cane. Out of all the times I've been shot at, only been hit once. Stabbed around 7 times and jumped countless, and I'm still here. I used to think I was just hard to kill, nah. I could die tomorrow easily, Now I just feel that God but me here for a reason, and I feel lucky that I know what that reason is. I'm only 22 years old but I feel so agradecido. So thankful.

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I am amazed and horrified that people can completely ignore themselves,
I quite enjoy that aspect of what I call god that is my portion of the generic one made up by my whole species.
And I feel very sorry for those deluded enough to desire and create an external authoritarian sky daddy , because the edifice must crumble and crack, and the creaking is what gives them the feeling you mention, of being ignored....

If this happens to you I hope you take the opportunity to join us in the sunlit lands free of any of those delusions.- It really is a much happier place.

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I don't feel like he ignored me, I just feel like I'm not holding up my half.

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I believe there is no god so how can i be ignored by nothing

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Define "God."

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You know, despite my constant questioning of belief and my outright shunning of religion, I do not ever feel like God has abandoned me or ignored me. Maybe He's not real. Maybe He is. I don't know and it doesn't matter to me. The main thing is that I feel connected to something out there int he universe. I don't know what it is but I feel very connected to it.

In short, then, my answer is "no".

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I have FELT God's absence many times in my life, but I've never "realized that God wasn't there for me" Because He was with me. look in the in the book of 1 Samuel- according to biblical history people have struggled with thier feelings a long time before modern influence kicked it. The Israelites completely turned away from God after a huge tradigity, they felt as if God had completely abandoned them. But in reality God was waiting for them to come back.

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