Read:
You can love God and still feel far from him. You can go to church every weekend and open your Bible every morning and feel like you're just going through the motions.
The church in Ephesus knew something about that. They worked hard and held up under pressure. From the outside, they looked like a healthy church. Then Jesus said, "But I have this complaint against you. You don't love me or each other as you did at first!" (Revelation 2:4, NLT).
They hadn't stopped serving God or believing in him. But somewhere along the way, doing things for God had replaced being close to him.
It can happen to you, too. Prayer turns into something you say before dinner, and Bible reading becomes one more box on your to-do list. Eventually you have all the habits of a relationship with God, but not much of a relationship itself.
Those habits are good—and they don't mean your faith is fake—but you may have just gotten so used to doing things for God that you forgot how to be with him.
So today, skip the polished prayer. Talk to God the way you'd talk to your closest friend, and tell him what's actually true for you. "God, I miss you." "God, I feel numb." The way back starts with showing up honest.
Pray: God, I don't know when it happened, but I miss you. I've been going through the motions, and I want something real again. Draw me back into a close relationship with you. Amen.