Doing a Lot for God but Don't Feel Close to Him?

Sunday, James Drake preached Leaving a Legacy on Genesis 5, the genealogy everyone skips. One line he said about his own week has been following me around ever since. — Jeff Reed

“I’m doing a lot for God. I’m just not sure I’m with Him.”

If that sentence lands a little too cleanly, Church, you’re not the only one.

I’ll go first. I run live production for a living. My world is run sheets, cue lists, countdown clocks. I measure a week by what got done. Cameras cut clean, audio stayed up, the stream never dropped. Boxes checked.

And I can run that same operating system on my faith without even noticing. Serve the team. Answer the text. Show up Sunday. Volunteer again. Good things, all of it.

So why does it sometimes feel like I’ve been near God all week and never once actually with Him?

James named it out loud

On Sunday, James didn’t leave this as a theology lesson. He confessed it. He told us about a little girl who wandered into his office mid-week and asked whether he ever actually hears God. And her question exposed something he was already feeling in a crowded week.

So much of my life, he said, feels like I’m doing things for God rather than being with God.

I about came out of my seat. That’s the felt need, isn’t it. Not a crisis. Not a scandal. Just the quiet, low-grade distance of a person who loves Jesus and serves the church and still couldn’t tell you the last time it felt like friendship.

The chapter of tombstones

Then James took us somewhere I never would have looked for an answer. A genealogy.

Genesis 5 is a chapter of tombstones. The same words fall like a bell, over and over. He lived, he had children, and he died. Lived and died. Lived and died. Eight times.

And then one man breaks it. “Enoch walked with God, and he was not, for God took him” (Genesis 5:24).

Not worked for God. Not built for God. Not ran himself ragged for God.

Walked with Him.

Busy is not the same as close

Here’s the part I had to sit with.

Walking is a slow word. You don’t sprint a walk. You keep pace with somebody, in step, headed the same way, close enough to talk. And Genesis says Enoch did that for three hundred years. Through diapers and dishes and whatever the ancient version of a crowded inbox was. Ordinary days, walked with God.

Nobody put up a statue for Enoch’s productivity. Scripture tells us almost nothing else about him. It didn’t need to. The walk was the life.

And I think a lot of us have quietly swapped the walk for the workload. We assumed that if we just did enough for God, closeness would show up as a byproduct. It doesn’t. You can be busy with God or busy away from Him, and from the outside the two look almost identical. Same calendar. Same volunteering. Totally different week.

So what are we actually after?

Let me ask the question under the question.

When you serve this hard, what are you hoping to get? Peace? A sense that you’re okay? The feeling that God is finally pleased with you?

James pointed us to one line in Hebrews. God “rewards those who seek him” (Hebrews 11:6). And then he was careful about what that reward is not. It’s not health, wealth, and an easier life. Pray harder, check the mailbox, cash the blessing. That’s not the deal.

The reward is Him. When you seek God, what you get is God. The Friend who promised He’d never leave.

Which flips the whole thing on its head. All that doing I’ve been using to earn a sense of closeness? He was never charging admission. He was the thing I was too busy to sit down with.

I don’t have a formula for you

I won’t hand you five steps. That would just be one more list, and the list is half the problem.

But I’ll tell you what I’m doing this week. I’m trying to stop producing closeness and just be with Him for a few honest minutes a day. Not to accomplish anything. Not to report back. Just to walk a little, in step, like Enoch did across three hundred unremarkable years.

Turns out being with God isn’t one more task on the list. It’s the one thing the list was quietly crowding out.

Where’s your doing-without-being?

So let me ask you what I’ve been asking myself.

Where have you been doing a lot for God lately without actually being with Him? The serving that’s gone cold? The quiet time that turned into a quota? The prayer that sounds more like a status update than a conversation?

What if He’s not asking you to do more at all?

If any of that is you, don’t carry it alone, and please don’t fix it alone. Grab somebody at Christchurch this Sunday, or send our team a prayer request this week. Let’s take the next step with Him together… not another mile logged, just a walk, with the One who’s been waiting the whole time.

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