What Do You Do When You Can’t Hear God?

This isn’t a teaching post. It’s not filled with clever turns of phrase or bullet-point answers. It’s a question. And not a light one.

What do you do when you can’t hear God?

I’m not talking about questions of right or wrong—those are easy. Open your Bible and you’ll find clarity. But what about the daily questions that shape your future? The ones that keep you up at night?

Questions like:

What job should I pursue?

Why am I on this planet?

How should I use my gifting?

And then the deeper question underneath it all: God, are You still speaking to me at all?

I knew from a young age that I was made to teach and encourage others. I didn’t just like it—I came alive in it. I listened well. I showed up when people were hurting. I opened the Scriptures in a way that made others feel seen and loved. For a long time, that calling had a name: pastor.

And then I fell.

I stepped away from ministry in the wake of that failure. I thought the heartbreak I was feeling was just the loss of identity. And maybe it was, at first. But that’s not what lingers.

The real ache is this: If I was made for that, what now?

I’ve worked in the private sector for six years. I’ve had some success, even made more money than I did in ministry. But I’ve never felt home. It’s like I’m using tools I was never meant to wield, building something that isn’t mine.

I’ve chased new opportunities—followed rivers that promised life—but each one dried up eventually. So I moved on to the next, only to watch that one do the same.

Sometimes I feel like a nomad. Gifted but unsure what to do with it. Called, but to what, I don’t know.

So I do what any of us would do:

I ask.

I pray.

I listen.

And I hear… nothing.

No miraculous sign.

No voice from heaven.

No divine appointment to show the way.

Just silence.

I’ve wrestled with why God doesn’t answer. Why this drought has lasted so long. Is it punishment? Is it purification? Is it just… life?

I don’t have an answer.

But I do know this: I’m not the first one to walk through this.

Scripture is full of people who begged for a word from God and got silence instead. Job. David. Elijah. Even Jesus on the cross.

The silence of God is not always absence. And it’s not always a sign you’ve done something wrong. Sometimes—though I don’t fully understand how—it’s part of how He forms us.

So what do you do when you can’t hear God?

You grieve.

You keep praying, even when it feels like talking to the ceiling.

You go to work.

You stay faithful.

You plant small seeds of obedience.

You cling to the sacraments.

You lean on community, even when you don’t feel like it.

You wait.

And you hold to this: the silence may be doing something in you that certainty never could.

If I ever stand behind a pulpit again—and maybe I will, maybe I won’t—I’ll speak from a place that only the wilderness can teach. Not from skill or confidence, but from having stayed faithful when there was no applause, no spotlight, and no clear direction.

Maybe that’s the real call: not to build a platform, but to be formed in the silence.

So today, I wait.