Feeling Distant From God?
- 1 day ago
- 6 min read
Recognize the Warning Signs of Spiritual Drift
Check Engine: A Spiritual Diagnostic | Part One
Lessons from King Asa on misplaced trust, self reliance, and returning to God.
Listen to the episode: YouTube | Spotify | Apple Podcasts
Key Scripture: 2 Chronicles 16:12 NIV
Have you ever felt like something was off spiritually, but you kept moving anyway?
Feeling distant from God does not always begin with a crisis. Maybe life is still moving as usual. You may be in a season of win after win, and little by little, you have become comfortable handling things on your own. Or you may be under pressure, trying to fix what is in front of you without first bringing it before God. In either season, you are functioning, but you are no longer fellowshipping with Him the way you once did.
Sometimes God uses warning signs to show us that something beneath the surface needs our attention.
Check Engine: A Spiritual Diagnostic is an invitation to slow down, open our hearts before God, and ask, “What have I been ignoring?”
Think about the check engine light in a car. It may not tell you every detail of the problem, but it lets you know something needs to be checked. The light is there to warn us before a small issue becomes a bigger problem.
Spiritually, those warning signs can be mercy.
God uses conviction as one way to get our attention. His mercy does not expose us to condemn us. His mercy reveals what is off while there is still time to respond.
Lamentations 3:22-23 reminds us that because of the Lord’s great love, we are not consumed. His compassion does not fail. His mercy gives us room to turn back to Him.
His mercy keeps us.
His mercy warns us.
His mercy gives us time to respond.
The danger is that we can become so used to functioning that we stop noticing what is failing beneath the surface. We can keep going, keep serving, and still be spiritually worn down because we have ignored what God is trying to show us.
So let me ask you plainly:
What warning signs have you been ignoring?
Where have you felt strain or a growing reliance on your own strength? Have you been trying to fix something that God is asking you to bring to Him?
We cannot afford to ignore the light.
Lord, search our hearts today. Reveal the places where we have stopped relying on Your power and started relying on our own fixes. Give us the courage to pause, turn to You, and let You do the work only You can do. In Jesus’ name, Amen.
Let us look at the life of King Asa and what happened when he ignored a warning.
Checkpoint 1: Recognize the Warning Sign
King Asa’s story did not begin with failure. It began with faithfulness.
Second Chronicles 14:2 says Asa did what was good and right in the eyes of the Lord. He removed idols, called Judah to seek God, and led the people back to obedience.
When the Cushite army came against Judah, Asa did not rely on military strength. He prayed:
“Lord, there is no one like you to help the powerless against the mighty. Help us, Lord our God, for we rely on you” 2 Chronicles 14:11
Asa knew where his help came from, and God answered him.
Later, the prophet Azariah gave Asa a clear word from the Lord: “The Lord is with you when you are with him. If you seek him, he will be found by you” (2 Chronicles 15:2).
For a time, Asa responded well. Judah experienced peace, and the nation became strong.
But seasons of peace can sometimes make us forget the source of our strength.
It is easy to seek God when life feels urgent. Need has a way of bringing us to prayer. But when life begins to feel manageable, we can slowly replace dependence on God with dependence on ourselves.
That is often where the warning sign appears.
The warning sign is not always a major crisis. Sometimes it is a quiet drift.
We pray less. We stop seeking God first. We begin making decisions without asking Him for direction. We still know what to do, but we are no longer doing it with the same surrendered heart.
Before the engine fails, recognize the light.
Ask yourself:
What has changed in me? Where have I stopped relying on God the way I once did?
Checkpoint 2: Resist the Urge to Ignore It
By the time we reach 2 Chronicles 16, Asa is under pressure again.
Baasha, king of Israel, came against Judah and fortified Ramah. This was a serious threat because it blocked people from moving in and out of Asa’s territory.
Asa had faced pressure before. He had already seen what God could do when he relied on Him. But this time, instead of seeking the Lord, Asa turned to his own plan.
He took silver and gold from the temple treasury and sent it to Ben Hadad, king of Aram, to make an alliance.
The plan appeared to work. Ben Hadad attacked Israel, and Baasha stopped building at Ramah.
But the prophet Hanani came to Asa with a hard truth. Asa had relied on the king of Aram instead of relying on the Lord his God.
This is the part we cannot miss: not every plan that works is the plan God gave us.
Sometimes our warning sign is not the problem itself. Sometimes it is how quickly we stop praying. Sometimes it is how fast we reach for our own answer before we ask, “Lord, what do You want me to do?”
Pressure reveals where we place our trust.
When pressure hits, do we pause and seek God, or do we immediately begin building our own solution?
Checkpoint 3: The Diagnosis
The prophet reminded Asa of what he should never have forgotten. God had delivered him before when he relied on the Lord.
Then Hanani gave this powerful reminder:
“For the eyes of the Lord range throughout the earth to strengthen those whose hearts are fully committed to him.” 2 Chronicles 16:9
The diagnosis was misplaced trust.
Asa had a history with God, but somewhere along the way, his present dependence on God had weakened. The man who once prayed, “We rely on you,” began making decisions without first seeking the Lord.
Second Chronicles 16:12 shows us that even in Asa’s severe illness, he did not seek help from the Lord, but only from physicians.
This verse is not teaching that medical care is wrong. The issue is that Asa did not seek the Lord. Even in his illness, he continued in the same pattern of relying on everything except God.
His feet were not the only issue. His heart had drifted.
That is the warning for us. We can have a real history with God and still stop depending on Him in our present circumstances. We can remember what He has done before, yet lean more on people, money, plans, or our own understanding when life gets hard.
Let us allow God to search our hearts:
Lord, where have I misplaced my trust? What have I started leaning on more than You?Where have I stopped seeking You first?
The mercy of God is that He reveals what is off while there is still time to turn back. He warns us because He loves us.
That is the diagnosis: misplaced trust.
And that is also the invitation: turn back to the One who has always been faithful.
The Repair
Through Asa’s life, God has shown us that spiritual drift can begin quietly, pressure can expose what we trust, and misplaced trust can pull us away from seeking Him first.
This is not only Asa’s story. It is an invitation for us to pause and ask God what has shifted in us.
Just because life is still moving does not mean our hearts are healthy.
Just because we are functioning does not mean we are fully depending on God.
God invites us to respond to His warning. He corrects us because He loves us, and His mercy gives us room to turn back.
Psalm 139:23 says, “Search me, God, and know my heart.”
That is where repair begins.
Before we reach for another solution, let us stop and allow God to search us. Let Him reveal what we have been carrying alone, where we have relied on ourselves, and where our trust needs to return to Him.
Prayer Declaration
Lord, search me and know my heart.
I surrender what I have been trying to carry without You.
Help me make You my first response, not my last resort.
Renew my spirit, restore my dependence on You, and recenter my trust.
Reveal every place where I have leaned on myself more than I have leaned on You.
Thank You for loving me enough to warn me and call me back to You.
In Jesus’ name, Amen.
The garage is still open, friend.
In Part Two of Check Engine: A Spiritual Diagnostic, we will look at Eli, his sons, and the danger of tolerating what God has already shown us needs to be addressed.
Let us keep allowing God to search us, correct us, and restore what needs to be repaired.
Amen!