One of the severest punishments God can inflict upon people is to withdraw His presence from them. This is the essence of Hell.
Yet when God did this to His people in Jeremiah’s day, they didn’t even notice. They had become so disoriented to God and so dependent upon other
Gods, they never cried out to God, even when they experienced hardship. God expressed dismay that even after all He had done to reclaim His people’s attention, they still refused to cry out to Him.
How tragic when we grow so alienated from God that even calamity and pain does not drive us to our knees. How pitiful when we grow so accustomed to living without the Holy Spirit’s work in our life that we don’t even notice when He withdraws His manifest presence from us. When a people degenerate to that point, all that is left is judgment.
We live in a day when our nation is experiencing the withdrawal of God’s hand. Disasters and crises are commonplace. Human suffering is epidemic. Yet even God’s own people refuse to cry out to Him for deliverance. Instead we look to government agencies or financial institutions to rescue us. We turn to every other deliverer but God. What will it take for God’s people to cry out to Him, once more?