How Can I Feel Closer To God?

The answer might start with the people already around you

I think in order to answer this question, the best place to start is: How do we become closer with anyone? Building human relationships and building a spiritual closeness with God work the same way. All the same principles apply, just directed to God.

If your desire is to build a closeness with God, let’s talk about four key principles that help us build strong relationships with the people in our lives and that translate just as powerfully to our relationship with our Heavenly Father.

1. Honesty Builds Closeness

Being truly honest with ourselves and those we’re trying to build relationships with creates stronger bonds. Psychologist Arthur Aron’s research showed that real, reciprocal vulnerability is what generates closeness, not polished, surface-level conversation. When we open up, we invite others in.

In our relationship with God, this looks like prayer, not as a ritual checklist, but as a genuine personal conversation. Come to Him honestly, with everything you're carrying. And when repair and amends need to be made, you can, in humble prayer, repent and start anew.

John Gottman put it well: “The ability to repair after rupture is more important than never having conflict.” It’s not healthy in any relationship to tip-toe around our real concerns and feelings, especially not in our relationship with our Father in Heaven. True honesty through prayer and repentance will build that intimate bond and bring us closer to Him.

“Draw nigh to God, and he will draw nigh to you.” — James 4:8

2. Respond to Bids for Connection

John Gottman studied couples for decades and identified that small, everyday “bids for connection”, and whether partners turn toward or turn away from them , predicted relationship stability more accurately than how they handled big conflicts.

Think about the small bids your spouse gives you on a daily basis: a smile, a sigh, a hand reaching to be held, a kiss goodbye. Are we responding to those small moments with love and recognition? It is the same with our Father in Heaven. Are we noticing the small bids for connection that He reaches out to us with, and turning toward them?

Opening your heart to the voice of the Holy Ghost will help you recognize those moments. It is a skill, one developed through the daily practice of noticing and responding. The more you turn toward God’s small bids, the more natural that connection becomes.

3. Consistency Over Intensity

Many of us are waiting for an intense or miraculous interaction with God to prove that the relationship is real. And though those experiences do occur, it’s the small, steady, everyday acts that build the deepest bonds over time.

Daily spiritual practices like scripture study, prayer and sabbath day worship, cultivate far more closeness than waiting for lightning to strike. As Robert Waldinger of the Harvard Study of Adult Development describes it: treat your relationships like physical fitness. It only works if you keep practicing.

“For how knoweth a man the master whom he has not served, and who is a stranger unto him, and is far from the thoughts and intents of his heart?” — Mosiah 5:13

We come to know God the same way we come to know any person: through time spent together, through consistent attention, through showing up day after day.

4. Keep Showing Up

Relationships deepen when we choose to show up even when we'd rather not. Trust is built through reliability, not through perfect feelings.

Our emotions are ephemeral, often unreliable and fleeting. C.S. Lewis said it perfectly: “Faith is the art of holding on to things your reason has once accepted, in spite of your changing moods.” Our safest option is to place our faith and effort into a merciful and loving God, even when we don’t feel like it.

Here’s what I know from my own marriage: love is not a feeling you have every single moment of every single day. My husband is my greatest human relationship and there are still days he drives me completely up the wall. That’s not a sign something is broken. That’s just marriage. I’m reminded of a funny line from one of my favorite Rom Coms ‘How to Lose a Guy In 10 Days’: “I love you, Binky…but, I don’t have to like you right now.”

Real closeness isn’t built on perpetual warm feelings; it’s built on the daily decision to stay, to show up, and to remain loyal even when you don’t particularly feel like it. Our relationship with God works the same way. Faith isn't about certainty. It's about trusting that He is there even when you can't feel it.

Don’t Settle for Too Little

Thomas Merton wrote: “The biggest human temptation is to settle for too little.” Don’t settle for a distant relationship with God when something so much deeper is available to you. No meaningful relationship, whether human or divine, comes without intention. It grows through honest disclosure, consistent attention, and the willingness to keep showing up. Strong, close relationships take time and effort. So it is with our divine relationships.

It is my testimony that He wants a close relationship with you. He is not withholding Himself. He is reaching out every single day, waiting for you to turn toward Him.

“…He inviteth them all to come unto him and partake of his goodness; and he denieth none that come unto him, black and white, bond and free, male and female; and he remembereth the heathen; and all are alike unto God.” — 2 Nephi 26:33

References

Aron, A., Melinat, E., Aron, E. N., Vallone, R. D., & Bator, R. J. (1997). The experimental generation of interpersonal closeness: A procedure and some preliminary findings. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 23(4), 363–377.

Gottman, J. M., & Silver, N. (1999). The seven principles for making marriage work. Crown Publishers.

Lewis, C. S. (1952). Mere Christianity. Geoffrey Bles. (Faith quote from Book III, Chapter 11)

Merton, T. (as quoted in Forbes, August 4, 1980). “The biggest human temptation is to settle for too little.”

Vaillant, G. E. (2012). Triumphs of experience: The men of the Harvard Grant Study. Harvard University Press.

Waldinger, R. (2015, November). What makes a good life? Lessons from the longest study on happiness [TED Talk]. TED Conferences. https://www.ted.com/talks/robert_waldinger_what_makes_a_good_life_lessons_from_the_longest_study_on_happiness

The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. (2013). Book of Mormon: Another Testament of Jesus Christ. (Mosiah 5:13; 2 Nephi 26:33). The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.

The Holy Bible, King James Version. (James 4:8).