“God, you are my God;
I eagerly seek you.
I thirst for you;
my body faints for you
in a land that is dry, desolate,
and without water.”
(Psalm 63:1)

I’ve been in a dry, dark, and lonely place in my relationship with God for quite some time. There are at least several things in my life contributing to this, most of it circumstantial, but suffice it to say, my spiritual state could be described as “apathetic.” I have little interest in reading Scripture, worshiping, teaching, or ministering to others. I’d be lying if I didn’t say I feel a fair amount of guilt and shame, anger toward myself, and anger with God for where I’m at.

I’m very aware that the Christian experience is replete with different ‘seasons’ in our spiritual life, seasons affected by the events of life and/or initiated by the Spirit through his process of maturing our faith, where the ‘felt’ presence of God is removed (affecting our passion; enthusiasm; pleasure in God).

Here, being a Christian for more than 30 years and a pastor for over 20 years, the doctrinal truths and spiritual platitudes, though true, lose their luster. So, what sustains me? What keeps me pressing forward in my faith with trust and confidence that God will see me through this mess?     

It has often been said that “faith is not a feeling.” While it is true that we should not be flippantly driven by passing emotions, neither should we so easily dissect ‘faith’ from ‘feeling,’ otherwise we risk reducing it to a purely rational and cognitive exercise.

Faith seems to sit somewhere between the mind and heart, rational and emotional. Scripture uses words like “hope” and “confidence” to describe faith, which are ‘felt’ terms, terms of deep belief (Hebrews 6:19; 11:1). 

Beliefs may or may not be true. I may be truly convinced that I can fly without external aid. This could be something I feel to be true in the deepest part of my being. I may even have good reason to support my belief, the testimony of expert opinion or some level of prior experience. Yet, all of that could be a delusion (think: the story of John Nash in A Beautiful Mind). Ultimately, at a certain point, my beliefs are going to hit the wall (or ground!) of reality— as the truth of gravity proves my belief to be false.

It is the same with faith. Our “faith” is a belief that we are putting our trust and confidence in, that will ultimately be tested by reality. Here, we can describe faith as a deep belief that is something we both ‘feel’ and ‘reason’ to be true. It is a deep belief because we are more convinced that it is true than not.

It is important to acknowledge the relationship between heart and mind in our faith because it acknowledges the fulness of our humanity. That is, genuine faith is a deep belief formed in our heart and mind that both informs and is demonstrated by how we live and relate to others.

While intellectual knowledge is important to help carry our faith through times when we don’t ‘feel’ God near to us, where we’ve lost our fervor or joy or pleasure in pursuing God; neither rational arguments for the existence of God or reliability of Scripture, nor doctrinal truths are, in themselves, enough to keep us moving forward.

Our faith is grounded in deep beliefs. In what we’ve intuited about God through our experiences in the world and how God has ‘shown up’, revealing himself to us in felt ways in times past. Those experiences are real and are what help form those deep beliefs within our souls. Deep beliefs are not merely knowledge by information but knowledge formed through lived and felt experience.

What’s more, it seems that most people don’t come to faith through the intellect. That is, most folks aren’t drawn to a relationship in Christ through rational arguments or proof of historical evidence. We come to faith through a felt need and an encounter with God through the Spirit, through a feeling of conviction, connection, and love with God through the witness of his people. Only later do we come to understand the reasons and arguments that undergird and buttress our faith (enter, theology and apologetics).

So, we want to be careful not to dissect faith from feeling, just as we don’t dissect it from rationality (resulting in a type of “blind faith”). Doing so minimizes what we’re experiencing and feeling in various seasons of our faith, of how we’re experiencing ourselves and God, and what the Spirit is seeking to reveal or work within us through the diverse range of our emotions.

So, as I’ve shared from my own experience, apathy doesn’t mean “emotionlessness.” Nor does it necessarily imply “faith-lessness.” I am very much full of emotion: weariness; loneliness; frustration; doubt; dread… feeling such things is not necessarily contrary to faith, much less void of it. There are points where such feelings reveal the shallowness or immaturity of my faith and others where they simply reveal the weakness in my humanity, to no fault of my own. The implication isn’t necessarily that I’ve lost faith or that my emotions are distracting or weakening my faith; rather, they are an invitation to both express and deepen my belief in God.

What is vital at this point is that we approach God with honesty, an honesty that is more for us than him (as he already knows us better than we know ourselves!). Grief, doubt, anger, and confusion are as much a part of our emotional experience of faith as peace, joy, hope, and confidence. Jesus expressed the ‘dark side’ of emotion in the Garden of Gethsemane, pressing through the darkness with greater resolve. It was his deep belief in the goodness and faithfulness of the Father that empowered him to express his grief and doubt, that anchored him through his greatest trial. Faith operates in the same way for us.