We sing every word in the hymn on Sunday. We bow our head when the pastor prays. We even say “Amen” at the end of the sermon. Yet we often feel nothing. No joy. No love. No guilt either. Just nothing.
Here’s a question that frightens us, though we don’t always say it out loud: Can a real Christian feel nothing for God?
Most quick answers online say something like, “Don’t worry about feelings. Trust the facts.” That’s half true. The Bible does take our feelings for God seriously, and so should we. But Scripture also shows us the emptiness in our heart is not the last word about us.
An earlier post in this series looked at times when God seems distant and silent. This one is about something different: times when our own hearts feel cold towards Him.
This post is part of our series What Do We Do When…?, which takes the hard moments of the Christian life to Scripture and asks how God would have us respond. Other posts in the series ask what we do when God seems distant and silent, when God closes a door we prayed would open, when we don’t know what step to take next, when we fall into the same sin again, when life doesn’t go according to plan, when doubt and anxiety won’t let go, when we can’t forgive someone, when we feel trapped in a meaningless existence, when we’re afraid of the future, when our family opposes our faith, when we’re afraid to evangelise and when our evangelism seems to bear no fruit…
Feelings for God Really Do Matter
God doesn’t only ask for our time, our money or our good behaviour. He asks for our hearts.
“You shall love the LORD your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your might.”
Deuteronomy 6:5
Jesus called this the greatest commandment (Matthew 22:37–38). The Psalms are full of strong feelings for God. One psalmist writes:
“As a deer pants for flowing streams, so pants my soul for you, O God. My soul thirsts for God, for the living God.”
Psalm 42:1–2
The Westminster Shorter Catechism (a summary of Christian teaching from the 1640s) says our chief purpose is “to glorify God, and to enjoy Him for ever.” Enjoying God is what we were made for. So if you feel nothing for Him, you’re right to be troubled. The answer isn’t to pretend the problem away, but to understand it properly.
What Love for God Really Is
Here’s the key to this whole subject. In the Bible, love for God isn’t less than a feeling. It’s more.
The Bible word “heart” doesn’t just mean our emotions. It means the centre of who we are: what we think, what we choose and what we love. That’s why Jesus could say:
“If you love me, you will keep my commandments.”
John 14:15
Jesus did not say, “If you love me, you will always feel warm inside.” He tied love to faithful obedience. John says the same: “For this is the love of God, that we keep his commandments” (1 John 5:3).
John Calvin described faith as “a firm and certain knowledge of God’s benevolence toward us.” (Benevolence means kindness and goodwill.) Calvin added the Spirit seals it on our hearts. So faith isn’t cold head-knowledge. It rests on something firmer than a mood.
KEY TERM: AFFECTIONS VS EMOTIONS
- Emotions are feelings that come and go, like a wave of joy in a worship service. They can change with sleep, health or even the weather.
- Affections is an older Christian word for the deep direction of the heart: what we truly value, choose and turn towards. Think of it as the direction a ship is sailing, not the waves around it.
- Why it matters: your emotions may be flat while your affections still point towards God.
In Religious Affections, Jonathan Edwards taught “true religion, in great part, consists in holy affections.” But by “affections” he didn’t mean passing emotions. He meant the settled leaning of the heart and will. That difference changes everything for a believer who feels numb.
The Good News Hidden Inside Our Worry
Edwards said a person with no holy affections at all is spiritually dead. But he also cut the other way. He warned strong emotions prove nothing. A person can weep, shout and shake in a meeting and still not belong to Christ. Strong feeling isn’t proof of grace, and weak feeling isn’t proof that grace is missing.
Why are you reading this? Probably because your coldness bothers you. You want to love God more than you do. That desire is itself an affection. Dead people don’t grieve they’re dead. A corpse doesn’t wish it could feel.
The Bible is full of people who prayed for a heart they didn’t yet have:
- The psalmist: “Oh that my ways may be steadfast in keeping your statutes!” (Psalm 119:5). He longed for a steadiness he did not yet feel.
- The worried father: “I believe; help my unbelief!” (Mark 9:24). Jesus did not send him away. He healed his son.
Wanting to want God may be a small flame. But it’s a real one.
Even Strong Believers Go Cold
Feeling cold towards God doesn’t make us uniquely bad. True believers go through seasons like this.
In Psalm 77, the writer cannot sleep and cannot be comforted. He asks, “Has God forgotten to be gracious?” (Psalm 77:9). In Gethsemane, Jesus found His closest friends asleep instead of praying. He said, “the spirit indeed is willing, but the flesh is weak” (Matthew 26:41).
The Canons of Dort (a Dutch statement of faith from 1618–19) teach this clearly. They say true believers, especially when they fall into sin, can lose the sense of God’s favour for a time. But God doesn’t let them go. He renews them to repentance, and the light of His fatherly face shines on them again (Head 5, Articles 5–7).
Our Feelings Aren’t Our Foundation
Here’s the most important truth in this post. Our standing with God doesn’t rest on our love for Him. It rests on His love for us.
“We love because He first loved us.”
1 John 4:19
Our love is always the echo. His love is the voice. If the echo is faint, the voice has not stopped speaking. “God shows His love for us in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us” (Romans 5:8). He loved us when we had no love for Him at all.
John wrote to Christians whose hearts accused them. His answer wasn’t “Try to feel better.” It was this:
“Whenever our heart condemns us, God is greater than our heart, and he knows everything.”
1 John 3:20
There’s something deeper still. Jesus didn’t only die for us; He also lived for us. He loved the Father with all His heart, every moment, without one cold day. He said, “I do as the Father has commanded me, so that the world may know that I love the Father” (John 14:31). When we trust in Christ, God counts His perfect life as ours. Our cold hearts are covered by His warm one.
THE SMOKING WICK
“a bruised reed he will not break, and a faintly burning wick he will not quench” (Isaiah 42:3).
A wick is the string in an oil lamp. One that only smokes is almost out, and most people would throw it away. Jesus doesn’t.
Richard Sibbes, an English preacher of the 1600s, wrote a whole book on this one verse, The Bruised Reed. His best-known line is this: “There is more mercy in Christ than sin in us.” If Christ will not put out a smoking wick, He will not throw away a cold heart that’s still turned towards Him.
Why Do We Go Numb? 7 Common Causes
Numbness is like a warning light on a car dashboard. It tells you something is wrong, but not what. Here are seven common causes, and more than one can be true at once.
How to read this table: find the row that sounds most like you, then read across to see what Scripture says and what to do next.
| CAUSE | WHAT IT LOOKS LIKE | WHAT THE BIBLE SAYS | WHAT TO DO |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1. Hidden sin | You cling to a sin, and prayer feels empty | “When I kept silent, my bones wasted away” (Psalm 32:3) | Confess it honestly and turn from it |
| 2. Rival loves | Your phone, career or money fills God’s place | God’s people chose “broken cisterns that can hold no water” (Jeremiah 2:13) | Name the rival and ask God to loosen its grip |
| 3. Neglect | Bible, prayer and church have slipped | “Do the works you did at first” (Revelation 2:5) | Return to the basics, even without feeling |
| 4. Tiredness or illness | Stress, grief or depression flatten all your feelings | God gave tired Elijah food and sleep before He spoke to him (1 Kings 19:5–8) | Rest, and get medical help if needed |
| 5. Personality | You are calm by nature and rarely feel strongly | Strong emotion is no proof of grace (Jonathan Edwards) | Measure your faith by its fruit, not its heat |
| 6. God’s testing | No clear cause; God is training your faith | God led Israel through the desert, “testing you to know what was in your heart” (Deuteronomy 8:2) | Keep walking and trust Him in the dry place |
| 7. Never truly converted | Faith has been habit or family custom, not trust in Christ | “Examine yourselves, to see whether you are in the faith” (2 Corinthians 13:5) | Come to Christ today. He turns no one away (John 6:37) |
How God Warms a Cold Heart
Feelings do not obey orders. But God has given ordinary tools that He uses to warm hearts. Christians call them the means of grace—the regular ways God pours His kindness into His people. You cannot warm yourself by willpower, but you can move closer to the fire.
- Open the Bible, even when it feels dry. After His resurrection, Jesus walked with two sad disciples and explained the Scriptures to them. Later they said, “Did not our hearts burn within us while he talked to us on the road, while he opened to us the Scriptures?” (Luke 24:32). Notice: the burning came while they listened, not before.
- Pray for the feelings you lack. David prayed, “Restore to me the joy of your salvation” (Psalm 51:12). Tell God honestly, “I feel nothing. Please change my heart.”
- Come to the Lord’s Table. The Lord’s Supper (Communion) is not a reward for people who feel spiritual. It is food for the weak. Come because you feel cold.
- Stay close to other believers. The Bible tells us to “stir up one another to love and good works” and not to neglect meeting together (Hebrews 10:24–25). A coal left alone goes out. Coals kept together stay hot.
- Obey first, and let feelings follow. Jesus told the church in Ephesus, which had lost its first love: “Remember therefore from where you have fallen; repent, and do the works you did at first” (Revelation 2:5). He did not say, “Wait until you feel it again.” He said, “Do.”
Scottish preacher Thomas Chalmers once preached a famous sermon called The Expulsive Power of a New Affection. (“Expulsive” means “able to push out.”) His point: the heart cannot stay empty, so an old love is pushed out only when a greater love comes in. That’s why the cure for a cold heart isn’t mainly to try harder. It’s to look longer at Christ.
Two Ditches to Avoid
Numb Christians often fall into one of two ditches beside the road.
How to read this table: each column shows one response to spiritual numbness. The first two are common mistakes. The last column is the path Scripture points us to.
| Aspect | DITCH 1: FORCING FEELINGS | DITCH 2: WAITING PASSIVELY | THE BIBLE’S ROAD |
|---|---|---|---|
| What it says | “I must make myself feel something.” | “I will do nothing until God makes me feel something.” | “I will use God’s means and trust Him for the feelings.” |
| What it looks like | Chasing emotional meetings, louder music and new experiences | Skipping prayer, the Bible and church until the feeling returns | Steady, humble faithfulness in ordinary things |
| Where it leads | Tiredness, and a faith that depends on the next “high” | Deeper coldness, because the fire has no fuel | Slow but real growth (Psalm 119:32) |
Two Hard Objections
“Isn’t it fake to obey God when I don’t feel like it?”
No. Hypocrisy means pretending in front of others to be something you are not. Obeying God while honestly telling Him, “I feel nothing,” is the opposite of pretending. It is faithfulness. A tired mother who gets up at 3 a.m. for her crying baby is not being fake. She is showing love in its truest form. The psalmist says, “I will run in the way of your commandments when you enlarge my heart!” (Psalm 119:32). He runs, and God enlarges.
“If God is glorified by my joy, am I dishonouring Him?”
John Piper, the American pastor and author, is known for saying, “God is most glorified in us when we are most satisfied in him.” Some numb believers hear this and feel crushed. But Piper’s book, When I Don’t Desire God, urges cold-hearted Christians to confess their coldness, pray for joy and keep obeying while they wait. Seeking joy in God is a lifelong pursuit, not a test we pass or fail each morning.
Timeline: They Felt Cold Too
The next time we feel coldness towards God, let’s remember, we’re in good company. Many faithful Christians wrote openly about seasons of deadness.
- 1660s—John Bunyan: the author of The Pilgrim’s Progress described long seasons of a hard, unfeeling heart in his life story, Grace Abounding (1666). He found peace by holding on to Scripture’s promises.
- 1740s—David Brainerd: this young missionary to Native Americans often wrote in his diary about feeling dull and dead towards God. Yet he kept praying and preaching, and Jonathan Edwards published his diary in 1749.
- Early 1800s—Christmas Evans: this Welsh preacher wrote his heart had grown cold and hard. Travelling alone on a mountain road, he began to pray, and he wept as his love for Christ returned.
A PRAYER FOR WHEN WE FEEL NOTHING
Father, I don’t feel what I should feel for You. My heart is cold, and I cannot warm it. But You loved me first, and You love me still. Thank You that Jesus loved You perfectly in my place. Do not put out this smoking wick. Open my eyes to see Christ in Your Word. Restore to me the joy of Your salvation. Until You do, help me to keep walking with You. In Jesus’ name, Amen.
A Final Word
Feeling nothing for God is painful, and it should never become comfortable. But it isn’t the end of the story. Our feelings are like the weather. They change. God’s love is like a mountain. It doesn’t move.
“My flesh and my heart may fail, but God is the strength of my heart and my portion forever.”
Psalm 73:26
So keep coming to the fire. Keep looking at Christ. And hold on to Paul’s promise: “he who began a good work in you will bring it to completion at the day of Jesus Christ” (Philippians 1:6). The warmth will return in God’s good time.
One day, we shall see Him face to face. And then, we shall never feel cold towards Him. Ever again.
Tough Questions, Honest Answers
Is feeling nothing for God a sign I have committed the unpardonable sin?
No. Jesus spoke of blasphemy against the Holy Spirit in Matthew 12:31–32. In that passage, the Pharisees saw the Spirit’s clear work in Jesus and deliberately called it the work of Satan. The unpardonable sin is a hardened, final rejection of Christ by someone who does not care. A person who is worried that they have committed it shows a tender conscience, which is the opposite of that hardness. Numbness is a feeling; the unpardonable sin is a wilful choice. If you still want Christ, you have not committed it.
Can depression or medication make me feel nothing towards God?
Yes, it can. Depression often causes “anhedonia,” a medical word for losing the ability to enjoy things you once enjoyed. Some medicines can also flatten the emotions. God made us body and soul together, so what affects the body can affect how we feel in prayer and worship. This is not automatically a spiritual failure. Keep using the means of grace, but also speak to a doctor and a trusted pastor. Getting medical help is not a lack of faith; it is using gifts God provides.
Am I “lukewarm” (Revelation 3:16) if I feel nothing?
Not necessarily. Jesus’ warning to the church in Laodicea was not about weak emotions. That church was rich, comfortable and proud. They said, “I am rich… and I need nothing” (Revelation 3:17), and they did not see their need for Christ. To be lukewarm is to be self-satisfied and indifferent. A believer who grieves over a cold heart and longs for more of God is the very opposite. Even for Laodicea, Jesus’ remedy was to open the door to Him (Revelation 3:20).
Why do other Christians seem to feel God so much more than I do?
God has made people with different personalities. Some feel everything deeply; others are calm by nature. You also see only the outside of other people’s lives, often on their best days. Comparing your inner struggle with someone else’s outward joy is never a fair test. Scripture measures faith by trust in Christ and the fruit it produces, not by how much emotion we show (Galatians 5:22–23). Your quiet faithfulness may please God just as much as someone else’s tears.
Can I lose my salvation if my love for God grows cold?
Jesus warned that “the love of many will grow cold” (Matthew 24:12), so coldness is serious and must be fought. But the Bible also teaches that God keeps those who truly belong to Christ. Jesus said of His sheep, “no one will snatch them out of my hand” (John 10:28). True believers may stumble and grow cold for a season, but God will not let them fall away for ever. In the end, your safety depends on His grip on you, not your grip on Him. This promise should send us back to Christ, not make us careless.
How long can a season of spiritual dryness last?
The Bible gives no timetable. For some, dryness lasts a few days or weeks. For others, like Bunyan and Brainerd, it came back again and again over many years. Psalm 88 even ends in darkness, which tells us that some seasons are long and the answers come later. God has His own wise reasons for the length of the journey. What matters most is that we keep walking with Him in the meantime, trusting that He has not changed.
What should I pray when I don’t even feel like praying?
Start with honesty. Tell God exactly how you feel: “Lord, I don’t want to pray right now.” Then use words He has already given. The Psalms are a prayer book for every mood, including empty ones, and the Lord’s Prayer is another good place to start. You can also pray short prayers through the day, like “Lord, help me.” Remember that “the Spirit helps us in our weakness” and prays for us when we have no words (Romans 8:26). Weak prayers are still heard.
Related Reads
- What Do We Do When God Seems Distant and Silent?
- What Do We Do When God Closes a Door We Prayed Would Open?
- What Do We Do When We Don’t Know What Step to Take Next?
- What Do We Do When We Fall Into the Same Sin Again?
- What Do We Do When Life Doesn’t Go According to Plan?
- What Do We Do When Doubt and Anxiety Won’t Let Go?
- What Do We Do When We Can’t Forgive Someone?
- What Do We Do When We Feel Trapped in Meaningless Existence?
- What Do We Do When We’re Afraid of the Future?
- What Do We Do When Our Family Opposes Our Faith?
- Prayerlessness and Spiritual Dryness: Does the Bible Offer a Remedy?
- The Ordinary Means of Grace: Why Are They Indispensable?
- Letter to the Church at Laodicea: When Lukewarm Is Worse Than Cold
- Christian Joy: Is It a Personal Choice or a Feeling? Or Neither?
- The Unpardonable Sin: What is the Blasphemy Against the Spirit?
- Is Taking Antidepressants a Failure of Faith?
- Assurance of Salvation: How Can I Know I’m Truly Saved?
- What Do We Do When We’re Afraid to Evangelise?
- What Do We Do When Our Evangelism Seems to Bear No Fruit?
