Day 10 — Faith Is Not a Feeling

“Now faith is the assurance of what we hope for and the certainty of what we do not see.”

— Hebrews 11:1 (BSB)

You come home from a camp or a conference, and God feels so close you could almost touch Him. Then Monday comes. School, chores, an argument at home, a message that stings. By Wednesday, the feeling is gone. And a worrying thought creeps in: Was any of it real?

Here’s something that might set you free: faith is not a feeling.

Hebrews says faith is “the assurance of what we hope for and the certainty of what we do not see.” Notice those words: assurance and certainty. Faith isn’t a warm glow, and it isn’t a leap in the dark. It’s trust, resting your weight on something you have good reason to believe, even when you can’t see it.

You do this all the time. When you sit on a chair, you don’t first check how you feel about the chair. You have good reason to think it’ll hold you, so you sit. When you cross a bridge over a river, you aren’t relying on your mood. You’re relying on the bridge.

That’s what these ten days have been about. You’ve looked at reasons to believe that God exists, that the Bible can be trusted, that Jesus really lived, and that He really rose. Faith is what happens when you stop standing next to the chair, examining it, and sit down.

Feelings are like the weather. They change with sleep, hormones, exams, friendships and a hundred other things. Some days you’ll feel close to God. Some days you won’t feel anything. That’s normal. Feelings are a gift from God, but they make a terrible anchor. Remember Hebrews 6:19: our hope is “an anchor for the soul, firm and secure” because it’s fastened to Jesus, not to how we feel about Him on a given day. “We walk by faith, not by sight.”

Hannah Whitall Smith once described a clever young man who was trapped by doubt. Nothing felt real to him, and the harder he tried to feel it, the less real it seemed. Someone told him he didn’t have to control his feelings. He only had to decide which side his will was on. So he said, in effect, I choose to believe. I will believe. I do believe. His feelings kept protesting for a while, and he kept choosing. In the end, his feelings caught up. His life became, she said, one of the finest Christian lives she knew.

That’s not pretending. It’s what the father in Mark 9 did on Day 1: “I do believe; help my unbelief!” Faith is choosing to trust God with your life because He has shown He can be trusted, and then letting Him deal with your feelings in His own time.

So on the days you feel nothing, don’t panic. Keep trusting. The anchor holds whether you can feel it or not.

Think about it: Have you ever judged your relationship with God by how you felt? What would change if you judged it by what God has said and done?

Try this: Write three things you know are true about God, whatever you feel today. Put them somewhere you’ll see them on a day when God feels far away.

Go deeper: The Christian’s Secret of a Happy Life by Hannah Whitall Smith — Smith shows that the Christian life is lived in the will, not the emotions, and tells of a young man who overcame years of doubt by simply putting his will on the believing side. Start with chapter 7, “Difficulties Concerning the Will”.

Father, thank You that my relationship with You doesn’t rise and fall with my feelings. On the days I feel close to You and on the days I feel nothing, I choose to trust You. You are faithful, and Your Word is true. Anchor me in You, firm and secure. In Jesus’ name, Amen.