A response from kinwove

No — and yes. But not how that question usually gets answered.

Faith isn't meant to be divorced from feeling. The Bible is drenched in feeling. When someone encounters God, they fall on their face in awe. They weep. They sing. The Psalms rage and rejoice in wild swings. Nehemiah 8:10 says "the joy of the Lord is your strength." Joy is real, embodied, felt.

But here's the hard part: the strength doesn't depend on the joy always being there.

There's a difference between faith as a feeling and faith as a commitment. The feeling is often what draws you in — an encounter, a moment of clarity, the sense of being known and loved. That's real and it matters. But feelings are weather. They pass. They respond to circumstances, hormones, exhaustion, grief, doubt. If faith only exists when the feeling is present, then faith is fragile in a way that doesn't match what we see in Scripture.

What God seems to ask for is more like marriage than infatuation. Early in marriage you feel it constantly — the butterflies, the certainty. But mature love is different. It's showing up when you're tired. It's believing in someone even when they've disappointed you. It's the choice underneath the feeling, which sometimes deepens the feeling, and sometimes just holds steady until the feeling returns.

Your question — "is it supposed to work without feeling?" — suggests maybe it's not working right now and you're wondering if that's normal. It is. The feeling doesn't come back on a schedule you can predict, and faith in its absence is where the real weight shows up.

What are you noticing? Has the feeling been there before, or is this newer territory?