Faith & Doubt
Faith used to matter enormously to me and now even the wanting has gone quiet. What do you do when you do not even want to want it?
“A new heart also will I give you, and a new spirit will I put within you: and I will take away the stony heart out of your flesh, and I will give you an heart of flesh.”
Ezekiel is speaking to exiles whose failure was not primarily intellectual; they had simply stopped being able to respond. The promise is about internal replacement, stone traded for something that can feel again. Crucially the surgery is described as God's work rather than theirs. Scripture takes seriously the condition in which a person cannot generate their own desire.
“For it is God which worketh in you both to will and to do of his good pleasure.”
Paul writes to a church he asks to work things out seriously, and then immediately locates the power behind that work outside them. The word he uses for willing covers wanting itself, not only doing. That is unusually specific to your situation: desire is described as something God supplies, which means its absence is something you are free to ask him to address.
A path forward
Pray the absence itself: ask God to give you back the wanting. It is a prayer scripture explicitly supports and it requires no enthusiasm to say.
Keep the smallest possible practice alive, one you will not skip: one psalm at night, or grace before one meal. Do not try to restore the old routine at full volume.
Have one person collect you for church rather than relying on your own motivation. When desire is gone, structure and other people carry you until it comes back.
Closing verse
“Restore unto me the joy of thy salvation; and uphold me with thy free spirit.”
- Psalm 51:12
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