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You said yes to Jesus on a Tuesday. You meant every word of it. Then Wednesday morning came, and the kitchen looked exactly the same, the coffee tasted the same, and whatever you had quietly expected to feel simply was not there.
Nobody warns you about that part. So the real question stops being “how do I follow Jesus?” and becomes “how do I follow Jesus when I don’t feel anything?” Before you decide what that emptiness means about you, it is worth knowing this: there is a moment in the Gospels where that exact question gets answered out loud, and the answer has no feeling in it at all.
The Day the Crowd Thinned Out
In John chapter 6, Jesus finishes a teaching that lands badly. His own followers say so out loud:
“This is an hard saying; who can hear it?” (John 6:60)
And then John records what happened next without softening it:
“From that time many of his disciples went back, and walked no more with him.” (John 6:66)
Not opponents. Disciples. People who had been walking with Him, who stopped walking. Jesus turns to the twelve still standing there and asks something that sounds nothing like a leader managing a bad day:
“Will ye also go away?” (John 6:67)
An Answer With No Enthusiasm In It
Peter answers for them:
“Lord, to whom shall we go? thou hast the words of eternal life.” (John 6:68)
Sit with that first sentence, because it is a question, not a declaration. “To whom shall we go?” is what a man says after looking around at every alternative and finding nothing better out there. It is not “I love this.” It is closer to “where else would I even go?”
That is a man following on empty, and it is the answer that got remembered.
To be accurate about the whole passage: the very next line does carry conviction. “And we believe and are sure that thou art that Christ, the Son of the living God” (John 6:69). But look at what kind of statement that is. It is a conviction about who Jesus is. It is not a report on how Peter’s chest felt that afternoon. Those are two different instruments on the dashboard, and one of them can read steady while the other reads empty.
Notice too what Jesus does not do. He does not ask Peter to go away and come back with more enthusiasm. He does not treat the thinned-out crowd as proof that the ones left over are faking it. The question was whether they would stay, and they stayed.
The Night Jesus Felt Worst Was the Night He Obeyed Most
If feelings were the real measure of faithfulness, the hardest night in the Gospels would have to count as a failure.
In the garden, Mark says Jesus “began to be sore amazed, and to be very heavy” (Mark 14:33). He tells His friends plainly, “My soul is exceeding sorrowful, even unto death: tarry ye here, and watch with me” (Matthew 26:38). Luke adds the physical toll: “And being in an agony he prayed more earnestly: and his sweat was as it were great drops of blood falling down to the ground” (Luke 22:44).
And in the middle of feeling all of that, He prays:
“O my Father, if it be possible, let this cup pass from me: nevertheless not as I will, but as thou wilt.” (Matthew 26:39)
He asks for the cup to pass. He does not pretend to want it. And then He goes anyway. Obedience and emotion came apart that night in Jesus’ own body, which means the gap you are feeling between what you decided and what you feel is not evidence that your yes was fake.
The Detail Luke Adds That Almost Nobody Repeats
Here is the line that changes the whole scene. Matthew and Mark both report that Jesus came back and found the disciples asleep. “What, could ye not watch with me one hour?” (Matthew 26:40). Retold casually, it sounds like three men being slack at the worst possible moment.
Luke is the one who tells you why they were asleep:
“And when he rose up from prayer, and was come to his disciples, he found them sleeping for sorrow,” (Luke 22:45)
Sleeping for sorrow. Not sleeping from indifference, and not sleeping because they did not care enough. Grief had emptied them until their bodies simply shut down. That is what sadness does to people, and Luke writes it into the record rather than tidying it away.
What Jesus says to them next is the part worth carrying around: “Why sleep ye? rise and pray, lest ye enter into temptation” (Luke 22:46). It is an instruction, not a verdict. Get up. Pray. That is what He hands people who have nothing left — not a diagnosis of their spiritual condition, just the next small thing to do.
What to Do With a Morning That Feels Like Nothing
None of this means feelings are bad or that warmth never comes. It means feelings are weather, and you can keep walking in any weather. Three things hold up on an empty morning.
Make the daily thing small enough for your worst day
Whatever you build has to survive the morning you wake up flat, because that morning is coming. Ten minutes you will actually keep beats an hour you will abandon by Thursday. Build the habit at the size of your worst day, not your best one — that is also the honest answer to how to start reading the Bible when you don’t understand it.
Read for information, not for a feeling
If you open the Gospels hoping to feel something, a flat morning reads as a wasted one. So change what you are there for. Go in to find out what Jesus was like — who He stopped for, what made Him angry, what He said to people who had nothing to offer Him. You can learn what someone is like on a day you feel nothing. People do it at work constantly.
Say the honest sentence instead of the impressive one
A father in Mark 9 brings Jesus a son nobody has been able to help, and the sentence he manages is not a confident one:
“Lord, I believe; help thou mine unbelief.” (Mark 9:24)
Belief and doubt in the same breath, said out loud with tears, and the help came anyway. You are allowed to pray the real sentence. “I don’t feel anything today and I am here anyway” is a truer prayer than a borrowed one you do not mean. If you want more passages that hold up on an empty day, these verses on getting closer to God are worth reading whole rather than in fragments.
What Changes
Picture a morning six weeks from now. You still will not feel fireworks — most mornings nobody does. But you sit down and open to where you stopped yesterday, and you already know the shape of the story you are in. You know what Jesus did last chapter. You are mildly curious what He does next.
Then somewhere around lunchtime, a situation comes up that looks like something you read. A person being difficult. A moment where you could be quietly decent and nobody would ever know either way. And you recognise it. That recognition is the thing. It arrives without any emotional weather at all, and it means you actually know Him a little better than you did last month.
That is what following looks like from inside. Not a feeling you sustain. A person you are getting to know, on the days that sparkle and the days that do not. And if the flatness you are feeling is really about everyone else seeming further along, that is a different knot, untangled in how to follow Jesus without watching everyone else.
Thirty Days of Knowing Exactly What to Read
The hardest part of following Jesus is rarely wanting to. It is knowing what to open tomorrow morning, and the morning after that, without getting lost somewhere in the middle of Leviticus or quietly giving up on day four — and a flat week is exactly when a vague plan falls apart.
That is why we built 30 Days Walking with Jesus. It walks you through the life of Jesus one day at a time, a beginner-friendly reading plan through the Gospels, so the decision about what to read is already made before you sit down. On the mornings you feel nothing, that is the only decision you need taken off your hands.
Each day takes under 10 minutes. You get 30 short devotional videos, each under 60 seconds, 30 full-chapter audio readings, a complete PDF study guide with journal prompts, and 5 quick-reference scripture guides. And it is free — no payment, no card, no upsell, instant access on any device, yours forever. The words of Jesus should not sit behind a paywall.
Questions People Are Asking
Q: How do I follow Jesus when I don’t feel anything?
A: Keep doing the small daily thing regardless of the feeling, because the Gospels never make emotion the measure of following. When many disciples left in John 6, Peter stayed with a line that contains no enthusiasm at all: “Lord, to whom shall we go? thou hast the words of eternal life” (John 6:68). A practical approach is to read a little about the life of Jesus each day to learn what He is like, rather than reading in order to feel something, and to keep the habit small enough that you can do it on a flat morning.
Q: Is it normal to feel nothing after becoming a Christian?
A: It is common, and it is not treated as a failure in scripture. Jesus Himself prayed “O my Father, if it be possible, let this cup pass from me: nevertheless not as I will, but as thou wilt” (Matthew 26:39) on a night when Mark says He “began to be sore amazed, and to be very heavy” (Mark 14:33) — doing the right thing while feeling awful. Feelings tend to come and go for reasons that have as much to do with sleep, stress and grief as with faith.
Q: Why were the disciples asleep in the garden of Gethsemane?
A: Luke gives the reason the other accounts leave out. He writes that Jesus “found them sleeping for sorrow” (Luke 22:45) — grief had exhausted them, rather than indifference. Jesus’ reply to them was an instruction rather than a condemnation: “Why sleep ye? rise and pray, lest ye enter into temptation” (Luke 22:46).
Q: Does God mind if my faith feels weak or full of doubt?
A: In Mark 9 a father asks Jesus for help with his son and says, with tears, “Lord, I believe; help thou mine unbelief” (Mark 9:24). Belief and doubt are in the same sentence, spoken openly, and the help still came. Praying the honest sentence about where you actually are is treated in scripture as a real prayer, not a disqualifying one.
Q: What is the best way to start following Jesus day to day?
A: Most people find it easiest to read about the life of Jesus in the Gospels — Matthew, Mark, Luke and John — a small portion at a time, then do the next thing they see Him do, like stopping for one person everyone else walked past. Having a set plan removes the daily decision about what to read, which is usually what causes people to drift off in the first week. The free 30 Days Walking with Jesus plan is built around that idea and takes under 10 minutes a day.
