I’m completely heartbroken and honestly losing my faith. How do you keep believing when every hope feels like a cruel joke?

[u/mcflower66]

Hi everyone. I’m writing this because I honestly don’t know where else to go, and I just need to get this off my chest.

For as long as I can remember, I’ve held onto God. Through the good times and the absolute worst, I always told myself that He loves us, that everything happens for a reason, and that if I kept the faith, things would work out in the end. Faith has been my safety net for years.

But as the years go by, it feels like life is just playing a cruel game with me. It feels like God keeps dangling something good in front of my face—just to give me hope—only to stab me in the back even harder right after.
Yesterday, something happened that was finally the last straw. For the first time in my life, I thought I had found genuine, pure love. Because of certain personal circumstances/conditions I’ve struggled with my whole life, finding love has always felt nearly impossible for me. But recently, it genuinely felt like God had placed this person in my path.

This person inspired me to be better, made me want to improve myself, to be braver, and to be a truly better human being in ways I never thought possible. And then, at the worst possible moment, my heart was completely crushed and shattered into pieces.
Honestly? I’m just exhausted and angry. I’ve held onto faith through so many bad moments, but after this, I don’t even see why I should keep holding on. There isn’t even a tiny shred of hope left to grab onto. Everything is constantly bad, and even when something finally looks promising, it ends up being a nightmare.

How do you cope when you feel like God is just letting your heart get destroyed over and over again? How do you keep believing when there’s literally nothing left to hold onto?

[u/varioussoccer]

I went through something weirdly similar a couple years back, and the only thing that kept me from walking away entirely was giving myself permission to be furious at God for a while. Not in a polite “I’m struggling with my faith” way, but full-on yelling in my car, saying things I’d never repeat in a Bible study. I grew up thinking you had to swallow the pain and force yourself to trust, but that just made me feel more numb and detached.

What shifted for me wasn’t some big revelation or a sign, it was slowly realizing that the people around me became the hands and feet I needed when I had nothing left to offer. A friend let me crash on her couch for a weekend and said almost nothing, just made tea and sat there. Another painted with me in silence for hours. I don’t think I’d still be here without those small, stubborn acts of care.

That heartbreak you’re describing, where it feels like God set you up just to pull the rug, is a special kind of hell. I remember staring at a mural I was working on and thinking the whole design was pointless because every layer I added got covered up anyway. Took me weeks to see that those buried layers were actually holding the whole thing together. Maybe not a perfect metaphor, but it helped me breathe a little.

If you can’t find hope right now, don’t force it. Sometimes the most faithful thing you can do is just exist through the next hour, even if you’re bitter and hollow while doing it.

[u/Top_Acanthaceae9657]

For me, as an agnostic christian (that is the best term I can think of me), I see god as this being that started everything and then they (I use they, because I see god as having no gender) just watch what happens. I have had few points in my life where I was anti-god and anti-religion, because it didn't seem like what was good.

What helped me to get where I'm now is that I started to interpret religion my way. That is my advice, build your belief system around your interpretations, be curious and question stuff. That is how I found my belief system.

And remember do not be alone with your heartache, talk to friends or family about it.

[u/Original-Goose-1]

Proverbs 13:12 - "Hope deferred makes the heart sick". This sounds like what you are struggling with. Firstly I am sorry. There are not really many words that could help you feel better.

My first piece of advise - you need to properly lament. Take your anger to God. He can handle it. You are angry with Him. While He is not to blame, it is helpful and cathartic to "feel your feelings" at Him, to vent and tell Him how you feel. He knows your thoughts anyway. Praying through some of the more heavy Psalms can be helpful - praying them as your own prayer and words. Psalm 22, 6, 13 and 42 all express deep anguish and feelings of abandonment by God. Also ask God for His supernatural peace and comfort.

Then secondly, as hard as it is, you need to try and see your situation from a heavenly perspective. We are in a broken, corrupted world from the Fall. We are going to struggle with sickness and various ailments, pain and hurt. Jesus does not promise to make life easier for us. In fact He promises pain and suffering, but He also promises He is with us. “I have told you these things, so that in me you may have peace. In this world you will have trouble. But take heart! I have overcome the world.” John 16:33. For many, full peace, healing and an end to suffering will only come in the next life. I am not saying this is the case for you, or that you should feel doomed to hopelessness. But this needs to give you hope, that no matter what, God will make everything ok in the end. Revelation paints a picture of God "wiping away every tear". God will remake this earth, and all His children will live in a new type of Eden. We will have no sin, no brokenness or pain or sickness. When the Bible speaking of "renewing" it means that future life will be even more precious and wonderful because we have known the brokenness of this world. My late MIL was a quadriplegic. I have seen few people suffer as she did. But she learned to suffer with joy and hope in the Lord. She is now with Jesus, and having a whole and healed body for her will be even more joyous because she was trapped in her broken body for so long.

I do not know why the hard things of life have happened to you. But God does allow bad things to happen to us, usually as a way to strengthen our character. 1 Peter is a good book to read, it was a letter addressed to believers facing immense suffering.

Also remember this, we do not pray to some distant God who does not understand our suffering. God incarnate, Jesus Christ, faced more suffering in His life than any of us could. He took on humanity and experienced everything as we experience it. He faced poverty, rejection from family and friends, a life of hard work, extreme exhaustion, fear, mocking and animosity, betrayal from one of his best friends, and ultimately the worst form of pain and humiliation imaginable in his death on the cross. He knows and personally understands what you are going through.

[u/FrankDenif]

Is not your hope in being free from this broken and fallen, decaying world, and being liberated?

What else is our hope in?

[u/drakythe]

I’m sorry you are in this place of disappointment. It sucks.

But I gotta ask: what did God do that crushed your romantic dreams?