All things are possible for the one who believes, but what happens when you can't find faith?
The Bible says that salvation through faith is a gift from God, and this speaks to me. I don't feel that faith and belief is a conscious choice that I can make; my belief comes from what I know to be true, based on what I have seen, heard, and felt. Without the work of God, we could not believe in the gospel to be saved. I feel no more able to choose to believe in God than I could choose to believe that I will not see the sun set today. Yet, the gospels condemn those without belief. I pray that God might open my mind to the truth of the matter, while sustaining my patience and persistence.
What is the path for those that do not believe, but want to? What is the response to those who have tried for years without success?
You are not alone.
This is a question I've struggled with significantly myself, since I've got a very strong skeptical streak also and managed to fall in love with a religion that initially struck me as completely impossible. I've never had that moment of instant conversion, never "known" in my heart that it was true. I've developed plenty of thoughts on divine hiddenness, and "I believe, help my unbelief" because of this.
The most valuable thing for me has been Catholic natural theology, for a couple of different reasons. I don't have much use for most of modern apologetics, but I did find the Thomistic tradition convincing enough that atheism no longer strikes me as an intellectual tenable position. The strange thing, however, is that I still very seldom "feel" that God exists. Belief in a more mystical, experiential sense did not accompany intellectual consent.
This has been very frustrating, but also extremely helpful, since it's much easier to work through the question of why your seeking doesn't seem to be bearing much fruit when you genuinely believe that theism is true. I've largely come to the conclusion that it is bearing fruit, albeit slowly and subtlely, and without much in the way of the mystical realization that I might have expected or preferred.
I don't think faith is a matter of trying to force yourself to believe through force of will. For me, it's been more a matter of surrender. Again, that is much easier if you actually think theism is true, and I see one very serious complication for you with regards to that. This statement here:
If God created life, who created God? What logical explanation is there for something so complex as God that comes from nothing, and lives outside of time and space?
God is not traditionally thought of as a complex being, or an entity that "lives" outside of time and space. He also does not come from nothing--he is the essence of existence, so to speak, not something that at some point in time arose. Every traditional theologian I'm familiar with follows Plotinus (the founder of Neoplatonism) in asserting that God is not complex but utterly simple, because complex entities are ontologically secondary to the parts that make them up. There is actually a theological term for this: divine simplicity.
I would strongly recommend looking into the modern populizers of classical theism. Two of the major ones right now are Edward Feser and David Bentley Hart, who kind of hate each other but are a powerful combination for getting real familiarity with the classical tradition.
