A large number of Christians are dependent on feelings as a measure of their walk with the Lord. If they have warm, fuzzy, tingly feelings, or if they’re losing control of their bodies, they think the Holy Spirit must be present. The corollary, then, is that if they’re not losing control, and if they don’t have those feelings, the Lord is not there. This, dear readers, is not the fulfilment of faith: it’s the opposite of faith.
Enjoying the thrill of worship and a sense of the presence of God can be a very great thing indeed, in fact there is nothing greater in life. But it’s a huge mistake to base our faith and our spirituality on what is essentially fallen human emotion. Feelings are unreliable, subjective, and often in denial of the facts.
For the first year and a half of my Chistian life, my faith was governed by feelings. I felt the presense of God. I had emotional highs when I contemplated the truths I was learning, and when I realized that the creator of the universe was there in the room with me. I felt freedom and joy and euphoria. But soon the hard times began to hit, and suddenly it seemed that the Lord was not there with me in such intensity. Sometimes I would pray ernestly, but didn’t get those highs and happy feelings. Where was the Lord? Had he abandoned me? Had I done something to drive Him away? Had I failed to do something?
The answer is that no, my God had not abandoned me, because he promised this:
“Never will I leave you;
never will I forsake you” (Hebrews 13:5).
and,
“…surely I am with you always, to the very end of the age” (Matthew 28:28).
If we’re dependent on feelings to convince us that our Lord is present by His Spirit, we’re not living by faith.
What had changed in my own experience was my phyiscal, emotional response to circumstances. He was still with me. He has been with me in the darkest of times, even when it seemed He was a million miles away. And looking back, I see the Lord’s hand in my life. I see His faithfulness and His providence, even in the times when I felt nothing. The fact to learn as soon as you can, is that God is there with you, even when you don’t sense His presence at all, because God is faithful, and God is love.
There are times when we offend Him. Those times can indeed distance us from the Lord in an experiential way. But as David wrote,
“Where can I go from your Spirit?
Where can I flee from your presence?
If I go up to the heavens, you are there;
if I make my bed in the depths, you are there” (Psalm 139:7-8).
I’m writing about faith and feelings because in our day a large percentage of Christians are depending on feelings as a gauge of their walk with God. If they get warm, fuzzy feelings when they pray or praise or at other times, they believe the Holy Spirit of God is obviously present and moving. More than that, if they fall over and lose their composure, and laugh or scream or cry or even bark like a dog, they are convinced that the Spirit of the Lord has now descended and is at work in a big way. If there’s no falling over; no warm feelings; no uncontrollable laughter; no emotional weeping or shaking, there’s no Holy Spirit.
This insistence goes against the grain of the very Scriptures we take our truths from (or should do). The truth is opposite to the above claim, because, as I said earlier, God is faithful always, even when we are not; even when we do not sense His presense. At all tines, including those when the darkness is all around us and we feel without hope, He’s there, by His Spirit. To say otherwise is to belittle the Lord, to deny His word, and to vaunt ourselves as the judge of God’s abilities and faithfulness.
What did Jesus Christ say about this? He said:
“…where two or three are gathered together in my name, there am I in the midst of them” (Matthew 18:20).
Here are no conditions involving falling over or feeling the right sensations.
I have in my possession a Strong’s Exhaustive Concordance. It lists every use of every word in the Bible. The word “faith” and others related to it occur many hundreds of times throughout Scripture. On the other hand, the word “feel” is used in Scripture only nineteen times, and of those only two are in the New Testament. There are three related uses of the word: feeling, feelings, feels. Only seven verses in the Bible contain these words, and of those, only one is in the New Testament.
There’s a huge imbalance here. If you were to search the New Testament-in which the Holy Spirit is seen to be given to the Church-you will find no occasion on which apostles or disciples observe or speak of their emotions or feelings as a gauge of their experience with God. When we’re told in Scripture to have joy in the Lord, it isn’t to be gained by rolling on the floor or by straining to gain emotional feelings or experiences. It’s all about faith. Without faith it is impossible to please God (Hebrews 11:6). Feelings are not mentioned as a goal or an imperitive.
In a sense, the obsession with feelings as a measure of our spiritual experience is the exact opposite of faith. When those hard times hit, or when the emotions we desire don’t manifest in our physical bodies, we need faith. Faith is to be the king and the driving force of our walk with God-not feelings. We have to believe that God is in our presense and in our lives, even when our emotions don’t express it.
Fuel for Faith, Food for Thought 