Facts and feelings

Do we not feel the urge of prayer sometimes?
Do we not feel that we are worshipping sometimes?
Do we not feel closer to God at times?

The list of negative feelings is endless....we may fill the blanks with all our personal feelings.

These are some of the situations and questions that we may go through if we live our Christian life by feelings and emotions. Let us understand this through an analogy. There was an argument between two brothers while they were looking at the sun. The younger one said "The sun is moving from the east to west and I can feel that experience visually". The older one said "No, it is only the earth that moves around the sun. The sun is stationary". The younger one asked the elder one about the reason for his claim. The elder brother said that "It is written in science books that Earth revolves around the sun".

Now let us come back to our topic. As seen in the above illustration, the proven fact is that the earth is the one which moves, and we never feel it. This perfectly applies to our Christian life too. Our spiritual life should always be based on the facts. The life through spirit is always factual and not a vanity of feelings. Feelings, thoughts and emotions originate in our soul. Here lies the secret of a victorious Christian life. The soul is the origin of passions, feelings, emotions, intelligience, and above all the "self". We will be always defeated by satan if we continue to live in our soul.

We must put our soul to complete death and live each moment driven by the Holy Spirit. How do we know that the Holy spirit is within us?. If we go by feelings, we will be deceived. It is an absolute fact that the moment we confess Jesus is God, and accept Him as our personal savior by repenting for our sins, the Holy Spirit enters us. Now all that we need to do is to live a life of complete dependence on the Holy spirit. We need to be united in Christ always through the Holy spirit.

Romans 10:9-11 says "If you confess with your mouth, "Jesus is Lord," and believe in your heart that God raised Him from the dead, you will be saved. For with your heart you believe and are put right with God, and it is with your mouth that you confess and are saved. As the Scripture says, "Anyone who trusts in Him will never be put to shame."


Martin Luther says

"We must not judge by what we feel or by what we see before us. The Word must be followed, and we must firmly hold that these truths are to be believed, not experienced; for to believe is not to experience. Not indeed that what we believe is never to be experienced but that faith is to precede experience. And the Word must be believed even when we feel and experience what differs entirely from the Word"

Luther further said

"I still constantly find that when I am without the Word, Christ is gone, yes, and so are joy and the Spirit. But as soon as I look at a psalm or a passage of Scripture, it so shines and burns into my heart that I gain a different spirit and mind. Moreover, I know that everybody may daily experience this in his own life."

This is the difference we need to understand. Only by grounding ourselves deeply in the word of God, and understanding the facts, we can overcome the feelings of the soul. Jesus dealt with satan always using the word of God. We fail in our spiritual lives because we are not strongly rooted in the scriptures. We spend most of the time going to worship in places where there is flamboyant music, and inspirational message that stir up our feelings and emotions. None of this would help us if we need a deep relationship with Christ.

It is only by reading scriptures and waiting on our knees, we could know God. It can be said that "Only our knees can achieve, what our intelligence cannot". How true it is, isn't it?. Today we may go through a tough time handling our feelings and emotions. We may be going thorugh a vigorous cycle of positive and negative impacts of emotions. But, let us not be discouraged. Let us look unto the cross, and ask God with an earnest heart to take away our "self". God is ready to do it provided we are ready to completely surrender us to Him.