I'm frustrated right now.
I want that excitement I felt when I first began to seek God. I want that wonder, that anticipation and the feeling of everything being new and amazing. I remember seeing everything with new eyes - the sky, the clouds, the trees, the flowers, the smells of Spring. I knew for sure I would instantly die for my faith in God. The thought of being tortured or martyred didn't bother me a bit.
Why don't I see things as clearly as I once did? Is the "honey moon feeling" over? Has reality set in now?
I believe this is where faith comes into place.
Maybe worshiping God doesn't mean I have great loving feelings and excitement all the time. Maybe true worship is during the ordinary days of life when I feel nothing. Some days I feel as though my heart is as soft as flesh and other days I feel it's made of stone.
Regardless, I belong to the one true God and Father of my Lord Jesus Christ.
My salvation doesn't come from my works, feelings or experiences. My salvation comes from Jesus Christ. Likewise, my assurance doesn't come from works, feelings or experiences. Blessed are those who have not seen, yet have believed.
Blessed are those whose every feeling and circumstance seems to say that God doesn't love them, yet still believe. Blessed is the person who is insane enough to choose to believe God loves them regardless of their behavior.
6 comments:
Matthew,
You are a wise young man.
You are fixed in Christ not your emotions.
THANK GOODNESS, huh?
MWAH, Boo-baby!
Wow, yes, very wise!
It's great to get some of this stuff settled! For a long time I lived with a constant worry and an unfulfilled hope that there would finally come this time in life when I would always be "feeling" the presence and wonder of this awesome God. Because of all the faulty pentecostal junk that was being preached all the time (I'm not saying that all pentecostal teaching is junk... just a lot of the stuff I happened to be under), I was in search of experiences and feelings that would "confirm" the presence and power of God.
"Blessed are those who have not seen, yet have believed" has taken on a lot of meaning in my life. What kind of faith is it if I have to see in order to believe?
Encouraging post, Matthew! Thanks!
Matthew, I’m way behind in my blog reading and trying to play catch up but this post really caught my attention.
The Bible takes Jesus’ three and a half years of ministry and condenses it into a few chapters. The result is that we think Jesus’ life as well as that of the disciples were filled with one exciting event after another. Maybe if the gospel writers had instead given us a daily log of activities, we would have found that there were days and maybe even weeks when nothing much happened. Maybe there were days when life for them seemed pretty hum drum.
Jesus had a physical body subject to all of the limitations we have. No human body is able to sustain a constant life of excitement and adrenaline rush. I really suspect that daily life for him and his disciples consisted primarily of relationship building with an occasional miracle thrown in.
Great post, thanks!
Matthew, I thought this was a great post and it generated some additional thoughts so I did my own post and linked it to yours. To read what I wrote, follow this link.
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