The other day I had an extensive discussion with some friends about the role of feelings in our relationship with God. I was pretty adamant that while feelings played a certain role, we couldn’t rely on them. Instead, most of us decided, faith was the key component above and beyond our feelings and emotions that led to intimate relationship with God.
During some overwhelming and stressful moments over the past 24 hours, I realized that it probably isn’t that simple.
If I’m honest, my perceived closeness to God is more like playing a slot machine than being filled continually with the love that God supposedly lavishes on those who seek Him. Let me explain.
Though I’ve always been taught and still firmly believe that I cannot rely on my feelings and emotions in my relationship with God, they play a bigger role in my walk with the Lord than I’d maybe care to admit.
How many of us feel like we have an intimate relationship with our friends or significant others when we initiate conversation with them each day but don’t seem to get any response? Your girlfriend giving you the “silent treatment” usually isn’t a good sign.
Sometimes, it feels like my relationship with God isn’t much different. I might come to Him daily spending time in the Word and in prayer but don’t really seem to “hear” or feel much of a response.
It’s like I approach the “quiet time lever,” pull it down and hope that “today is the day I get lucky and truly get to meet with God.”
David and the psalmists seem to have had similar experiences and yearnings to meet with the presence of God in a real and significant way.
“How long, O LORD? Will you forget me forever? How long will you hide your face from me? How long must I wrestle with my thoughts and every day have sorrow in my heart? How long will my enemy triumph over me? Look on me and answer, O LORD my God. Give light to my eyes or I will sleep in death; my enemy will say, ‘I have overcome him,’ and my foes will rejoice when I fall.” (Psalm 13:1-4)
Similarly, songwriter Jason Wade wrote these lyrics during a time when God seemed distant:
How long have I been in this storm?
Overwhelmed by the ocean’s shapeless form
Water’s getting harder to tread
With these waves crashing over my head
I know you didn’t bring me out here to drown
So why am I ten feet under and upside down
Barely surviving has become my purpose
Because I’m so used to living underneath the surface
If I could just see you
Everything would be alright
If I’d see you
This darkness would turn to light
During the following year or two after I started to walk with the Lord, my times in the Word were some of the best I’ve probably ever had since much of that was my first time through the Bible and I was continually learning new things about God and my faith and experiencing God in a very real way.
So what happens after you’ve read through parts of the Bible more times than you can count and you no longer seem to come away with that little “nugget” every time you sit down to meet with the Lord?
That’s what I’m trying to figure out.
Feelings and emotions can’t guide our relationship with the Lord but they seem to play an integral role in our perception of our intimacy with God.
But whether it feels like He hears us or not or whether we think He’s close or not, God always bends His ear to listen to us when we call out to Him and promises to reveal Himself to us if we seek Him with all our hearts. God’s Word gives us many promises of this.
I guess that’s where faith comes in.
David finishes his psalm:
“BUT I trust in your unfailing love; my heart rejoices in your salvation. I will sing to the LORD, for he has been good to me.”
It’s beyond me why God chooses to hide His face at certain times in our lives and to be near in others (there are many possibilities but we’ll save that for another time), but we can be assured that our efforts to pursue Him are not in vain, even if it doesn’t FEEL like we’re accomplishing anything.
I can only imagine what the disciples thought after Jesus was crucified and resurrected. Yes, He had promised to send a Counselor that would do even greater things than what He had done in his earthly ministry, but this probably seemed to be of little comfort to the disciples.
They went from following a Jesus who was tangible, touchable, and visible, someone they could talk with, laugh with, and cry with, to having to rely on the confusing and mystical ministry of the Holy Spirit that would come by faith.
But Jesus insisted this was better. Better than a visible cloud that would move with the presence of God from place to place. Better than the healing, life, and love that Jesus embodied during His time on earth. Better than the emotions and feelings that resulted from these encounters with God.
Faith.
As hard as it is sometimes to live by faith and not feelings or emotions, I can relate to David’s psalm.
There have certainly been times in my life where God felt distant and like continuing to pick up a Bible every day was pointless.
But in the end, like David, I have tasted and have seen that the Lord is good. He has never forsaken me and has always proven faithful to be there for me when I needed Him.
God has always known what I needed, what I could endure, and He longs to be with me much more than I could ever long for Him.
And every time I doubt Him or think He’ll never cover me in His presence again, He proves that His love really is unfailing, that He really is faithful and attentive to my cries, and that He alone is good and worthy of my life.
