In worship, there have been times I have been overcome with emotions and felt close to God. I go to a Charismatic church and worship is very much an emotional experience.
But the thing is, although I FEEL that these emotions were from God and I'm sure they were, there is no way to prove that these feelings were truly from God. I have seen others experience the same thing in church services and yet remain unconverted. Our feelings can be manipulated and we can be deceived by them. If the heart is not changed, the experiences are nothing more than an emotional feeling of the flesh.
Saying the above I still believe God reveals Himself through experiences in our lives, but the fact is: our feelings are untrustworthy and unreliable when it means a foundation for our faith. Faith is only to be placed in Jesus Christ, His word is our firm foundation, we know that He loves us not because we cried in church yesterday but because the Word says He laid down His life for us. We place our faith in the latter because it is unchanging, although our tears will eventually dry up His word will remain firm and true.
I trust in the unchanging (unlike feelings) word of God, there is no shadow of turning in Christ and His word, He is the same yesterday, today and forever.
1 Corinthians 13 And now these three remain: faith, hope and love. But the greatest of these is love.
Faith is like an emotion.
It's good feeling to have faith in the Bible, isn't it?
It may be only in my case, but I don't know the Bible tells me truth or not, to be honest, I just believe it is true or truth in it, because I don't know what is true.
But I know I am believing in God is that God is good against evil bad, I know that as matter of the fact and nobody can tell me difference.
And I don't believe in God for eternal life or to get in Heaven, it's not for me and I believe that I am in Heaven if I worship God and obey God's heart.
When I can do that I don't need the Bible, but the realty is that I will keep reading it to find where is the heart of God not just for reading sake.
We can believe the Bible as is and still God can say your heart wasn't with my heart.
Mtthew7: 21 Not everyone who says to me, Lord, Lord, will enter the kingdom of heaven, but only the one who does the will of my Father who is in heaven. 22 Many will say to me on that day, Lord, Lord, did we not prophesy in your name and in your name drive out demons and in your name perform many miracles? 23 Then I will tell them plainly, I never knew you. Away from me, you evildoers!
Through my life, I've met so many people claim they are Christians because they are brought up that way.
Certainly they know the words of Bible 100 times more than I do.
But I've lived through with the words and spirit many years.
One of those words is "Let not your heart be troubled."
Knowing the words and knowing what that words mean to me are 2 different things, specially when I felt the meaning through Holy Spirit at that time.
It may not mean anything to you, if you are not in spiritual world of the Bible.
I know it is between Spirit and I, and I don't see no-one between us, meaning
between Holy Spirit and you relationship is yours only.
However, I'd like to share with someone who has similar experience.
That makes me feel the existence of spirit between us.
I call that a Church with spirit.
I have thought faith is the most important thing for a Christian, but 1 Corinthians 13 changed my mind and these words were brought to me by someone through a Christian forum about 10 years ago.
I don't know many words of the Bible, but when you know love is greater than faith and if you know what love is, even you do wrong you know you did wrong.
You may not correct it right away by your will, but when you have love of God in your heart, it will correct yourself soon or later.
Trust me on this one.
It happened to me.
And that's what I've been telling my friends around me, some are now out of prison, some are still in prison.
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