aiki
Regular Member
This is always the way it works. No one "finds" God; He finds us.
John 6:44
44 No man can come to me, except the Father who has sent me draw him...
It might have had something to do with God, yes, but I suspect what you felt was you responding to the convicting work of the Spirit, not the Spirit himself. This is what I was getting at in my post to you about the difference between what the Spirit does to us and our reaction to what he has done. Very often, people confuse their responses to the Spirit with the Spirit himself, blending the two together. When this happens, the person who makes this conflation ends up calling their feelings in response to the Spirit, the Spirit. But these two things are distinctly separate and very different.
Then it wasn't of the Spirit. The Holy Spirit doesn't fade away. He is "the peace that passes all understanding" (Philippians 4:7), he is the joy of the Lord (Romans 14:17; Romans 15:13), he is "the love of God shed abroad in our hearts" (Romans 5:5) and he "never leaves us nor forsakes us" (Hebrews 13:5). As he controls each of us more and more, who he is fills us in an ever-increasing measure and we overflow, in time, with the "fruit of the Spirit - love, joy, peace, patience, gentleness, goodness, faithfulness, etc. (Galatians 5:22-23) If, then, your sense of peace faded away it was because it was something you had generated from within yourself in response to a variety of spiritual influences.
Our feelings come and go like waves on a beach, shifting and vacillating, and often existing in contradiction to reality. They are the very worst ground for walking with God, changeable as they are, which is why you never see in Scripture that the Christian is to walk with God from the basis of what they feel, from the motive of mere emotion. Instead, God appeals to the mind of the Christian again and again, declaring that it must be transformed, ordering the will which, in turn, orders one's feelings.
Matthew 16:23
23 But he turned and said to Peter, “Get behind me, Satan! You are a hindrance to me. For you are not setting your mind on the things of God, but on the things of man.”
Matthew 22:37
37 And he said to him, “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.
Acts 1:13-14
13 When they had entered the city, they went up to the upper room where they were staying; that is, Peter and John and James and Andrew, Philip and Thomas, Bartholomew and Matthew, James the son of Alphaeus, and Simon the Zealot, and Judas the son of James.
14 These all with one mind were continually devoting themselves to prayer, along with the women, and Mary the mother of Jesus, and with His brothers.
Acts 17:10-11
10 And the brethren immediately sent away Paul and Silas by night unto Berea: who arriving there went into the synagogue of the Jews.
11 These were more noble than those in Thessalonica, in that they received the word with all readiness of mind, and searched the scriptures daily, whether those things were so.
Romans 7:22-23
22 For I delight in the law of God, in my inner being,
23 but I see in my members another law waging war against the law of my mind and making me captive to the law of sin that dwells in my members.
Romans 7:25
25 Thanks be to God through Jesus Christ our Lord! So then, I myself serve the law of God with my mind, but with my flesh I serve the law of sin.
Romans 8:6-8
6 For to set the mind on the flesh is death, but to set the mind on the Spirit is life and peace.
7 For the mind that is set on the flesh is hostile to God, for it does not submit to God’s law; indeed, it cannot.
8 Those who are in the flesh cannot please God.
Ephesians 4:22-24
22 That you put off concerning the former conversation the old man, which is corrupt according to the deceitful lusts;
23 And be renewed in the spirit of your mind;
24 And that you put on the new man, which after God is created in righteousness and true holiness.
And on it goes, God's word urging the Christian by command and example to be people whose minds are conformed to, and transformed by, the truth of God, leading the charge in their spiritual life rather than their emotions.
Merely saying these things are so doesn't make them so. On what biblical grounds did she establish her remarks? You see, Christians need the word of God, the Bible, as the Final Arbiter of what is true concerning God, and themselves, and how to walk rightly with Him. How do you know what a crooked line is if you don't have a straight line to which to compare it, right? The Bible is the "straight line" by which we assess all other spiritual "lines," all truth-claim "lines." If they "line up" with the Bible, those "lines" are straight, not crooked, and so may be kept; but if not, they gotta go. This objective, authoritative, unchanging standard is vital to determining what is and isn't of God, which is why God, in part, gave it to us.
2 Timothy 3:16-17
16 All Scripture is inspired by God and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, for training in righteousness;
17 so that the man of God may be adequate, equipped for every good work.
Psalm 119:103-105
103 How sweet are Your words to my taste! Yes, sweeter than honey to my mouth!
104 From Your precepts I get understanding; Therefore I hate every false way.
105 Your word is a lamp to my feet And a light to my path.
Psalm 1:1-3
1 How blessed is the man who does not walk in the counsel of the wicked, Nor stand in the path of sinners, Nor sit in the seat of scoffers!
2 But his delight is in the law of the LORD, And in His law he meditates day and night.
3 He will be like a tree firmly planted by streams of water, Which yields its fruit in its season And its leaf does not wither; And in whatever he does, he prospers.
Some, though, want to throw off the constraining limits of the Bible, making their personal, subjective feelings and experiences the Final Arbiter of what is and isn't true about God, themselves, and how to walk rightly with Him. This is encouraged by the widespread relativistic secular philosophy of modern western culture that is radically committed to the supremacy of the individual. Everywhere one may turn these days, the message that "the individual is King" is promoted: "Follow your heart," "you are whatever you choose to be," "there is no absolute truth, only your truth and my truth," "you do you," "everybody else is responsible for making me feel safe," and so on.
In the Church, too, this radical individuality has taken root, producing a deep skepticism - even opposition - toward the Bible which limits the individual at every turn. In His word, God is constantly ordering the individual about, commanding them to do this and that, telling them that one thing is true and another false, reminding them that they answer to their Maker for everything they do, not only to themselves. Nothing could be more counter-cultural, more opposite the hyper-individualistic relativism of modern western society, than what God says to us in His word.
But Christians who've taken in the relativistic, individual-centered thinking of the World, who want "flexibility" (they call it being "tolerant" and "open-minded") over the constraining limits of divine Truth, who want to make God conform to their natural sensuality and emotionality, who wish to be the Final Arbiter of what is and isn't true about experiencing God, deny the authority of Scripture, God's special revelation of Himself and His Truth to us, placing their personal, subjective experience above what He has said, essentially adding to God's word. These Christians say things like, "God isn't limited by the Bible!" or "You can't tell the Holy Spirit what to do!" But what they really mean is, "You can't tell me my ideas and subjective experiences are limited, even excluded, by God in His word."
What happens, though, when each of us becomes the Final Arbiter of divine Truth? If we all have our own truth about God and walking with Him, how can we accept what Jesus said about himself: "I am the Way, the Truth, and the Life" (John 14:6)? If the Truth is ultimately located in us, in what we feel, and experience, and think, then Jesus is wrong and we may each write our own Bible.
So, what does any of this have to do with your personal, spiritual story? Maybe you can guess. Does your experience of God, does your spiritual journey, line up with the "straight line" of God's truth given to us in His word? Not as far as I can see. Like so many believers these days, your walk with God has been all over the map, stumbling and unbiblical (these things always go together), anchored to feelings and sensations, that, having subsided, leave you now contemplating a departure from the faith. This shouldn't be the case for someone who has walked with God for over twenty years! But this IS exactly where a sensual, emotional spiritual life leaves you when the sensations and emotions, for whatever reason, disappear.
No, friend, this absolutely is NOT the way you decide if a thing is okay with God or not. We sinners can be "at peace" about a great many things God hates! Read the fifth chapter of 1 Corinthians. And very often what we want to call "the peace of God" is really just the relief of the pressure of sinful desire that results from yielding to it. I've heard that serial killers talk of the "peace" they felt after they murdered someone, a sense of calm and contentment that came over them after they'd tortured and killed another human being. I had a Christian man say something similar about yielding to the desire to look at inappropriate content. He had struggled against the impulse to look at filthy sexual pictures for days, but, finally, gave in to doing so. The relief he felt giving up the struggle against his sinful desire was enormous, of course, and he wanted to tell me that this "peace" confirmed to him that God was okay with his looking at inappropriate content. Sound familiar?
I've heard this confusing of "God's peace" with a sense of relief over and over again from Christians. God, though, doesn't leave it up to a "feeling of peace" to determine what is right and wrong to do. He establishes in Scripture a clear hierarchy of priorities, and values, and morality that order everything we do. And so, we don't need "feelings of peace" to guide us, but a clear understanding of God's hierarchy of things given to us in His word. In His word, the Bible, God tells the contented serial killer he has done a terribly evil thing; to the inappropriate content addict who feels at peace about looking at inappropriate content God says in His word he has sinned; to the person who has yielded to any "idol" that competes with God for their affections and "treasure" (time, energy and money), God declares them disobedient. However calm and contented, even happy, these sinners feel about their sin, however much peace they have yielding to their favorite sin, God says in His word they have done wrong.
Not at all. I once saw a Buddhist priest immolate himself in public protest over severe social conflict in his country. With perfect calmness he doused himself with gasoline, sat down in the middle of the road, and without a single moment of hesitation ignited himself. As he roasted to death, he sat perfectly still, no cry of agony escaping his lips, no contortion of the features of his face occurred, he never leapt up and ran about, mad with pain. He just sat there and burned to a crisp. In a note he had left behind explaining his horrendous act, he said he was "at peace" with his fiery "statement," and thought it absolutely necessary to halting the great social unrest in his nation. He had no qualms at all about torching himself, no concern that it wasn't the right thing to do. He was at perfect peace about his decision to burn himself to death. How many Christians have this incredible certainty, calmness and sense of peace? Very, very few. Oh, they claim to have "deep peace" but next to the "peace" of this Buddhist priest, what they are calling "peace" is a pale shadow.
I think the priest's "peace" was actually entirely demonic. The fact that his "peace" led to his ultimately pointless destruction indicates this very clearly. The "thief" (aka the devil) comes to destroy, the Bible says (John 10:10), the "roaring lion" seeks to devour (1 Peter 5:8). And this is why relying on a feeling of peace can be so incredibly dangerous for the Christian believer. The devil can counterfeit "peace" very powerfully, deceiving believers into operating on the basis of this feeling rather than upon the objective declaration of God's word, getting them to compromise spiritually and morally and convince themselves of all sorts of ungodly things.
It isn't whether or not your experience lines up with "anything" but whether or not it lines up with the "straight line" of God's word. And much of it doesn't, as far as I can tell. But you aren't alone in this. A great many modern Christians have never been properly discipled into the faith and so have walks of faith very similar to your own. I work with such believers all the time in my role as a discipler of men at my church.
How do you know it was God speaking to you? That Jeremiah was "relatable"? Every book of the Bible, read at almost any place and time, is relatable in some way to our life with God. What if reading Jeremiah had not been "relatable"? What if doing so had been a dull business out of which you got nothing? Would having read God's word been a bad thing, then?
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