Isn't that the best experience in the world?!?!
Without trying to deny you your experiences, and please do not misunderstand me but I have a dire word of warning for those who think feeling good is the best in the world.
There was a time that I gloried in God through my feeling world, as a bipolar person my moods go very high and to sing praises and make commitments in my highs I used to love to do.
I knew The good feelings came from Jesus for they were all linked to my faith in Him. In my highs I used to be so full of love that it almost hurt and I would feel so much pride in Him that I could know Him like this and He would love me so much.
However then One Day The Lord walked in Truth into my life, and I saw the One who died to give me existence - Rev 1 -
all the Joy at meeting Him like that burst my old life apart like A Big Bang - and I was about to find out the hard way that New Wine doesn't fit into old wine skins.
10 years of desolation came my way after that great Day, when The Truth robbed me of all my treasures in Him and I the one who had prided in my faith and had made so many commitments to Jesus was left behind a barren desert - talking about Rapture!:o
from those 10 years of madness 7 years of deepest depression - 15 months of those severely suicidally depressed - all my good feelings were gone and I couldn't feel my faith any more either after awhile - and so I pined away a miserable sinner and perished the fool I had been trusting my feelings to tell me about right and wrong.
it wasn't until after my Armageddon was past that I understood that in all my service to Jesus I had had very little compassion on the ill, weak and sinful inside of myself - and that I had locked-up all my so called sinner selves - and that I had numbered all things in and outside of my heart either good or bad and that I had oppressed unbelief and doubt in me but had never gone to God a doubtful unbelieving person and that now I was totally over run by all that.
Down in the pit after 7 years falling I finally I understood that faith is indeed a gift of God and that all my decisions to do good where no good when done in self-righteousness or pride or any other unclean spirit ruling and that I truly had ruled my inner being like a tyrant and not lovingly at all.
I was even horrified when I saw Jesus release all my inner prisoners and set them free to be who I really was - and I was even more horrified when my legalistic thinking self was bombarded by his own jugdements and perished miserably in the persecution on all that had life in religious dogma within me.
The real trouble in my inner being was that to love myself - a sinner I had never thought of doing - I despised and hated my 'sinful and fleshly needs self' - so all my religious zeal ended-up being unfocussed and of the mark to say the least - For Jesus came down for us while we were still sinners and loved us though we were steeped in sin, such had not been the motivation inside my heart in serving God though - rather the opposite - so in effect anti-Christ like spirit had been control of my faith life.
After that false prophet came out in the open...
I saw that it was my big ego that had had control over my life, I had served God so well for I knew it would bring me His Good and not because I loved being like Him, a truthfully loving person - rather I was prideful, arrogant and judgmental when I was like that - and so Jesus cut The Son of Lawlessness out of me and I learned to have faith in God even when deepest down in the bottomless pit and understood He loved me even while depression raged inside of me and brought me utter desolation and terrible torture of heart and mind.
It took me years to understand that this is what I had brought down on my Lord being a person who heeded his feelings and not someone who truly heeded The Word of God spoken in the Spirit of Love for God, self and other at all - The Living Word within.
once I repented from that my depression took a turn for better and my evil voices stopped screaming and His Peace has finally been restored in my heart.
I will never pride in anyone but Jesus when it comes to my Salvation though, and never trust my feelings to say it right, or think anything of it more than The word warns about, I will most certainly not make any more decisions based on my feeling world - rather God's Word spoken in love for God, self and neighbor I trust to lead The Way.
The New Wine?
Indeed brothers and sisters it is good - and please do enjoy Jesus a lot - He is also King over our feelings - but praise Him in true faith, love and hope (and use New Wine-skins) and not simply through good feelings, they so easily sweep us of our feet and make us focus all wrongly on The Son of God, thinking lofty thoughts while He lays hurting death on the bottom of our sinful lives.
Peace.
In our lives of lies we cannot see God's glory but are stuck with our own lives and destined six foot deep shortly.:o:o:o It is best to be well aware of this!
