What is it that drives your life? When you get up in the morning, do you act according to what you feel like? When circumstances are tough and your emotions are upside down, does it affect your behaviour? Is your joy dependent on you feeling joyful or your forgiveness and love dependent on you feeling merciful? When you feel irritated, frustrated or fearful do you act according to these feelings.
What is it that determines our conduct? Do we act according to our feelings? We can compare our life to a train. What is it that drives our life? One day we get up and feel e.g. enthusiastic, or something good happens during the day that makes us excited. So what does our train look like?
Someone told us that her usually unromantic husband remembered their wedding day and booked a romantic holiday for them. She concluded that that made her feel ecstatic and made her day. Usually she is quite affected by her husband’s loveless behaviour.
On days like that we feel a zest for life and accomplish much, because we feel so good until... later that day something happens and wham! Down in the dumps we are – depressed. So, what does our train then look like?
Our day is upside down, we growl at everybody, we don’t feel like doing anything, self-pity is the name of the game, love went out the back door for we can hardly handle ourselves, let alone loving others, everybody works on our nerves and all we do all day is grumble and complain.
The consequence of feelings driving our life train is an emotional roller-coaster life – as James 5:1-7 puts it: “If any of you lacks wisdom, he should ask God, who gives generously to all without finding fault, and it will be given to him. But when he asks, he must believe and not doubt, because he who doubts is like a wave of the sea, blown and tossed by the wind. That man should not think he will receive anything from the Lord.”
If faith drives our life, we will call on the Lord whenever we need to know what to do, for we believe He knows what to do with our lives and when we call on Him He will give us wisdom in our circumstances. We need to constantly watch out to keep faith in the driving seat. Our sinful nature and the devil work hard at putting feelings in the driving seat.
Sin is based on feelings. A person feels like having sex out of marriage tonight, the body is craving for it, so let the feelings rule and the person go and find another person with similar feelings. A person feel angry and a strong desire to vent his anger, so he takes it out on someone else.
A life driven by faith relies on the Holy Spirit whose fruit is “love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control,” (Galatians 5:22, 23a). These are not feelings, but the result of faith. Feelings come easily, but are unstable. “Faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen,” (Hebrews 11:1) and causes stability in life.
Faith, however, doesn’t happen automatically as feelings do. Feelings are part of human (sinful) nature and therefore happen by themselves, whereas “faith comes from hearing, and hearing through the word of Christ,” (Romans 10:17). We need to seek the Lord in order to have faith.
The formulae are therefore: Living by feelings = instability.
Living by the Spirit = faith = purpose.
So, where do you stand?
Lord, help me to live by faith?
Thank you Lord that your Word went out from your mouth, via your servant’s pen, and it will not return to you empty, but will accomplish what you desire and achieve the purpose for which you sent it.
If you benefited from this, why don’t you link it to your Facebook or Twitter or forward the e-mail reminder to make it available to your friends? You can also use the e-mail link to pass it on. Please pray as well for its distribution to those who need it and feel free to ask questions or discuss thoughts.
No comments:
Post a Comment