One day you're up, the next you're down, you're happy, you're depressed, you're indifferent - our feelings can have a massive influence on our view of the world and more importantly our relationship with God. Feelings enable us to learn and to experience everything around us, good or bad. However it is these same feelings that can cause us to rejoice when everything seems to be going right and reject God when it seems the entire world is against us. In simple terms feelings are very fickle.
Think about it this way, it's your birthday, you're so excited and you're expecting one of your closest friends to call you. Seconds become minutes, minutes become hours and now it's 9pm, the day is practically over and your friend hasn't phoned you and now you feel, what? Neglected, forgotten, hurt? Immediately you might start building a defence or bottling up those feelings and start running stories in your mind 'I'm never going to trust this person again' 'I'm never going to talk to them again' - it sounds childish, but you can't deny we can all fall victim to this mindset. So now we have this massive blockade in our minds, but then you discover that the same friend is throwing you a massive party that evening, and has been busy organising the entertainment, food, venue etc. Now how are you feeling? Ecstatic, overwhelmed, emotional?
To connect it with your relationship with God, transfer the role of your friend to God. You could be going through a major event in your life that you feel God has to deal with in a particular way at a particular time, but He hasn't done it the way you wanted or the time He was supposed to do it in, and so you get angry, frustrated, upset, downcast - the list could go on and then you start venting all these feelings in your actions: (the joke is there is scripture that clearly states we ought not be doing these things)
Fail to read the bible - (All Scripture is God-breathed and is useful for teaching, rebuking, correcting and training in righteousness -2 Timothy 3:16).
Listening to music that brings no benefit to you e.g. laced with sexual references, or instructing you to pledge your allegiance to some ridiculous-ness - (Keep vigilant watch over your heart, that's where life starts - Proverbs 4:23)
Don't even bother talking to God or even acknowledging Him - (men ought always to pray, and not to faint - Luke 18:1 'pray without ceasing' - 2 Timothy 1:3)
Just generally go out of your way to rebel - (Blessed are those whose way is blameless, who walk in the law of the LORD! - Psalms 119:1)
I'm just talking from experience here, and please tell me why we get to this place? Because of FEELINGS! And is this place going to get me anywhere? Hell no! You see we're not spiting anyone but ourselves. I'm sure you've heard that saying 'cut off your nose to spite your own face'. Well here is a prime example, our feelings can lead us into predicaments where we neglect God, just because we're not getting our own way, He's not moving the way that we want or at the time we want and this just leads us into darkness and further away from His presence. And I'm not sure about you but I do get that yearning to just be back in His presence, but then I kind of want to spite God (hilarious, I know) so I stay out of it a bit longer, and this can become a vicious never ending cycle and it's only you that's missing out on His greatness. The truth is God will work things out for our benefit, even better then we could have possibly imagined and some things happen just to make us that little bit more resilient or to learn something. Look at your friend throwing you that party?
So, what do we do? The solution I believe, is to give God our feelings, tell him that we're angry with Him, or upset or frustrated. Remember He did make you in his image so who better than to understand us? He's not going to turn His back on you because you screamed or shouted at Him. His love is unconditional, in other words unchanging. God is not going to stop talking to you because you hurt Him, he will welcome you with open arms when you want to apologise. So why are we going to treat our Father in such a sometime-ish manner that the focus on feelings can create? God has our best interests at heart, so next time something doesn't go your way don't give up on God. He did give us feelings for a reason so express how you feel rather than using your feelings to block God out. Don't base this amazing relationship on the frivolity of feelings.
For now I say Bonne nuit,
Jade Chanel x
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