Readers of yesterday’s blog know that a friend of mine helped me in a situation I’m dealing with. One thing I had stated, though I don’t remember how I said it, was that I felt numb. The feelings weren’t there. At that, she said she was going to throw my own words back at me. “So what?”
C.S. Lewis spoke about this in the Screwtape Letters. He has the demons writing to each other and the older says to the younger that at times, God will remove his presence from a Christian and let him stand on his own. He then says to the younger demon to not be deceived. Our cause is never more in danger than when a Christian looks at a world full of danger, heavens that are empty, cries out “Why?” and still obeys!
My future events coming up have I believe given me a kind of numbness. In some ways, it’s hard to enjoy things, but yet as I do them, I find that I enjoy them. Many of us I think can relate. We know that there is something good there, but the passion just isn’t there. We want it to be there, but it isn’t.
That could be a good thing though. I was at my church evening service last night and a girl who had been on a missions trip spoke about seeing these kids and how they had this great passion and she didn’t have that so she prayed that she would get to experience that great passion again.
Don’t get me wrong. I can understand that. I’ve prayed it myself. I wonder how much error I could be in though in doing so. Am I wanting God just so I can feel passionate? That’s just a nice bonus. The man is to love the woman for who she is and not just the pleasure he looks forward to with her. Pity the man who tells his lady that he only wants her for the pleasure that she brings him. We would say such is unromantic, but do we not do the same with God at times?
What would be the better? We don’t pray for passion. We pray for devotion. We pray that we will be willing to serve even when the feeling is not there. We will go even when the desire to go is not there. We will pray when we don’t feel like it and we will study when we don’t want to.
I would also dare say that many of us are just the kind of people that we don’t have a lot of emotional passion about many things. I find I can have at times great passion for something, and yet it’s not an effort to hide it. I am not the type to express emotions. Maybe if we don’t have that kind of passion for God, it might be we don’t have it for a lot of other things as well.
Do good feelings come sometimes? Yeah. Of course they do. However, we are to be people that are not slaves to our passions, feelings, and emotions. We are to rise above them and control them. They are good things of course, but they are not to wag the dog and too often, we have let emotion, passion, and feeling do just that.
To my great friend, I think you for that shock to my system that told me that. I am thankful you remembered my advice and shot it back at me at a time when I needed it the most. There are other ideas to write on, but those are for other nights.
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