From the book The Secrets of Guidance (1896)
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Fact! Faith! Feeling!(Part 2) by F.B. Meyer
Our feelings are very deceptive, because so easily wrought on from without. They are affected by the state of our health, changes in the weather, the society or absence of those we love. When the air is light, and the sun shines, and we have slept well, we are more likely to feel disposed towards God than when the dripping November fog drenches the woodlands. The Father who made us, and knows our frame, understands this; so much so, that when Elijah, after the strain of Carmel, his swift flight and his disappointment at Jezebel's continued obduracy, threw himself beneath the juniper tree and asked for a swift death, God sent him sleep for his exhausted nervous system, and food for his hunger.
As a rule, Faith fruits in Feeling. "Being justified by faith, we have peace with God... and not only so, but we joy in God, through our Lord Jesus Christ." "Believing, we rejoice with joy unspeakable, and full of glory." When the prodigal returned, the father bade them slay the fatted calf, saying: "Let us eat and be merry." There is relief from a heavy burden of sin, the ecstasy of pardon, the light of the Father's face, the sense of rightness, the calm outlook on the future. When the King comes to His own the bells ring out their peals on the waiting air, as though intoxicated with delight!
Happy and blessed feeling is the effect of the Spirit's work on the soul. "The fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace..." He is the earnest of our inheritance, and though in our minority we cannot expect to enter on the fulness of our heritage, we are privileged to enjoy its firstfruits. There are prelibations of the river of His pleasures, and stray notes from the full chorus of bliss. When the Holy Ghost reveals the Bridegroom, the loving heart is glad, even though the nuptials are not yet celebrated.
But the lack of feeling does not always indicate we are wrong. There may be causes, as we have seen, which account for our depression. It may be that Christ would teach us to distinguish between love and the emotion of love, between joy and the rapture of joy, between peace and the sense of peace. Or, perhaps he may desire to ascertain whether we cling to Him for Himself or for his gifts.
Children greet their father from the window, as he turns the corner and comes down the street; he hears the rush of their feet along the passage as he inserts his latch-key in the door; but one day he begins to question whether they greet him for the love they bear him or for the sweets with which he never forgets to fill his pockets. One day, therefore, he gives them due notice that there will be no sweets when he returns at night. Their faces fall, but when the hour of return arrives they are at the window as usual, and there is the same trampling of little feet to the door. "Ah," he says, "my children love me for myself," and he is glad. Our Father sometimes cuts off the supply of joy and suffers us to hunger, that he may know what is in our hearts, and whether we love Him for Himself If we still cling to him as Job did, He is glad, and restores comforts to His mourners with both hands.
Seek feeling, and you will miss it; be content to live without it, and you will have all you require. If you are always noticing your heart-beats, you will bring on heart disease. If you are ever muffling against cold, you will become very subject to chills. If you are perpetually thinking about your health, you will induce disease. If you are always consulting your feelings, you will live in a dry and thirsty land, where no water is. He that saveth his soul shall lose it.
Be indifferent to emotion. If it is there be thankful; if it is absent, go on doing the will of God, reckoning on Him, speaking well of Him behind His back; and, above all, giving no signs of what you are suffering, lest you be a stumbling-block to others. Then joy will overtake you as a flood. He will make you sit at His table, and gird Himself to come forth and serve you.
There are five concluding cautions for the culture of the devout life, our attention to which will generally result in holy joy and peace.
We must be still before God. The life around us, in this age, is pre-eminently one of rush and effort. It is the age of the express train and electric telegraph. Years are crowded into months, and weeks into days. This feverish haste threatens the religious life. The stream has already entered our churches, and stirred their quiet pools. Meetings crowd on meetings. The same energetic souls are found at them all, and engaged in many good works beside. But we must beware that we do not substitute the active for the contemplative, the valley for the mountain top. Neither can with safety be divorced from the other. The sheep must go in and out. The blood must come back to the heart to be recharged, and fitted to be impelled again to the extremities.
We must make time to be alone with God. The closet and the shut door are indispensable. We must lose the glare of the sunny piazza that we may see the calm angel-figures bending above the altar. We must escape the din of the world, to become accustomed to the accents of the still, small voice. Like David, we must sit before the Lord. Happy are they who have an observatory in their heart-house to which they can often retire beneath the great arch of Eternity, turning their telescope to the mighty constellations that burn beyond life's fever, and reaching regions where the breath of human applause or censure cannot follow.
It is only in such moments that the best spiritual gifts will loom on our vision, or we shall have grace to receive them. It is impossible to rush into God's presence, catch up anything we fancy, and run off with it. To attempt this will end in mere delusion and disappointment. Nature will not unveil her rarest beauty to the chance tourist. Pictures which are the result of a life of work do not disclose their secret loveliness to the saunterer down a gallery. No character can be read at a glance. And God's best cannot be ours apart from patient waiting in His Holy Presence. The superficial may be put off with a parable, a pretty story, but it is not given such to know the mysteries of the Kingdom of Heaven.
We must be possessed by an eager desire. There is a difference between wishing for a thing and willing it. In a single hour we may wish for a hundred differing objects, and forget them. But how different from this is the fixed determination, the settled purpose of the will! The lad catches sight of some equipment for his sport, the student of a precious book, the lover of a rare and jewelled ornament which he covets for the one he loves -- in each case the will is wrought upon till it resolves to acquire at any cost. Then privation and self-sacrifice and delay are cheerfully encountered. Nothing can extinguish or slacken the determination that follows hard after its quest. So with us.
We must hunger and thirst; we must be possessed by strong and passionate desire; we must be resolved even to use violence to take the Kingdom of Heaven. The expressions of Scripture are all so intense -- the hart pants for the waterbrooks; Jacob will not let the angel go; the widow troubles the unjust judge day and night. We, too, may have this strong desire if we will let the Spirit of God produce it within our hearts. But the merchantman must be bent on seeking and finding the goodly pearl. We must strive to enter the strait gate. We must agonise, to use the Apostle's word, as the athlete for the crown.
We must have a promise in our hand. This is the true method of dealing with God. Search the Bible for some holy word which exactly fits your case. It will not be hard to find one, since it abounds with personal incidents culled from every conceivable variety of life. Then, when it has been discovered, and perhaps borne in on you by the divine Spirit, take it with you into the presence of God, or place your finger upon it as you pass into the presence chamber with hushed and reverent step. The promises are our inventory of possession, and our need should make us look up for and claim the blessing intended to meet it.
Reckon on God. If you desire spiritual gifts, not for your own gratification, but for the glory of Christ; if, so far as you know, your heart is rid of evil, and your life of sinful habit; if you perceive that the promise is for you, because you are not only a son but an heir of God, and a joint heir with Christ; if you feel an eager desire that God has instilled to lead you to this very point -- then open your mouth wide, and believe that God fills it; unshutter every window, and believe that the light enters; throw wide every aperture, and believe that you have received what you needed and sought. According to your faith, it shall be unto you. You may not have the emotion you expected, or the sense of blessing you looked for, but you will have God, God's gift, God's answer to your faith. And you may go your way and reckon that you have what you sought. Then, in some moment of need, or when you least expect it, or when engaged in wonted toils -- some glad consciousness of joy, or peace, or nearness to Christ, or power over others, will be the evldence that you did receive.
We must care for others. No life can be blessed which is self-centred, and shut in, as the Dead Sea, by giant walls. The secret of having is giving; of learning is teaching; of climbing to the throne is by stooping to wash the feet of the disciples. Think more of others than yourself, and your own life shall be never so rich and prosperous.
This page Copyright © 1998 Peter Wade. The Bible text in this publication, except where otherwise indicated, is from the King James Version. This article appears on the site: http://www.peterwade.com/
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