The atmosphere in our home was as thick and dark as a stormy winters night. My husband had said some things that were really hard to hear, but I knew they were the truth.
I had been throwing around statements like ‘I believe this ….’ and ‘I feel that …..’
I had been speaking with an air of confidence. As if I was speaking the very word of God ….. but nothing that I had said, had come to pass.
And that was the hardest truth of all!
A year ago, I had truly believed that God was going to bless us with our dream ‘farm’.
It was a long journey … for two years, I prayed and believed and journaled that this dream would be ours. It felt as if the blessing was immanent. The circumstances seemed perfect …
We knew the seller personally and had become rather good friends with him. He was more than patient with us while we tried to sell our home, but we never did find our buyer. And eventually, we had to watch as our dreams evaporate before our very eyes. The house was sold to another family.
For six months after that, I battled to journal. Could it be that I had been hearing wrong all that time? Could I have just imagined everything I wrote? Was my journaling real or was it all just in my imagination? Perhaps I wasn’t hearing God at all?
This was an enormous test on my faith. Selfishly, I never thought of how it would impact my husband’s faith.
And now, here we were, having another heated conversation about faith and trust and believing.
That night, I stayed up after my husband went to bed and found a quiet spot to continue reading a book that I’d started by Katherine Marshall called Beyond Our Self.
As I read, truth upon truth started jumping out of that pages and into my heart.
I have lived, allowing my emotions to override the voice of God.
My ‘feeling’ God’s love, became mixed up with the ‘feeling’ of this is what He wants for me, this is His plan for my life.
I guess I assumed that because God loves me so much, He would absolutely want this for me too. And because in God, all things are possible, He absolutely can give this to me. To us, to our family.’
So I chose to believe it by faith. But you see, I was allowing my emotions, my great desire, to persuade myself that this was God’s will for my life – for our lives.
I transferred my will, though my emotions, onto God and believed that He would grant me my will because He loved me so much.
And that was just the beginning of my revelation.
Because it was still all about my will …
I have included a few paragraphs of Katherines book below, so that you can see how it all began to make sense to me.
PS. The term ‘Entering-in’ refers to a person’s decision to be born again and to live their life for Christ.
Before the entering-in decision, we have probably thought that we belonged to ourselves, that what we did with ourselves was our business. We reasoned that since God gave us intelligence, He intended that we use it for those decisions that go to make up a life – a career, whom we shall marry, where we shall live, how we shall rear our children. Self-interest, was the self thought it wanted, what seemed best for the self – these have been the deciding factors.
But if the man is to enter in, he must decide that while this intelligent self-interest may seem good, there is a better way.
A man must will that self abdicate it’s throne; that henceforth Christs will determines action. And this movement of the will – that decision-making part of man – must be made without paying any attention to the emotions.
It is important that we should not gauge the reality of spiritual experience by our feelings.
Feelings are at the bottom of most of our Christian difficulties. Our emotions are often painfully misleading, and at best we have imperfect control over them.
Our feelings can be affected by such irrelevant matters as the mood of those around us, by whether we have a good nights sleep, by hunger or indigestion or by a morning in which the rain blew through the open window, spattered the wallpaper, and the neighbourhood dogs turned over the garbage pail. “I don’t feel God’s presence today,” we wail.
What is the remedy?
It is simplicity itself: Our emotions are not the real us. The motivating force at the centre of our physical being is our will.
The dictionary describes will as ‘the power of conscious deliberate action’. The will is the governing power in us – the rudder – the spring in all our actions.
Before giving our lives to God, we are only responsible for the set of that will – whether we decide on Gods will or insist on self will.
Our maker knows that our feelings are unruly, unreliable gauges.
So if we see to it that our intentions, our motives are right, we can trust God to see to the outcomes.
Our emotions trail behind the will.
That evening, I realised that I had and always allowed my emotions to govern my prayers and my actions.
It is wonderful to feel God’s love and favour so tangibly, but I realised that this mislead me into believing that God would most certainly give me the desires of my heart. Even though I would pray about most things – important things – I did not always wait to know God’s will.
Instead, I would power ahead trusting that God would bless ‘my will.’
But I can see by the journey that my life has taken, that ‘my will’ is certainly not always best for me.
God is the only one who know all things and He is the only one who knows best!
The challenge to myself and for all of us, is to lay down our will, each and every time we pray, and trust for God to lead us according to His will.
This is wonderful because it will keep us incredibly close to God as we trust Him to lead us in all that we do. Where we live. Who we marry. Where we work. Who we are friends with. How we handle conflict. Everything, everyday, in every way.
It’s not difficult and its not scary.
It’s just a matter of laying down our will.