When its too tough….

HANDY LITTLE CHART -

God has a positive answer:

YOU SAY	GOD SAYS	BIBLE VERSES
You say: “It’s impossible”	God says: All things are possible	(Luke 18:27)
You say: “I’m too tired”	God says: I will give you rest	(Matthew 11:28-30)
You say: “Nobody really loves me”	God says: I love you	(John 3:1 6 & John 3:34 )
You say: “I can’t go on”	God says: My grace is sufficient	(II Corinthians 12:9 & Psalm 91:15)
You say: “I can’t figure things out”	God says: I will direct your steps	(Proverbs 3:5- 6)
You say: “I can’t do it”	God says: You can do all things	(Philippians 4:13)
You say: “I’m not able”	God says: I am able	(II Corinthians 9:
You say: “It’s not worth it”	God says: It will be worth it	(Roman 8:28 )
You say: “I can’t forgive myself”	God says: I Forgive you	(I John 1:9 & Romans 8:1)
You say: “I can’t manage”	God says: I will supply all your needs	(Philippians 4:19)
You say: “I’m afraid”	God says: I have not given you a spirit of fear	(II Timothy 1:7)
You say: “I’m always worried and frustrated”	God says: Cast all your cares on ME	(I Peter 5:7)
You say: “I’m not smart enough”	God says: I give you wisdom	(I Corinthians 1:30)
You say: “I feel all alone”	God says: I will never leave you or forsake you	(Hebrews 13:5)

 

Magical Thinking

How can a person know he or she is not in error? Because we are the ones judging our own thoughts, it’s not easy to determine if we are up to the task. Surely, there are other folks who consider some of your views to be void of sound reasoning. So the question remains, who is correct?

After many years of contemplation, I’ve come to realize that magical thinking is one of the most common causes of erroneous beliefs. The term, “magical thinking,” is the ability to draw conclusions that are based on a person’s desire for what reality should be, not necessarily upon what reality actually is. People simply believe things that have no connection to logical thinking. Here are some examples of magical thinking:

Relics of saints can transfer spiritual energy. The pet psychic who claims she can read your dog’s mind by looking at a photo of the dog. Doing an Indian rain dance will cause precipitation to fall from the sky. Wearing your favorite lucky shirt will improve your bowling score. The Bible contains hidden teachings that only certain groups can understand.

It’s very appealing to believe one is able to create whatever reality one so desires. Someone who uses magical thinking will have the satisfaction of always being correct. However, with the ability to create your own evidence for your beliefs, there is nothing to prevent error from creeping into your consciousness.

The imagination is a wonderful tool for innovation, but without guidelines to govern this creative energy, we will eventually get off track. Our brains should come with the warning: “Danger, the lack of a factual foundation may cause a sudden shift from reality.”

Overcoming Bias One of the biggest obstacles to truth is bias. There is good kind of bias; then, there is a type that involves having a preference to one particular point of view, or ideological perspective, that is not supported by fact.

My knowledge of the effects of alcohol on drivers makes me know I’m biased against anyone who drinks and operates a vehicle. A negative bias might be someone who thinks all doctors are quacks. In other words, a negative bias paints with a broad brush, and this is most often the wrong kind of bias.

Someone’s view that he or she has no faults is a pretty good indication that magical thinking is causing them to be biased. No one is perfect, so if you can’t recall the last time you were in error, you might have bias issues.

Someone put together the following list of questions that are based on the Socratic method of evaluating an argumentation. These can be very helpful in detecting our personal biases.

What do you mean by_______________?
How did you come to that conclusion?
Why do you believe that you are right?
What is the source of your information?
What assumption has led you to that conclusion?
What happens if you are wrong?
Can you give me two sources who disagree with you and explain why?
Why is this significant?
How do I know you are telling me the truth?
What is an alternate explanation for this phenomenon?

True-Believer Syndrome The term, “true believer syndrome,” is largely credited as being coined by M. Lamar Keene in his 1976 book, The Psychic Mafia, referring to an irrational belief in paranormal events, even after direct confession or evidence that the events were fraudulently staged. Keene became interested in this phenomenon after he worked to expose fraudulent psychics, faith healers, and miracle workers.

He would show people that the person claiming to have supernatural powers was a scam artist, and they would refuse to listen to him. “The true-believer syndrome is the greatest thing phony mediums have going for them” because “no amount of logic can shatter a faith consciously based on a lie,” said Keene.

True-believer syndrome proves that the wrong type of magical thinking can lead to self-deception. Here are a few glaring examples of this phenomenon:

Flat Earth Society - Based in Lancaster , California , the name for the Flat Earth Society is self-explanatory They advocate the belief that the Earth is a flat disk centered at the North Pole and bounded along its southern edge by a wall of ice, with the sun, moon, planets, and stars only a few hundred miles above the surface of the earth. They believe the numerous modern satellite and space shuttle photos showing the earth as a sphere to be hoaxes. The ability to climb a tall building and see the curvature of the earth for themselves would probably not sway them from thinking the earth is not flat.

Crop circles – In the late 1980s and early 1990s, crop circles began appearing in British wheat fields. UFO watchers claimed the circles were caused by the landing alien spacecraft. In 1991, Doug Bower and Dave Chorley admitted to creating some 300 crop circles with a piece of wood and some string. They even demonstrated to the press how they carried out the hoax. Crop circles advocates refused to believe the men had created the circles. In the face of the revelation, one gentleman maintained his faith by claiming a special magnetic force had knocked down the wheat stocks.

Money scams - In the mid 1980s, my own late grandmother had received letters telling her that she was the winner of a lottery. The only thing preventing her from receiving a huge payout was for her to first pay a handling fee. Despite the fact that my grandmother never received a dime, and that supposedly she was winning contests she never entered, my grandmother continued to send money to these scammers. My grandmother continued this behavior even after being sternly warned that she was being defrauded.

Critical Thinking William Graham Sumner offers one of the best summary of critical thinking: “Critical thinking is the examination and test of propositions of any kind which are offered for acceptance, in order to find out whether they correspond to reality or not. The critical faculty is a product of education and training. It is a mental habit and power. It is a prime condition of human welfare that men and women should be trained in it. It is our only guarantee against delusion, deception, superstition, and misapprehension of ourselves and our earthly circumstances.”

Critical thinking is what keeps us out of trouble. Whenever we encounter a situation that could be hazardous to our mental, physical or financial well-being, we need to pull out the litmus paper of skepticism.

Imagine a friend named Bob comes to you and says he has invented a car engine that can get 200 miles per gallon, and that he needs to raise $1 million to set up a shop that can mass produce the engine. Bob asks you to contribute $100,000 to the project, and promises to make you instantly wealthy once the company goes public. Because you trust your friend, you decide to clean out your savings account and place a second mortgage on your house. A year later, you find out Bob’s engines don’t actually achieve such high levels of fuel economy, and the whole project goes bust.

Critical thinking would have saved you and many other people from losing money. It’s an appealing idea to own shares in a company that would be the next Microsoft, but the unlikelihood of this being the case should have given you pause. There are no cars that get 200 miles per gallon, because the technology to accomplish that is beyond our grasp. The reason no one created a microchip that could operate at a gigahertz in the 1960s is because it required tens of billion of dollars in research and 30 years of trial and error before a microchip of this speed was possible.

The usage of critical thinking does not require us to be cynical of all things. If you drive down the interstate and come upon a bridge, you don’t ask yourself whether the will collapse as you cross it. You know that any bridge in a heavily trafficked area will be well maintained. Critical thinking would serve you well if you encounter a rickety bridge on an old country road.

Wake-Up Call The stubborn nature of man is sometime almost immune to any type helpful advice. There is a method of last resort that has been the turning point for many people. People who is flying in the face of reality will eventually encounter a personal crisis that will forces them to reassess their beliefs.

Someone may think nothing is wrong with drinking. When that person loses a job, he or she is confronted with the type of evidence that cannot be pushed aside. Then he or she is forced to admit to the error.

Personal calamity doesn’t require someone to come to the truth. I’ve seen plenty of people hit rock bottom and still manage to blame everyone else for their problems. A woman who has been divorced five times can still think that she’s just had a run of bad luck with men. A man who wasted his life away on booze can find fault in all the enemies that drove hime to drink.

Anyone who realizes he or she has received a wake-up call needs to take prompt corrective action. People often recant of problems they had previously confessed to having. When temptation comes along, the same magical process of delusion draws them back in. People need to know that the clock is constantly moving forward. The devil doesn’t care how many times you press the snooze button; his strategy of victory is based on the fact that people will continue to hit the button.

God Does Not Use Magical ThinkingA lot of Christians believe that the Kingdom of God operates on magical thinking. God just makes a wish and things magically happen. The process may appear to be that simple from our vantage point, but that can’t be how things work. For every complex cause, there needs to be an intelligent force acting behind it.

God does not have a personal fairy godmother to grant His wishes. When the Almighty desires to perform what we would call a supernatural act, He has to fulfill it himself. When Jesus healed the man of leprosy, the biological composition of the man’s infected skin was broken down and rearranged to form healthy skin. When the Lord walked on water, either He was made lighter or the molecular bonds of the water were made stronger.

Magical Thinking’s inability to bridge the gap between the natural and supernatural world has provided an opportunity for some people to rationalize many biblical miracles. The parting of the Red Sea is frequently explained as being the result of a wind blowing away the water. Some folks go into pure heresy by claiming that Jesus didn’t die on the cross; they say He simply fainted and later recovered.

Faith is not a special power unto itself. It is simply an asterisk that says, “I don’t know how God did it.” When believers arrive in his kingodom, the Lord will reveal all mysteries, and there will be no more “magic.”

Christians Should Not Use Magical Thinking To see the negative influence magical thinking has had on the Church, one only needs to open the Yellow Pages of the phone book and look under “churches” to see how splintered the body of Christ has become. We all started with one body, and today there are over 10,000 different denominations in America.

A lot of the walls between denominations would crumble if church leaders were as diligent about scriptural doctrine as the ancient Bereans. I’ve always liked the saying David Reagan has helped popularize: If the first sense of Scripture makes sense, seek no other sense, or you will end up with nonsense.

I once ran across an atheist site that listed several reasons scientific reason is superior to Christianity. It repeatedly blamed Christians for lacking common sense. Here are a few guidelines to help put believers more in line with Bible-based truth:

1. A Berean Christian will check for possible weaknesses in his or her own doctrines.

2. A Berean Christian should be quick to test all new teachings against the Word of God.

3. A Berean Christian should only side with views that come straight from the Bible.

4. A Berean Christian would never agree to a “loyalty oath” of an organization.

5. A Berean Christian needs to be able to admit that he or she might be wrong.

Christians need to be mindful that there is a devil who actively seeks to mislead people. With the Bible being the only source of truth, it is foolhardy for people to think they can use their own judgment to separate right from wrong. That’s just magical thinking –a satanic delusion to take the minds of man off Jesus, who is the Word of God (John 1:1).

Blocks to Feeling God

The most relevant factors are sometimes the very ones we think have no influence over us. The possibilities we will look at, here presented in a different order, include:

	Spiritual blockages
	Persistent guilt feelings that seem disturbingly real and deserved despite seeking God’s forgiveness
	Undetected clinical depression
	Past hurts that could be unconsciously driving you to shut down your feelings
	Haunted by being unable to think of a single reason why God would love you
	Nagging doubts about God’s goodness
	Fearing you are not one of God’s favorites
	Expecting a sign from God
	Misunderstanding God’s ways

My prayer is that the Lord will highlight to you every factor influencing you, as you prayerfully read the entire webpage. Yes, I’ve had to mention prayer twice in the one sentence. To fulfill my role I must pray, but for you to receive full help, so must you. In fact, let’s pray right now:

Lord, I need you to cut through all my delusions, and open my eyes to spiritual reality. I am so keen to have a fulfilling relationship with you that I will read this entire webpage, looking to you to empower me to identify which parts are relevant to me. I want this entire matter sorted out in my life and I am determined to pay whatever it costs to bring this about.

Feelings Versus Reality

Surprisingly many celebrities envied for their beauty feel unattractive. Countless students have felt sure they have failed their exam when they actually did well. Hypochondriacs are healthy people who feel sure they are ill or even dying. A whole range of phobias cause people who are quite safe to feel frightened.

In total, billions of dollars have been lost by people who felt sure their business would succeed. Feeling lucky has plunged not just gamblers, but multitudes of other people into all sorts of disasters, and feeling inadequate has kept countless others from the success they could have enjoyed.

Trainee pilots have it drilled into them how critical it is to disregard their feelings and trust solely the plane’s instrumentation. What magnifies the danger of drink driving is that intoxicated drivers feel better at driving than they really are. Countless millions of people have felt perfectly safe minutes before they died.

Though notoriously unreliable, feelings seem so real and convincing. Never is this more true than when it comes to feeling unloved. There are numerous and distinct reasons why being loved by God and feeling loved by God, are often a world apart. The same is true of God’s presence and feeling his presence. Let’s explore these reasons.

Unforgivably Guilty?

The most exciting Person in the universe is terrifyingly holy. Not even the most saintly person can relate to the Holy One until his or her sins are supernaturally removed through spiritual union with Jesus, the spotlessly pure, eternal Son of God. This supernatural transformation is the most critical factor in having a thrillingly genuine encounter with the Living God.

Just as instructions for using a DVD recorder are useless if you do not have a DVD recorder, so this webpage is of no use until you are genuinely reborn spiritually and understand the experience. 

If Jesus has forgiven you, you are cleansed of all sin and have no guilt in God’s eyes. Despite this, there is a good chance that you will continue to feel guilty. As we have already seen, there is a vast difference between reality and feelings. Most of us will need to keep reading.

God has a supernatural enemy who is fiercely determined to minimize the impact of his greatest defeat. He attempts this by mustering all his evil cunning to afflict us with deceptive feelings of guilt and hopelessness. It is a cruel, deadly serious, supernaturally powerful attempt to fool us into rejecting the all-forgiving power of Christ’s sacrifice. In reality, is no harder for God to accept the vilest devil worshipper or reprobate former Christian than for him to accept humanity’s most saintly person. Let me explain.

A single sin – even the most minor possible offense – plunges us so far below the perfection of God that the holy Lord could draw close to us no more than a sterilized surgeon performing open heart surgery could let himself touch a sewer rat. The “tiniest” one-off sin is all it takes to keep anyone eternally cut off from the fearsomely holy God. Like trying to unmurder someone, once defiled by the slightest imperfection, there is no way any of us can scramble back to the perfection required to relate to the Holy One.

Every one of us, whether good-goody or as debased as you can get, is in the same impossible situation. All possibility of being able to say we have lived a perfect life is shattered at the moment of our first sin. Once contaminated by a single sin, devoting the rest of our lives to pure things could remove our contamination no more than adding pure water to a bucket of contaminated water. So that’s it. After one sin, relating to God becomes so impossible that even a billion more murders and blasphemies could not make it any more hopeless.

Defiled and unable to reach God, the whole of humanity – no exceptions – was in the clutches of the Evil One. Then God intervened by sending Jesus to swap places with us, thus making it possible for everyone – no exceptions – to be granted the righteousness of God’s holy Son and thus have full access to God.

Jesus undid the devil’s evil by dying for the sins of the entire world, thus making possible the full forgiveness of every sin, no matter how gross and deliberate and repeated, or whether committed before or after becoming a Christian. Nothing could rob us of God’s yearning to pour out his love and forgiveness upon us, unless we do not want Jesus to deliver us from our sins, or we mistakenly believe that Jesus’ costly sacrifice is too inadequate to forgive the grossest of sins.

Satan’s defeat means that the only place where he can hold humanity captive is in a slave camp where all the prison bars, walls and fierce-looking guards are nothing but an illusion. At any moment anyone can walk out, free. The only people staying there are those who fear freedom from sin and so choose to remain captives, or those who refuse to believe that because of Jesus’ victory, the prison’s security measures are an illusion.

Powerfully intimidating, deceptive feelings of rejection by God, and feelings of guilt, hopelessness and condemnation are simply part of the Evil One’s ploy to try to fool people into acting like his slaves when, because of Jesus, every one of those who act like captives can walk free at any moment.

It pains our loving Lord when we make unwise choices. Nevertheless, he honors our wishes by leaving it up to each of us whether we choose to believe in the power of the Deceiver or in the power of Jesus. In blanket statement after blanket statement, God promises over and over in his Word that he forgives whoever believes in Jesus. There are no exceptions. People who consider themselves unforgivable insult the crucified Lord, the Savior of the world, by choosing to believe in the power of their sin, rather than the power of their Forgiver.

Yes, Jesus spoke of an unforgivable sin, but whatever he meant by that cannot negate the Bible’s repeated insistence that forgiveness is freely available to everyone who believes in what Jesus achieved by giving his holy life as payment for the death penalty our sins deserve. The context of Jesus’ reference to an unpardonable sin makes it clear that he was referring to rejecting God’s offer of forgiveness by choosing to believe that Jesus, God’s Savior, is of the devil, not of God. No one believing that Jesus is anti-God would look to Jesus for God’s forgiveness. So it turns out that the only sin that cannot be forgiven is one for which forgiveness through Jesus is never sought.

Since Satan is powerless to stop anyone who by faith accepts God’s forgiveness through Jesus, we could expect faith in the power of Jesus’ forgiveness to be the area of greatest satanic attack. God’s spiritual foe, who the Bible calls the deceiver, is determined to flood us with exceedingly convincing feelings of guilt, hopelessness and rejection, in an attempt to get us to insult Christ by denying the unlimited forgiving power of his sacrifice. The choice is ours whether we break God’s heart and dishonor him by choosing to believe deceptive feelings, or whether we refuse that cowardly path and cling to the integrity of God’s love and promises, and to the power of Christ’s forgiveness.

This area of satanic attack is so critical and affects so many Christians that I have devoted incalculable hours to writing webpage after webpage specifically for people who feel riddled with guilt or feel unforgivable.

Unworthy of God’s Love?

What commonly sabotages our feelings and enjoyment of God’s love for us is being unable to think of a single reason why God would love us. We think if we, who are biased towards ourselves and presumably have above average tolerance of our own failings, find ourselves unlovable, how could anyone else truly love us – especially the God of perfection? In fact, for many of us, the notion of God loving us – as distinct from loving someone else – seems quite impossible. We forget, however, that the Lord is very different to fickle humanity. With the God for whom nothing is impossible, no one is unlovable.

I cannot figure out how my computer works, but I don’t let that stop me from enjoying it. Neither do I have to figure out why God loves me before I can enjoy his love. Nevertheless, our inability to understand God’s love can gnaw away at our belief that God genuinely loves us. So let’s look deeper into this.

To intellectually know the nature of God is not enough; we must take it to heart and let the truth transform us. The God of the impossible is not only perfect in his holiness; he is perfect in love. Not only is his miracle-working power without human limits, his love is also without human limits. The Creator of not just galaxies, but sub-atomic particles, has a mind so powerful that he is intensely interested not only in constellations but in every hair on your head. So far beyond human limitations are his powers of concentration that he could not be more aware of your every thought if you were the only person in an empty universe. The Creator’s love is as unlimited and as extreme as his physical power.

God is not a machine. He is not merely rational; he is passionate. To glimpse a shadow of his love, picture the world’s most selfless, devoted and proud parent of an infant. Multiply that love by infinity and you are approaching God’s love.

Let’s examine parental love to see just how mysterious genuine love is.

You know what it’s like when a married couple hit on the idea of starting a family. They are having breakfast together when the man suddenly exclaims, “I’m sick of gardening, looking after the car, maintaining the house, and all my other chores!” His wife looks up from her cereal. “I’ve got this cool idea,” he continues, “Let’s have children so they can do all the work.”

“Brilliant!” exclaims the wife, excitedly grasping the possibilities, “I’ll teach them to do all the washing and ironing. They’ll keep our house tidy and do the cooking. We’ll have breakfast in bed every morning. They’ll answer the phone so we can have long undisturbed sleeps”

“Yes!” chimes in her husband, “Life is too hectic. We need some children to give us some peace and quiet.”

“And think of all the decisions they could make for us,” adds the wife. “I’m sick of having to choose what I watch on TV.”

“Come to think of it,” says her husband, “I’ve been missing Sesame Street. And my accountant says children are a goldmine. Pouring money into kids is the best investment we could ever make. We’ll be millionaires! We’ll be retired at 35. And think of later. What are we going to lie awake at night worrying about if we don’t have teenagers? And when we’re older who else would throw us into a nursing home?”

“I don’t think a woman looks truly beautiful without stretch marks,” muses the wife. “Dirty diapers and vomit, screaming kids, snotty noses, and temper tantrums are just the spark our marriage needs.”

Having children is almost an act of insanity, and yet billions of us yearn for it. Selfless parental love is a compelling desire placed within us by God himself – the God whose love doesn’t make worldly sense. When he loves, nothing could be further from his heart than a profit and loss analysis. Divine love – pure love, undefiled by selfishness – is based on giving, not getting.

Even the most starry eyed would-be parents know ahead of time that their offspring will be naughty, self-centered and have disgusting habits. Billions of us willingly sacrifice much to have children anyway. Children inevitably embarrass and disappoint their parents but, despite having only a speck of God’s love, good parents can’t stop loving their offspring.

If there are parents, powered by only inferior imitations of God’s love, who keep on loving when it does not seem profitable, how much more will the infinite love of God explode the confines of coldly rational, human thought.

If passion were cold and calculating, it would make sense to consider ourselves unwanted if we can’t think of anything God could gain from loving us. Many of us choose to love adults only because of what they can do for us – kill loneliness, boost our status or egos or some such thing. We are so used to fake love that we are suspicious if ever we stumble upon the real thing. If real love were selfish, loving for no reason would be insane. But true love is unselfish. And God is brimming with it.

God loves you because he loves you. He loves you because that’s his very nature. It’s who he is. He loves you, not for what you can do for him, but for what he can do for you. His love singles you out as if there were only you and him. His love makes you special, irreplaceable, and of infinite value.

The story is a told of a boy who labored with his grandfather for hours and hours to design, build and paint a model sailing boat. When at last it was finished, he took his precious boat to the lake to try it out. It sailed beautifully. Suddenly a gust of wind swept the boat out of reach. It drifted further and further into the deep until the boy lost sight of it. Eventually, he trudged home, heart broken.

The boy’s grandfather suggested making another boat, but the boy was inconsolable. Nothing could take the place of that boat.

Weeks later, the boy glanced in the shop window of a second hand dealer and saw his boat. It was weathered and beaten but it was definitely his. Excitedly, he rushed into the shop to claim his boat, only to find he was not believed. He was told the only way he could get that battered second hand boat was to buy it. He had to find work to earn enough to buy it. When at last the transaction was completed, he hugged his beloved boat and whispered to it, “You’re mine! You’re twice mine! You’re mine because I made you and you’re mine because I bought you. And I don’t care how battered you are, I’ll make you beautiful again.”

That’s how God feels about you.

God loves you because you are his. He loves you because he made you and because he bought you and because the All-powerful One sees the astounding person he can make you, if only you let him.

With God, you are lovable. To think anything else is to insult not you, but the God of love. The One for whom nothing is impossible is so passionately in love with you that there is no length to which he will not go to pour his love on you for all eternity. God’s eternal Son went to the extreme of being tortured to death so that you could be as cherished by God as Christ himself is.

I beg you not to gloss over what the Holy Son of God did for you. The great temptation is to perversely under-rate God’s personal love for you and malign the Lord of Glory by supposing Jesus died only for people in general, as if you were just one of millions, not the personal focus of the greatest expression of love in the universe. In our imagination we can cultivate twisted ideas about God’s love, but in reality, divine love cannot be diluted or depersonalized. God loves you as if you were his only child.

The truth is that with his Son’s full agreement, God traded his Son’s life for you. No matter what your analysis of your worth, no one is more important to God than you.

Mysterious Depression

As strange as it may seem, vast numbers of people suffer from clinical depression long before realizing they have depression. One such person is a missionary I know. Eventually she was diagnosed and then began to learn that a common characteristic of this affliction is an inability to feel loved by God. She writes:

When I was first going through serious depression, I had not the slightest idea that it was depression. I knew I was keeping a close guard on my spiritual life, but in spite of that, it truly felt like God simply was not listening or responding to me, even though I prayed and prayed. And it was that way for months.

I also felt sure I was a failure in my job, and that my teaching was futile. I now look back and see that the truth was very different to my feelings. People enjoyed my classes, and were eager to learn, and the papers they turned in proved they were learning.

I was also sure that my co-worker – another missionary, whom I got along well with and saw constantly – was displeased with me. That frustrated me, because I didn’t know why she was displeased.

It turned out that I had simply projected on to those around me, and even God, the negative way I felt about myself.

I now know that one of the symptoms of depression is not being able to feel love, even by those who are close to you. In depression, most of our feelings are blunted. We feel useless, unworthy, hopeless, and that no one cares about us. Not feeling God’s love was simply a symptom of the disease. It had nothing to do with God not being there, or me being “off” spiritually.

I have undergone much spiritual dryness simply because of depression. Now that I understand what is happening, I’m no longer shaken by it.

Pain Avoidance Techniques

So you could be unable to feel God’s love because clinical depression is deadening your emotions and distorting your perception of earthly and heavenly reality. There are other possibilities, however. We could be unconsciously shutting down our emotions because lurking in the shadows of our mind is a fear of getting hurt.

Part of us – often subconsciously – actively resists feeling love, because it makes the stakes frighteningly high should that person later reject us. To love someone is to make ourselves highly vulnerable. It gives that person the terrifying power to hurt us deeply. To really feel someone’s love requires us to open our hearts to that person. It gives a person the power to lift us to the clouds but also the power to smash our hearts like a dropped egg.

Not surprisingly, the fear of getting hurt causes many of us to close off emotionally, as a form of self-protection. Tragically, the very attempt to seal off our emotions from the possibility of getting hurt, also seals off the possibility of us feeling loved.

In theory, for us to release our white-knuckled grip on our emotions, it should be sufficient to know that God is faithful and will keep his promise never to leave or forsake us. In practice, however, fear is seldom overcome quickly. If someone is terrified of spiders, it will take more than becoming intellectually convinced that a particular spider is harmless, to remove his fear. We can expect it to take a long while for us to trust God so completely that we relax enough to be able to feel loved. So, as back to front as it seems, the first but significant step towards realizing that we are loved is to not expect to feel loved.

Your emotional Fingerprint

Part of the uniqueness that makes us special is that we each have a distinctive emotional reaction to identical situations.

We all know that some of us are far more emotional than others. Some people seem to laugh at anything; some laugh at nothing. Some would cry if their cat sneezed. Others would not shed a tear if hit by the worst personal disaster known to humanity. The one who cries the least might have the softest heart. Lack of tears has nothing to do with how much people are hurting or how devoted they are.

How emotional you are, depends on your personality, not on how godly you are. The same is true of all feelings.

To adapt what I’ve said elsewhere:

Never confuse devotion with emotion. The Bible measures love, not in tingles per second, but in putting one’s life on the line (1 John 3:16-1 . It’s pain endured in the valley, not gooey feelings in the afterglow of mountaintop ecstasy, that validates love. Never assume that emotional deadness – a normal phase of anyone’s spiritual life – implies spiritual deadness. We march by faith, not by warm fuzzies.

Suppose someone is beaten up and sustains a spinal injury that allows him to walk but he is left with some loss of feeling in his legs. That does not make him any less lovable. Many of us have been beaten up emotionally and have been left with a loss of feeling in our emotions. That’s unfortunate, but is should not let it have any effect on our relationship with God.

If a devout woman of God broke her neck and lost all physical feeling, we’d be shocked if she let that hinder her spiritually. We’d expect a great man or woman of God to maintain closeness to the Lord, not matter what. Likewise, we should not allow not being able to feel emotionally hinder us spiritually.

Negative Expectations

Many of us are convinced that we are unlovable. Some of grown up expecting our father to be cold and indifferent and deep down think God must be the same. Some of us have actually had it drummed into us that since childhood that we are unalterably evil.

Christians feeling such things or having suffered such a background will always be half expecting God to reject them or at least be frowning on them or aloof. Consequently, they are strongly pressured to interpret every feeling or event, not in the light of the truth that God is incurably loving and forgiving, but according to their negative expectations about God. This can easily produce a vicious circle with one’s mind producing feelings in line with one’s expectations.

A Wrong Emphasis on Feelings

It is astonishingly easy for us Christians to slip into unbiblical thinking. A quick statistical check of biblical word usage gives a crude indication of how we have strayed from the Bible’s perspective on the significance of feelings. In the New International Version of the Bible, for every variant of the word “feel” (feeling, felt, feels, etc) there are over thirteen occurrences of variants of the word “faith” or “believe.” In the King James Version, the figure balloons to thirty-seven references to faith/believe for every variant of “feel.”

“Now faith is  . . . the evidence of things not seen,” declares the Word of God (Hebrews 11:1, KJV). Most of us know the verse. The problem is that we tend to reject it and think that feelings are the evidence. The Jerusalem Bible renders the verse: “Only faith can guarantee the blessings that we hope for, or prove the existence of the realities that at present remain unseen.” Our temptation is to dethrone faith and try to make feelings, not faith, the guarantee or proof of spiritual reality. To do so is to stray from biblical Christianity. To cling to faith is to show oneself an authentic Christian.

Expecting a Sign from God that He Loves You

How do you think the Almighty would feel if you said, “God, I want you to prove to me that you’re not a liar when you say over and over in your Word that you love me.” We’d never put it so bluntly, but regardless of whether we seek a feeling or supernatural skywriting, this is really what is going on when we seek a sign from God that he loves us.

Expecting a sign plunges us into a no-win situation. To explain, permit me to draw upon something I wrote elsewhere:

I’ve suffered times when I was convinced I desperately needed personal indications of God’s presence, and I felt badly treated by God when he left me to stagger though life devoid of any tangible proof that I was important to him, even though he gave people all around me the signs I craved. Eventually I remembered Thomas, who was granted perhaps the greatest of all such experiences – the opportunity to physically handle the risen Lord. How blessed he was! And yet the astounding thing is that Jesus told Thomas that the person who is really blessed is the one who is not granted an experience like him. The best is reserved for the person compelled to hold on by faith alone (John 20:29).

Finally I understood how I had forced my Lord into the position where he either had to deny me the experience I was hankering for, or deny me the greater blessing he had planned for me – the chance to gain glory by finding faith without experiencing anything dramatic and so grow in faith, that precious commodity that is more valuable than gold. The Lord had lovingly risked my wrath so that he could give me the greater blessing. And instead of being grateful, I was annoyed at him.

How often we must unknowingly put God in such a situation. Seeing only one possible solution, we demand it of God, convinced that he must either act the only way we can figure, or God cannot be loving. We force God into either denying us what is best or acting in a manner that we have fooled ourselves into thinking is unloving. We repeatedly find ourselves in such situations because God is so intellectually superior to us.

Doubting God’s Goodness

You are sure to unconsciously keep your emotions in check when relating to God if you fear he could have a cruel streak. No normal person would feel secure about giving his or her heart to someone who might possibly be callous, or even sneak some twisted pleasure out of slaughtering innocents, or tormenting people in hell, or in any other way have less than the highest conceivable morality.

To be more tenderhearted than any human; to love more than life itself both hate-crazed rapists and their innocent victims, is to live on an emotional nuclear bomb. Nevertheless, this is the agonizingly heart-wrenching place where God lives. To be the God of perfect justice, and yet merciful and forgiving, is to live on a knife-edge that demands terrifyingly stupendous wisdom. If you, in your wildest dreams, suppose you could do better that the God of perfection, it is because in this infinitesimal fragment of eternity, you know only a fraction of the facts and the final destinies of those involved.

The Lord could have stripped us all of our dignity and freedom of choice, enslaving humanity so that it is impossible for any of us to make wrong decisions and hurt people. Yes, such iron control would remove evil, but it would also remove all good. If robbed of choice, every human action would be reduced to moral neutrality. We could never know the joyous fulfillment and honor of having chosen correctly.

You cannot congratulate a robot. Only its maker could be honored. God wants not machines but children – dignified beings who can be honored. For us to have the ability to make praiseworthy decisions, we must also be granted the ability to make blameworthy decisions. To be destined to rule as royalty with God for all eternity necessitates the freedom to make horrific mistakes. Love does not enslave; it sets free.

God is love, and love takes enormous risks, because there is no other way to love. “If you love something, set it free; if it comes back it’s yours, if it doesn’t, it never was,” Richard Bach. This principle is the driving force behind all that God does.

God is good. He is perfect in all his ways. He is infinitely trustworthy.

When it Seems God has Favorites

If we confuse circumstances with God’s favor, we are bound to suffer bouts of feeling unloved. Until we understand the heart of God and his plans for us, there is little that is more likely to crush our ability to feel loved than when God seems to be blessing others more than us.

Let’s examine the reasons why it is so common for us to mistakenly think God has favorites. (If you don’t require all the detail provided in this section, feel free to just skim through it.)

• If spring could tip-toe past nature without stirring it from its winter slumber; if the sun could slip through the sky without dispelling the night; if rain could fall to the ground without bringing life to the desert – only then should you fear dry times, dark times, lean times.

Not Seeing the Big Picture

One of Jesus’ most chilling expressions was, “they have received their reward in full” (Matthew 6:2,5,16). Despite seeming blessed of God, their current satisfaction, smugness or “fifteen minutes of fame” is all they will ever get. .

There are those who by missing out down here are storing up treasure in heaven and there are those who are the envy of people down here, but will live in eternal regret. “What is highly valued among men is detestable in God’s sight” (Luke 16:15).

To illustrate, Jesus compared Lazarus, a diseased, despised beggar, with a hard-hearted rich man, who seemed to be basking in God’s blessing. For all eternity, their situations will be reversed (Luke 16:19-26). Another time, Jesus told of the farmer who seemed so divinely favored that he had to build bigger barns to store all his wealth, but his riches were of no consequence because he would die and his bumper harvests were the only “blessing” he would ever receive (Luke 12:16-21).

So what matters is not current circumstances – whether our own of those of other people. Over and over, Jesus taught that everyone’s existence takes an astounding twist; a terrifying or heart-stoppingly thrilling reversal of fortune, in the next life. The proud will be humbled. The humble will be exalted. The first will end up last. The meek will inherit the earth. Jesus revealed that at the end of the age, when the “sheep” are separated from the “goats,” both classes of people will be shocked. Neither had imagined the stupendous and eternal implications of their seemingly minor decisions (Matthew 25:31-46). He spoke of three servants entrusted with money. Two worked hard, one had a life of ease, but the day of reckoning came (Matthew 25:14-30).

Jesus’ own life highlights the great reversal. He went from the cross to the throne; from earthly shame to eternal glory; from apparent rejection from God to being exalted by him. The final twist was staggering. And he told us to take up our cross and follow him on this astounding journey.

In the short term, the ungodly can indeed prosper and, like Jesus, God’s children can get a raw deal. It is vital that we focus on the eternal, not current “blessings.” When we confuse the two, everything slips out of focus and we will wrongly think God is overlooking us.

Blessed are the poor, the meek, the persecuted, said Jesus. There are Christians who will spend all eternity rejoicing in the blessing of having on earth suffered severe persecution and defamation. And there are Christians who will suffer eternal loss, as if a fire had ripped through their home, destroying everything they owned (1 Corinthians 3:11-15).

Seasons in God

Job crashed from prosperity to poverty, from health to sickness and from a large, happy family to devastating grief. Throughout it all there was not the slightest fluctuation in God’s love for him. Joseph went from being the pampered, favorite son, to being a slave, then branded a rapist and incarcerated as a criminal and finally exalted to political power, fame and fortune – all without any change in God’s attitude to him. David moved from shepherd boy to giant killer, to King’s son-in-law, to fugitive, to King – with God being proud of him the whole time.

We could talk of Elijah, who slid from mountain top, to depression, to spectacular entry to heaven. Or we could burst out of the Old Testament into the New, and see the mightily blessed apostle Paul often having not even enough to eat, suffering horrific beatings, unjust prison sentences, pounded by natural disasters (snake bite, several ship wrecks, and so on) and God refusing to answer his prayers (2 Corinthians 12:7-9). On and on we could go, showing from God’s revelation to humanity (the Bible) that changing fortunes need not indicate changes in God’s favor.

To always be in fruit would kill a tree. As trees cycle from dormancy, to blossom, to fruitfulness, to loss and dormancy, without fluctuations in God’s blessing, so people basking in God’s blessing have seasons of growth and fruitfulness and seasons of loss, dryness and barrenness. The main difference between spiritual seasons and natural seasons is that nature moves in unison, whereas at any one time, different Christians in the same locality will be in different spiritual seasons. Some people will be over the moon, pampered with spiritual goose bumps, like John when receiving his revelation. Others will be languishing in the midst of an oppressive trial, like John was, as a prisoner on Patmos, when his vision commenced (Revelation 1:9). It would be a grave misunderstanding to think this means some have God’s favor and some do not, or to think you have fallen out of God’s love and blessing, when it is simply a change of season.

As I have said elsewhere:

You might be envious of the Apostle Paul, thinking you would feel so loved of God if the Lord had appeared to you in blinding light as he did to Paul. But would you feel loved of God if, like Paul, you reeled from one catastrophe to another – shipwreck after shipwreck, years languishing in prison, religious leaders wanting him dead, forsaken by Christians and so on?

Living in Unnecessary Spiritual Poverty

In Jesus’ famous parable, the prodigal son’s brother was jealous of the father’s extravagant display of love for the wayward son. “You’ve thrown a party, slaughtering the fatted calf for this no-hoper, when you haven’t given me so much as a little goat!” he complained bitterly.

The father’s reply is staggering: “Son, all that I have has always been yours for the taking” (Luke 15:29-31, my paraphrase).

This brother had been waiting for the father to give him things; never having sufficiently believed in his father’s love and generosity to have realized that he could have helped himself to everything.

Some people help themselves to God’s blessings, simply because they choose to believe the Bible when it says that God is love, does not show favoritism , that he has blessed us with every spiritual blessing in Christ (Ephesians 1:3), and so on. Others miss out, not because they are any less loved, or that God doesn’t want them to have it, but simply because they fail to take God at his word.

Different Callings

The Scriptures reveal that Christians differ so greatly from each other that they are like totally different bodily organs. Some of us are like eyes – spiritually perceptive but delicate and useless for carrying anything. Some are like arms – strong and useful but can sense very little. Being destined to fulfill different roles in the body of Christ means that some people will be more spiritually perceptive than others, not because God is moving more powerfully in their lives, and certainly not because they are more loved of God, but simply because they are called to perform a different function in the body than other parts.

Just as everyone sees your nose and no one sees your kidneys, some parts of Christ’s body will, of necessity, be more noticed than others. Again, this is solely because of their function. Prominence in the body does not in the slightest mean prominence in the heart of God. In fact, as Scripture points out, God has ordained that those parts of the body that get all the attention – such as our hair – are actually less important than parts that are out of sight.

Personality Types

Some people’s personality cause them to regularly soar and plunge from dizzy peaks to darkened valleys, while certain individuals have moods that barely change from one day or week to the next. Those of us whose personality type keeps our emotions on a steady course can end up feeling inferior – and feel less loved by God – simply because we have never had the highs of those Christians who suffer great highs are lows. On the other hand, people whose personality takes them on an emotional roller coaster, instead of realizing the uniqueness of their highs, often feel inferior because Christians who rarely suffer such lows because their emotional journey is much flatter.

Especially because too few Christians are brutally honest about their down times, the spiritual grass always seems greener in someone else’s life.

We might be envious of Elijah when God was working miracles through him, but none of us envy him when he was in the pits of depression wishing he were dead (1 Kings 19:4).

Poetic License?

Yet another complicating factor is that what happens inside of us is virtually indescribable. Some people are so poetic in their attempts to describe their feelings that even if those hearing the description had the identical experience, they wouldn’t recognize it and would still feel envious.

So comparing our own spiritual journey with what we know of that of other Christians is strewn with spiritual danger. To quote myself again:

Eleven thousand teachers competed with Christa McAuliffe and lost. The winner of a seat on space shuttle Challenger was the envy of millions – until the shuttle disintegrated soon after take-off. Eleven thousand losers suddenly became winners.

In the twinkling of an eye, the first shall be last (1 Corinthians 15:52; Matthew 20:16; Luke 16:15) . Until that wondrous moment, don’t assume you’re a loser.

Despite God insisting in his Word that he loves each of us with all of his heart, we are all subject to many factors that give the upsetting illusion that others are more loved of God than us. No wonder faith is so critical to the Christian life. Without faith in the integrity of God’s word and his love, we will never see past the temporary and superficial, to the heart of God.

If God Loved Me He Wouldn’t Have . . .

It is hard to find anyone in Scripture of whom God is proud, who did not suffer what must have felt like endless times when it seemed to the untrained eye that God was acting unlovingly towards that person.

Over and over, Scripture praises Abraham for his faith, and yet he must surely have endured many times with the thought churning through in his mind, “If God really loved me he would have given me a son by now. I’m getting too old even to enjoy a child.”

I can well imagine Joseph thinking, “If God loved me, he wouldn’t have sold me into slavery.” Yet, after year upon year of setbacks, he ended up declaring to his brothers, “You intended to harm me, but God intended it for good . . .” (Genesis 50:20).

We are so much like children thinking, “If Daddy loved me he would have let me run on to the busy road, he’d let me play with matches, he wouldn’t insist I eat vegetables . . .” Other times, we are like athletes selected for Olympic glory, thinking that if the coach truly cared about us he wouldn’t set us grueling training sessions.

Every time I cannot see the love and wisdom behind God’s actions, I am displaying my ignorance and folly. To plunder other writings of mine:

Embraced by divine love, your life will be tinged with mystery but aglow with glory.

Tucked in the heart of Scripture sleeps a tiny psalm of precious truth (Psalm 131) . The singer confessed that as a mother denies her baby access to her milk when it’s time for her darling to be weaned, so God sometimes denies us things we crave. Yet as a weaned infant lies warm and secure in its mother’s bosom, our soul can nestle into God, not knowing why we have been denied that which we have clamored for, but content to draw love and comfort from the Father’s heart.

As the heavens soar far above us, high and unreachable, so is God’s wisdom (Isaiah 55:8-9; Psalm 139:6; 147:5; Romans 11:33-34; Job 11:7-9) . Our tiny minds may understand the Father’s ways no more than a babe understands its mother, yet still we can rest in him, bathed in the certainty that when the omnipotent, omniscient Lord lets the inexplicable touch a child of his, it is a manifestation of unfathomable love. In the hands of the One who wouldn’t so much as break a damaged reed or snuff a smoking wick, you are safe (Matthew 12:20).

Spiritual Blockages

Isaiah 59:1-2 Surely the arm of the LORD is not too short to save, nor his ear too dull to hear. But your iniquities have separated you from your God; your sins have hidden his face from you, so that he will not hear.

Psalm 66:18 If I had cherished sin in my heart, the Lord would not have listened

The Lord is exceedingly tolerant of those who keep battling sin despite losing often. These are people who have yet to discover how to appropriate Christ’s victory into their lives, but as long as they keep seeking forgiveness and keep seeking victory, their falls are in an entirely different category to those who and have not the slightest intention of giving up willful sin. Those who abuse God’s grace by deliberately sinning without any genuine remorse are in grave spiritual danger and they can certainly expect this to end up seriously affecting their relationship with God.

Then there are those who have unrepentant sin in their lives and are unaware that God disapproves. At the end of this page is a link under Spiritual Blockages to the testimony a woman who suddenly found that God seemed distant. It turned out that this was the Lord’s way of getting her to seek him and to discover that there were matters (in her case, previous dabbling in the occult) God wanted her to repent of. Up until then, her Lord had tolerated this being in her past, but he decided that now was the time for her to learn that it is spiritually dangerous and to deal with it.

Wrap-Up

We all know about anorexia and how people – often women – can be attractive and yet be fooled by a cruel trick of the mind into being thoroughly convinced that they are repulsively overweight. This is not just a devastating delusion; it can kill.

There is something very similar that crushes marriages – women who are gorgeous in their husband’s eyes and yet feel so undesirable that they shrink from their husband’s advances. Not only do these women undergo needless distress, it cripples the entire relationship; greatly hindering, or even destroying, intimacy and lovemaking and the couple’s enjoyment of each other. The most distressing aspect of this tragedy is that all the suffering is completely needless because the husband is thrilled with his wife’s appearance, and yet this fact keeps bouncing off the woman. Either, despite all her husband’s pleas, she does not believe him, or she is so caught up in her own delusion that she allows her mistaken self-image to enslave her, rather than delighting in what she knows is her husband’s view of her. Either way, the husband reels in the pain of rejection and the frustration of seeing his beloved suffering and yet spurning all his efforts to convince her of how desirable she is.

An almost identical tragedy devastates relationships with God when much of the Lord’s delight in us is dismissed as a lie, merely because it does not match our feelings. Or the tragedy hits when we are so self-absorbed with our own feelings and distorted self-image that we have little interest in how thrilled God is with us.

The choice is ours. We can cave in to oppressive feelings, letting them bluff us into spoiling our relationship with God. Or we can press on, despite our feelings, and enter into the countless blessings God has for us.

Feelings not based on truth are as useless and dangerous as drug-induced highs. Truth depends on facts, not feelings. It’s facts, not feel-good delusions, that we need and it is precisely these critical, life-changing facts that the Bible deals with.

Chasing feelings is like chasing the end of rainbows. To be a feeling-junkie is to throw your life away, as surely as mainlining heroin. To stake your spiritual life on the integrity of God’s love and his Word, however, is to store up treasure in heaven, where the interest rates are out of this world.

Ridiculously old and childless, Abraham didn’t feel like he would end up a father of many nations. Scared and ill-quipped, Joshua, Gideon, young David and so many other heroes of the faith, didn’t feel like facing the enemy. Tired and discouraged by a fruitless night, Peter and his fishing partners didn’t feel like obeying Jesus and launching into the deep. Frail and outnumbered in a jostling crowd, the hemorrhaging woman didn’t feel like fighting through the throng to touch Jesus’ cloak. Sweating, as it were, drops of blood, Jesus didn’t feel like doing God’s will. Tortured time and again, the apostle Paul kept having to pray for the courage just to keep going (Ephesians 6:19-20; Philippians 1:20).

The entire Bible is bursting with people who didn’t feel like doing the very thing that made them heroes of the faith. They felt defeated and insignificant, but they kept on anyhow. They treated their feelings with as much disdain as pests. Like troublesome flies, unwanted feelings persist but heaven’s heroes press on regardless. They push through the doubt, fear and pain, and keep going despite everything within them screaming that it is hopeless. That’s the heart of a champion. And you were born again to treat your feelings with that same contempt and perpetuate this glorious tradition of spiritual champions by clinging to the belief that God is on your side and loves you passionately, despite everything within you screaming the opposite.

You weren’t born to be a groveling, shame-faced feeling-junkie. Cut the umbilical cord tethering you to spiritual babyhood and soar with spiritual giants to the realm of faith. You can do it! It’s a promise from God himself.

How to “feel” God

Question:

Some people say they “feel” God with them. I have trouble feeling his love. Is he really there? How can I know that he loves me?

Answer:
You are not alone. Even some of our biblical heroes like David struggled at times to feel God’s love. In Psalm 13:1 he cried out, “How long, O Lord? Will you forget me forever? How long will you hide your face from me?” When you’re feeling distant from God have you ever cried a prayer like this? I have and I can tell you that it helps me feel connected to God.

I often hear from people who are Christians, but are struggling to feel God’s love for them. Their prayers seem to have bounced off the ceiling unanswered. Their cries for God’s healing touch echoed down hospital corridors, apparently unheard in the heavens. Emptiness had overwhelmed their hearts and left a Godless void inside. Doubt had driven out faith. Together we cried out for God until we found him. If you’re going through times like these you may feel like giving up on God, but don’t. He hasn’t given up on you.

Like the father in Jesus’ parable of the Prodigal Son (Luke 15:11-32), God never stops loving us. Insulted and rejected by his son, who left home and wasted his inheritance money in wild living, Father still loved his son. In fact, he missed him so terribly that day after day for months he looked to see if his son was coming home yet. When finally he saw Prodigal way off in the distance he didn’t wait for his son to get to him. He ran out to greet him - huffing, puffing, sweating, robe flying open and exposing his undergarments, he ran and ran as fast as he could - unconcerned that the town gawked at a man of distinction making a spectacle of himself. Then he embraced his dirty, disheveled, and swine-smelling son to his heart and kissed him again and again. He gave his son gifts of grace: a robe to cover his tattered clothes so he could lift his head high, sandals to welcome him home as a son and not a slave, his signet ring to give him a second chance to manage the family property, and a great party to honor him in the community. This is our Heavenly Father. He takes initiative to show his love. He is generous, overwhelming us with his love and his gifts of grace that we didn’t earn.

This picture of your Father God loving you may seem too good to be true for you. Perhaps your father didn’t take initiative to get to know you and share his love with you. Maybe hugs and kind gestures have been few and far between for you. It is hard to trust in the love of God whom you have not seen or touched if people whom you have seen and touched have shown you little love. So what can you do? How can you begin to experience the healing, life changing love of God that you long for?

I’d like to offer you some powerful possibilities for helping you to feel more of God’s love for you. Consider the faith-building steps below and focus on the steps that you most need to take:

1. Confess your shortcomings. None of us are perfect. When we hurt other people we need to say we’re sorry to restore relationship with them. It’s the same with God. Our behavior affects our relationship with Him. It’s a good idea to daily take a moral inventory in order to say you’re sorry for your shortcomings and then to turn to God. Do this and you will feel more of God’s love.

2 .Believe that you are lovable. Your problem with God may be a self-esteem problem. Some people feel bad about themselves because of something they did. Others feel bad because of something that was done to them. Either way, don’t let yourself feel bad about yourself. Work at receiving forgiveness for your failings and giving forgiveness to those who have hurt you. Don’t give in to shame, embarrassment, and negative self-talk. If you do you’ll feel like hiding and will tend to shut out God and others who care about you. Instead, dare to believe that you are lovable and worthwhile and that your emotional needs are important. Then look for loving, gracious people and receive their care as a gift from God. Additionally, try reading and praying over positive Scriptures that focus on God’s love for you. (See “God’s Love for Christmas.”)

3 .Let go of anger. Your problem feeling close to God may be tied to an anger problem. Angry people are lonely people. You may have valid reasons to be angry, but don’t stay angry or you’ll just hurt yourself. Anger and negativity push people away, even the caring people whom we need. You can’t stay angry at someone and feel their love for you at the same time. If you’re angry at God then do what Job did. His children died, his business failed, and he was afflicted with painful boils. On top of this his friends judged him, telling him that he was suffering because he sinned. Job knew he didn’t deserve this pain. He was angry at God about what had happened to him and all the pain he was in and he told him so. He was angry at his friends for criticizing him and he told them how he felt too. Because Job talked through his feelings and let go of his anger he didn’t become bitter, he became better. In the end he found God’s comfort. You can too if you talk through your anger with God, let go and trust him, reaching out to him for the love that you need.

4. Express your feelings. You may be struggling to experience God’s love because you struggle to feel your feelings. Perhaps you’re a person of action and reason and feelings just get in the way. Or you’ve experienced so much pain and disappointment in life that you’ve shut down your emotional system. In either case, if you’re emotionally detached you won’t feel close to God and his care for you. To get more in touch with your feelings find friends who are interested in you and who will ask you, “How are you feeling?” and then listen to you. Also read the book of Psalms in the Bible and look for psalms that you identify with. Then write your own psalms to God, talking to him just like you would to your best friend. Tell him what’s happened and how you feel about it and then remind yourself that God cares about you, has given you good things in the past, and will help you now.

5. Clear up your image of God. Most people I talk to who are having trouble feeling God’s love have a distorted image of God. They don’t see God for who he is. They’re projecting pain or disappointment from childhood onto God. They may know in their heads that God is different, but emotionally they experience him like their critical father, distant mother, abusive step-father, or someone else who hurt them. I find that when these people are helped to heal from their childhood hurts they are better able to see God for who he is. Along the way, it’s helpful to immerse your heart and mind in the positive images of God presented in the Bible. Three of my favorites are the Loving Father (Luke 15, mentioned above), the Good Shepherd (Psalm 23 and John 10, and the Nurturing Mother Bird (Psalm 91). When one of these positive pictures of God gets in your heart you’ll feel different about God, yourself, and your life.

6. Ask for prayer. To sum it all up, if God seems far away and inaccessible to you then you need help. You can’t find God on your own. Remember the story of the paralyzed man who needed Jesus’ healing touch? (Mark 2:1-12) Four men carried him a stretcher to Jesus. Jesus was in a house ministering to hundreds of people who were crowded inside and standing outside the windows. The friends of the paralyzed man were not deterred. The carried him onto the roof, cut a whole in the roof, and carefully dropped him down at Jesus’ feet. And Jesus healed him. If your faith in God is paralyzed then ask for prayer from a friend, your pastor, or a counselor. You can feel God’s love for you! Don’t give up on God. Get the help you need, take the steps I’ve suggested, and receive what He provides.

JESUS AND HIS DISCIPLES ON THE MOUNT

The Sermon on the Mount

The following verses taken from Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount make it abundantly clear that Jesus was not addressing the Pharisees, or Saducees, or the Priests, or Scribes, or even the multitudes which did not follow Jesus up the mountain, but waited for His return. Rather, Jesus addressed His Own disciples (of whom there were initially, many) who followed Him up the mountain. These only He instructed regarding a much higher standard of conduct and judgment:

“…and when He was set, His DISCIPLES came unto Him” (Matt. 5:1)

“And He opened His mouth, and taught THEM [His disciples]“ (Ver. 2).

“Blessed are YE [all you disciples]…” (Ver. 11).

“…for great is YOUR [disciples'] reward…” (Ver. 12).

“YE [disciples] are the salt of the earth…” (Ver. 13).

“YE [disciples] are the light of the world…” (Ver. 14).

“Let YOUR [disciples'] light so shine…” (Ver. 16).

“For verily I say unto YOU [disciples]…” (Ver. 18).

“For I say unto YOU [disciples]…” (Ver. 20).

“YE [disciples] have heard that it was said…” (Ver. 21).

“But I say unto YOU [disciples]… whosoever is angry…” (Ver. 22).

“But I say unto YOU [disciples]… shall say to his brother, Raca…” (Ver. 22).

“But I say unto YOU [disciples]… whosoever shall say , ‘You fool’ shall be in danger of hell [Gehenna] fire” (Ver. 22).

“Therefore if YOU [disciples] bring your gift…” (Ver. 23).

“Agree with YOUR [disciples] adversary quickly…” (Ver. 25).

“Veryily I say unto YOU [disciples], YOU [disciples] shall by no means come out thence, till YOU [disciples] have paid the uttermost farthing” (Ver. 26).

“But I say unto YOU [disciples], that whosoever looks on a woman to lust…” (Ver. 28).

“And if YOUR right eye offend YOU [disciples], pluck it out, and cast it from YOU: for it is profitable for YOU [disciples] that one of YOUR members should perish, and not that YOUR whole body [the bodies of Christ's disciples, not the wicked unbelievers in the day of Judgment] should be cast into hell [Gehenna fire]“ (Ver. 29).

“And if YOUR right hand offend YOU, cut it off, and cast it from YOU: for it is profitable for YOU [disciples of Mine] that one of YOUR members should perish, and not that YOUR whole body should be cast into hell [Gehenna fire]“ (Verse 30).

Any question as to whom Jesus addressed His “Sermon on the Mount?” Is this “Gehenna fire” for the world of unbelieving sinners, or for His Own Disciples?

THE PRINCIPLE OF FIRST USAGE

We have been taught that the first time a word is used in Scripture, it often gives a great deal of insight into its meaning and usage in the rest of the Scriptures. Well right here in verse 22 (the very first use of the words “hell” and “fire” in the New Testament Scriptures) we have proof positive that whatever “Gehenna fire” is, it is not eternal torture nor is it literal fire for calling a brother “fool.” Calling a brother “Raca” or “fool” are very similar. However, for saying Raca one is tried in a rather benign tribunal, but for saying “you fool” one is sentenced to eternity in hell fire? The latter would be billions of trillions of times more severe than the former. What justice is there in that? Also notice that Jesus does not even consider that either of these sins is repented of and forgiven. That is why He says the offender is in “danger” of this or that judgment.

All through the Old Testament, God wisely fit the punishment to the crime. Greater crimes; greater punishments: Lesser crimes; lesser punishments. Does our Lord and Saviour now throw all such mercy and justice to the wind? Is “name-calling” now not only a capital offense, but an ETERNAL OFFENSE?

Under the New Covenant is name-calling punishable by ETERNAL TORTURE IN FIRE?

How many Christians have not a clue as to what Jesus is teaching in this acclaimed and applauded Sermon on the Mount? Many think it is three chapters on quaint little sayings like, “Turn the other cheek…,” “Our Father which art in heaven…,” “Judge not…,” “Ask and ye shall receive…,” and “Do unto others…” The Sermon on the Mount will be a total enigma until we learn to believe Jesus when He taught saying:

“It is the spirit that quickens [gives life and understanding]: the flesh profits nothing: the words that I speak unto you, they are spirit and they are life” (John 6:63).

Paul asked the question of the carnal-minded Corinthians: “…Are you unworthy to judge the smallest matters?” (I Cor. 6:2). Are my readers also unworthy to judge the smallest matters-the most simple matters? Okay then, let’s use our God-given brains for a few minutes. What “specifically” did Jesus tell us is the disciplinary action to be taken against someone who hates his brother? And remember, to hate a brother is the spirit of a murderer (I John 3:15). Here is Jesus’ answer:

“I say unto you that whosoever is angry with his brother without a cause shall be in danger of the judgment” (Matt. 5:22).

Did Jesus do away with “judgment?” No. “But I say unto you, that whosoever is angry with his brother… shall BE [future tense] in danger of the judgment” (Verse 21). Jesus didn’t do away with judgment. 

Now then, what does the Word of God tell us is the penalty of the judgment for committing murder? “He that smites a man, so that he die, shall be surely PUT TO DEATH” (Ex. 21:12).

Notice that it does not say: “shall surely be cast alive into hell,” or “burned alive forever in Gehenna fire.” NO, “…put to DEATH.” American Heritage College Dictionary, “death n. The state of being dead” “dead adj. Having lost life; no longer alive.” When one is “dead” he is no longer “alive.” What a revelation. Are you still with me? I lost 99.44% of all Christian theologians back on page one, first paragraph.

Continuing: If Jesus is yet teaching His disciples that murderers will be in danger of the judgment, which meant, “…shall surely be put to death,” then how is it even within the realm of human understanding, that merely calling a brother “you fool” would bring upon the offender, ETERNAL LIFE IN LITERAL FIRE OF A HELLHOLE CALLED GEHENNA? Death to the murderer, but ETERNAL TORTURE for calling someone a name? Are they all crazy? Can a spirit-filled follower of Jesus Christ believe such utter, stupid, spiritual swill?

Who has used the term “fool” more than the famous TV actor Mr. T? Does anyone (be he cleric or layman) really believe that Mr. T (formerly, Laurence Tureaud/Lawrence Tero) of the TV series The A Team fame, and more recently, I Pity The Fool, really believe that this man who gave huge amounts of money and clothing to Katrina victims, and who continues using his wealth and talent to help those in need, will suffer hundreds, maybe thousands, of consecutive eternal sentences in the torture of some insane Christian hell fire for his multitudinous use of the word “fool”?

I thank God that Mr. T will not have to face near the Judgment for his excessive use of the word “fool” now those Christians, clergymen, and theologians who teach that most of humanity will be tortured in hell fire for all eternity for improper use of the word fool.

GEHENNA FIRE IS JUDGMENT FIRE ON ALL GOD’S ELECT

Clearly the sermon on the mount was not directed toward the Pharisees, or the Sadducees, or the Scribes, or the chief priests, or the Jews, or Judea, or the multitudes, or the unbelieving nations of the world, but rather for Christ’s followers. That is for you if you are a follower of Jesus. Although by the time Pentecost came around after the resurrection of Jesus, there was a total of only 120 disciples waiting for the promise of God’s Holy Spirit to come on them in Jerusalem (Acts 1:15), nonetheless, earlier, Jesus had many disciples.

Mount Tabor from the West/1843 ft high/eastern end of Jezreel Valley
Also known as: Har Tavor, Itabyrium, Jebel et-Tur, & Mount of transfiguration.

Mount Tabor is traditionally thought to be the mountain on which Jesus gave His famous sermon. It is inconceivable that thousands of elderly, sickly, and crippled people followed Jesus up the mountain. No, they were with Him at the base, and waited for Him till He returned where He continued healing and teaching.

Yes, of course, the whole world of unbelievers and ungodly will experience God’s Divine consuming fire-His Gehenna fire, but not before it has first purged all of His Elect, the called and Chosen of the House of God. Which judgment the “House of God” has been experiencing now for 2000 years.

These instructions are decidedly not written for the “Many [who] will say to Me in that day, Lord, Lord, …in Thy name done many wonderful works?… I will profess unto them, I never knew you: depart from Me…” (Matt. 7:22-23).

Only the living experience “Gehenna fire.” And during this life, It is rather the living chosen elect of Jesus Christ who go through “Gehenna fire.”

“If you be reproached [insulted] for the name of Christ, happy are you… yet if any man suffer as a Christian, let him not be ashamed; but let him glorify God on this behalf, for the time is come that judgment must begin at the house of God…” (I Pet. 4:14, 16-17). 

We must all receive reproaches from men, but judgment from God. And God purges us from the offenses of our carnal mind by “His Divine consuming FIRE” (Heb. 12:29).

The word “fire” is used with reference to Judgment many times in Scripture: “Gehenna fire,” “salted with fire,” “furnace of fire,” “unquenchable fire,” “everlasting fire,” “burn by fire,” “baptism by fire,” “coals of fire,” “flaming fire,” “eternal fire,” “consuming fire.”

Are all of these Scriptural uses of fire really literal, physical, descriptions of how God will torture most of humanity as depicted in this Medieval Christian Art?

Here are the New Testament Scriptures which speak of different “fires” by which men are judged:

“That the trial of your faith, being much more precious than of Gold that perishes, though it be tried in the fire [Christ's 'Gehenna fire'], might be found unto praise and honor and glory at the appearing of Jesus Christ” (