Tag Archives: Holy Spirit

Feelings, nothing more than feelings…

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“Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ,
who has blessed us in Christ with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places…”
(Ephesians 1:3 ESV)

Paul’s letter to the Ephesians begins with one of the most effusive expressions of praise ever found, “Blessed be God… who had blessed us in Christ with every spiritual blessing… as he chose us… predestined us… adopted us… to the praise of his glorious grace, with which he as blessed us.”  Volumes of books are necessary to unpack this simple yet eloquent explosion of praise to God.  You’ll find the opening verses of Ephesians to be a “Cliff’s Notes” guide to covenantal reformed theology, and without crossing the line into plagiarism, every candidate for ministry should use these verses as the basis for their statement of faith.

We have been blessed by God in Christ with every spiritual blessing.  This could be read, with every blessing of the Spirit, the Greek is a little ambiguous here, but ultimately it all means the same thing.  Paul unfolds the blessings that God has showered upon us.  We have been chosen by God to be holy and blameless.  In love, he predestined us to be adopted at sons, for the praise of his glorious grace.  I know words like “chosen” and “predestined” make some people shy away muttering “free will” under their breath.  But this is the word of God, His promise to us.  It is meant as good news.  God’s will is that we know His love, encounter His grace, be called His children – and God determined this when our will was set against Him.  That’s good news.

Moreover, we have redemption in Christ Jesus, the forgiveness of trespasses, and the revelation of the will of God with all wisdom and insight.  The blessings of God go on and on throughout Paul’s letter – Praise be to God for His goodness and grace!

Except –

There are times when we don’t feel blessed.  The world seems set against us.  Money’s tight, or even non-existent.  Friends are few and far between, and those you thought were close only got there so they could stab you in the back.  Anxiety and stress rise up around you, you feel lost and tossed around in the storm.  The winds blow and your life is turned upside down (literally here in NW Iowa).  It’s hard to echo the words of Paul, it’s hard to say that we’ve been blessed with every spiritual blessing.

There are times when we are in the desert.  We feel dry, spiritually – we’re thirsty for closeness with God.  We want to know those blessings that Paul is talking about here, but it’s just not connecting.  We hear about the blessings, why don’t we see them?

It’s at times like these that it is important to remember this truth, God’s word is true regardless of how we feel about it.  So often we think that our religious affections (to borrow the phrase from Jonathon Edwards) all rely on how I feel about God at this particular moment.  If I feel passionately about God, then I must be close to Him and He to me.  If I’m feeling distant from God, then there must be something wrong in my life.  While there may be some truth to this, I think that sometimes we may put a little too much emphasis on our feelings.  If I don’t feel like I’ve “connected” to God in prayer, does that mean that God didn’t hear my prayer?  If my heart wasn’t really in my worship and preaching last week, does that mean that God wasn’t still glorified by my preaching and in our worship?

One of my favorite quotes in literature comes from Dickens’, A Christmas Carol.  Scrooge has just encountered the ghost of Bob Marley, his former business partner who warns him of the coming visits in the night.  In disbelief Scrooge replies, “You may be an undigested bit of beef, a blot of mustard, a crumb of cheese, a fragment of underdone potato. There’s more of gravy than of grave about you, whatever you are!”  How many times are our feelings, either positive or negative, toward God based on our lack of sleep, our indigestion, or the run-in we had at the supermarket yesterday?

The truth of the matter is, regardless of how you feel about it today, for those who are alive in Christ Jesus, God has blessed you with ever spiritual blessing in the heavenly places.  This doesn’t mean that we won’t encounter poverty and pain, it doesn’t mean that we won’t face hardship and setback.  But it does mean that God to supplies all our needs “according to His riches in glory by Christ Jesus” (Phil. 4:19). It does mean that regardless of what we face, we may say, as did Job, “the Lord gave, and the Lord has taken away; blessed be the name of the Lord.”

Friends, when you don’t feel it, know it.  Know that God has blessed you in Christ Jesus our Lord, and you are blessed indeed!

On the Authority of Scripture

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After a week’s worth of musings on the Authority of Scripture, my reading plan from Calvin’s Institutes of the Christian Religion brought me to chapters 6 and 7.  Here are some particularly relevant quotes.

The first step is to reverently embrace the testimony of God with obedience:

If true religion is to beam upon us, our principle must be, that it is necessary to begin with heavenly teaching, and that it is impossible for any man to obtain even the minutest portion of right and sound doctrine without being a disciple of Scripture. Hence, the first step in true knowledge is taken, when we reverently embrace the testimony which God has been pleased therein to give of himself. For not only does faith, full and perfect faith, but all correct knowledge of God, originate in obedience. And surely in this respect God has with singular Providence provided for mankind in all ages.

The authority of Scripture does not depend on the consent of man.  Instead, Scripture derives its authority because it comes from God, and is attested by the power of God’s Holy Spirit.

If, then, we would consult most effectually for our consciences, and save them from being driven about in a whirl of uncertainty, from wavering, and even stumbling at the smallest obstacle, our conviction of the truth of Scripture must be derived from a higher source than human conjectures, Judgments, or reasons; namely, the secret testimony of the Spirit.

For as God alone can properly bear witness to his own words, so these words will not obtain full credit in the hearts of men, until they are sealed by the inward testimony of the Spirit. The same Spirit, therefore, who spoke by the mouth of the prophets, must penetrate our hearts, in order to convince us that they faithfully delivered the message with which they were divinely entrusted.

The rest needs no summary, its just beautiful.

Let it therefore be held as fixed, that those who are inwardly taught by the Holy Spirit acquiesce implicitly in Scripture; that Scripture, carrying its own evidence along with it, deigns not to submit to proofs and arguments, but owes the full conviction with which we ought to receive it to the testimony of the Spirit. Enlightened by him, we no longer believe, either on our own Judgment or that of others, that the Scriptures are from God; but, in a way superior to human Judgment, feel perfectly assured—as much so as if we beheld the divine image visibly impressed on it—that it came to us, by the instrumentality of men, from the very mouth of God. We ask not for proofs or probabilities on which to rest our Judgment, but we subject our intellect and Judgment to it as too transcendent for us to estimate.

Such, then, is a conviction which asks not for reasons; such a knowledge which accords with the highest reason, namely knowledge in which the mind rests more firmly and securely than in any reasons; such in fine, the conviction which revelation from heaven alone can produce. I say nothing more than every believer experiences in himself, though my words fall far short of the reality.  The only true faith is that which the Spirit of God seals on our hearts. Nay, the modest and teachable reader will find a sufficient reason in the promise contained in Isaiah, that all the children of the renovated Church “shall be taught of the Lord,” (Isaiah 54:13).

Amen!

SDG