Have you ever felt like God wasn’t listening? I can recall times in my life where I’ve seemingly been at the highest of mountaintops, where God was so close I could almost reach up and touch him. And I can recall other times, when I seemed to be in the lowest ditch possible, where it was like God had abandoned me completely.
I’m not the only one to feel this way. And if you find yourself in such a place, what does it mean, and what can you do about it? I’d like to explore these questions with you today, so that you don’t need to claw your way out of the same pit that I was in.
Let’s get started.
Feelings vs Faith
The first question we need to answer is should we be following our feelings? For many people, following how they feel, and allowing emotion to direct their path is something automatic. Feel good, celebrate! Feel bad, be down. Feelings run many peoples’ lives. But are they giving you accurate information. Have you ever thought about whether your feelings are accurate? And to answer this question, we must ask and answer a related question: where do feelings come from?
This second question is crucial to our discussion because it’s common to think of emotions as exclusive coming from our own inner-self, and therefore, we follow emotions as just another aspect of our nature. But let’s take a deeper look into the source of emotion. Take a look at 2nd Corinthians 10:4-5:
“4For the weapons of our warfare are not carnal, but mighty through God to the pulling down of strong holds;
5Casting down imaginations, and every high thing that exalts itself against the knowledge of God, and bringing into captivity every thought to the obedience of Christ.”
Emotion itself is not wrong, but some emotions certainly can be. Not every emotion is good; some are to be resisted, and we are not left powerless to do so. God has given us weapons… mighty weapons. These weapons are not carnal, but for pulling down of strongholds. Now notice what these strongholds are… imaginations, high things that exalt themselves against the knowledge of God, and thoughts.
The Knowledge of God
So again, not all feelings, emotions, and thoughts are good. And there’s a key piece of information in verse 5— every high thing that exalts itself against the knowledge of God. That’s a crucial detail— There are things that try to exalt, to elevate themselves against the knowledge of God; but what is the knowledge of God? Let’s pause here for a moment, and jump over to 2nd Peter 1:2-4:
“2Grace and peace be multiplied to you through the knowledge of God, and of Jesus our Lord,
3According as his divine power has given to us all things that pertain to life and godliness, through the knowledge of him that has called us to glory and virtue:
4Whereby are given to us exceeding great and precious promises: that by these you might be partakers of the divine nature, having escaped the corruption that is in the world through lust.”
Notice that both grace and peace are multiplied to us through the knowledge of God. So again we see the exact same phrasing, but these verses unpack the meaning more for us. First notice that this phrase is not knowledge about God, but rather it is knowledge of God. This is not just knowing facts and trivia about God; this isn’t intellectual high-mindedness, but it’s the knowledge of God. In other words, the knowledge that comes from God; and this knowledge is very specific… Verses 3 and 4 tell us that His divine power has granted to us all things that pertain to both life and godliness. This is informative because some Christians focus entirely on the godliness part, thinking that they are being hyper-spiritual— but God gives us both.
Now look at verse 5, whereby, we are given great and precious promises… that by these you might be partakers of the divine nature, having escaped the corruption that is in the world through lust.
I say again, this is not about facts or trivia. It doesn’t matter how many historical dates you can recall, how many doctoral degrees you have, or how many years you’ve been a member of a particular church group. It doesn’t matter how much money you give, or how often you do so-called good works. This isn’t about you serving God…. At the risk of sounding irreverent, it’s about Him serving you, and He did so through Jesus Christ, and this is why you can have these great and precious promises, and partake of His very divine nature.
Tying Everything Together
So how does this fit in with God seeming to be distant? Well, now that we know what the knowledge of God is, we are primed to have that grace and peace multiplied in our life, and the primary way this happens, is by knowing His character and His promises— one of the big promises God has given us is in Hebrews 13:5, cited from Joshua 1:5— God will never leave you or forsake you.
As we saw in our first text of 2nd Corinthians 10:4-5, there are things that will try to exalt themselves above the knowledge of God… however, we have been given weapons to combat those things, and bring them captive to the obedience of Christ; notice not our own obedience, but Christ’s obedience. If you try to defeat a supernatural enemy using your own obedience, you’ve already lost— the moment you falter in the slightest, you’ll come tumbling down, in a vicious spiral of guilt, shame, and condemnation. However, you can absolutely bring everything captive under Christ’s perfect obedience when something tries to tell you that God has left you, or that God is angry with you, or doesn’t care about you— you needn’t look any farther than the cross, and say “that’s my proof, right there.” Jesus’ perfect obedience will silence any argument.
So, I encourage you today to let grace and peace be multiplied in your life, as you meditate on the knowledge and promises of God, and know that He is always with you.
Be blessed.
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