Feelings vs. Faith

Sometimes we feel God’s presence, sometimes we don’t. That’s part of the normal Christian life. But does that make our relationship with God a matter of he loves me, he loves me not? Never! He doesn’t change, even when our feelings do. It is not our feelings that take hold of the unchanging God, it’s our faith.

The good old Puritan William Perkins has this to say on the subject:

Religion does not stand in feeling but in faith, which faith we must have in Christ, though we have no feeling at all; for God oftentimes does withdraw His grace and favor from His children that He may teach them to believe in His mercy in Christ then, when they feel nothing less than His mercy. And faith and feeling cannot always stand together, because faith is a subsisting of things which are not seen and the ground of things hoped for; and we must live by faith and not by feeling. Though feeling of God’s mercy be a good thing, yet God does not always vouchsafe to give it unto His children. And therefore in the extremity of afflictions and temptations we must always trust and rely on God by faith in Christ.

Our feelings often leave us in the dark. Our faith in God never does.