I’m not feeling anything!!!

Shouldn't I be having the same emotional experiences and responses to God that I hear others talking about like:  "I'm on fire for God!" or "God is so awesome!" or "I'm trusting God for …" or “I'm waiting on the Lord to...." or "Isn't God fantastic for doing...for me?"   If so, I don’t!  I don't feel that way at all!

Is that how a real believer is supposed to feel and relate to God?  What am I missing?  I feel like a hypocrite compared to those 'super Christians' who are so spiritual.  Maybe I'm not really saved.

What do you think is wrong with me?

Hello dear sister.  Thanks for writing and for being so honest.

Don't worry about what you are going through, ok? Because what you are going through happens to a lot of people who make the transition from religion to the truth of our Lord Jesus Christ: the Grace message! Religion has gotten you on this treadmill of a performance-based acceptance system; but God has you under His grace—a free gift program!

Religion has had you in bondage my sister! What do I mean? Well, you mentioned how that you feel that you are not on fire for God. If you re-read what you wrote, notice how much you focus on you! Everything was about you! You, you, you! That's the flesh! Religion's bondage has you so focused on you and not on Christ, and what He has done for you on the Cross! You are focusing on your feelings.  Well, that is just your feelings, your flesh!

Now that you are saved, ‘you’ are not the issue anymore. It’s what our Lord Jesus Christ accomplished for you--that is the issue now!

Galatians 2:20

I am crucified with Christ: nevertheless I live; yet not I, but Christ liveth in me: and the life which I now live in the flesh I live by the faith of the Son of God, who loved me, and gave himself for me.

Romans 6:3

Know ye not, that so many of us as were baptized into Jesus Christ were baptized into his death?

Colossians 3:3-4

For ye are dead, and your life is hid with Christ in God. When Christ, who is our life, shall appear, then shall ye also appear with him in glory.

Religion has taught and trained you to operate out of your flesh as far as your worship to God!  But, God would have us do it His way. 

Isaiah 55:80

For my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways, saith the LORD.

God tells us by the Holy Spirit, through His Word how to worship Him.

Philippians 3:3

For we are the [spiritual] circumcision, which worship God in the spirit, and rejoice in Christ Jesus, and have no confidence in the flesh.  [How does one rejoice? How does one have confidence?  Is it not in one’s mind—how one thinks!]

So right now, you are going through Satan's trial to get you to put the focus on yourself (your flesh) and not on the Lord Jesus Christ!

You need to rest.  To simply rest—in your spirit, your mind—and be happy and thankful for whom God has made you in His Son!

You need to just stop trying to be on fire for God in your own strength and just rest in Him—in the truth of who He has made you in Christ! Allow God the time to give you that fire for Him! (He is not in a hurry, and you should not be either.)

Galatians 5:50

For we through the Spirit wait for the hope of righteousness by faith.

Romans 8:25

But if we hope for that we see not, then do we with patience wait for it.

I see what you are going through a lot, especially in the women who come to learn the Word rightly divided. They are taught to worship God and to operate in their Christian life out of their emotions and not out of their spirit. But our ‘emotions’ are dumb—they do not think. It is with our ‘minds’ that we are to do the thinking with, based on sound doctrine/teaching from God's Word!

2 Corinthians 10:5

Casting down imaginations, and every high thing that exalteth itself against the knowledge of God, and bringing into captivity every thought to the obedience of Christ;

So where you are now my sister is to the point where you need to just take all of this that you just shared with me to the Lord in prayer and then simply rest in Him to give you that fire again. This time, not based on your fleshly emotions, but on the truth of His Word.

That is where your diligent and enduring attendance to His Word, attending the local assembly, and taking in the sound doctrine and learning comes in. This is how you are edified—built up in Christ—by the Word. As you just rest in Christ, living day by day in patient continuance, and stop trying to be on fire for Him, etc., you will then grow in your understanding of His Word, and then your emotions will come around.

John 4:24; 17:17

God is a Spirit: and they that worship him must worship him in spirit and in truth.

Sanctify them through thy truth: thy word is truth.

Romans 8:5

For they that are after the flesh do [put in] mind [and think of] the things of the flesh; but they that are after the Spirit [put in mind] the things [words] of the Spirit.

Think on these verses:

Romans 8:8

So then they that are in the flesh cannot please God.

Galatians 3:3

Are ye so foolish? having begun in the Spirit, are ye now made perfect by the flesh?

Philippians 2:13

For it is God which worketh in you both to will and to do of his good pleasure.

1 Thessalonians 2:13

For this cause also thank we God without ceasing, because, when ye received the word of God which ye heard of us, ye received it not as the word of men, but as it is in truth, the word of God, which effectually worketh also in you that believe.

1 Corinthians 3:9

For we are labourers together with God: ye are God's husbandry, ye are God's building.

Hopefully this helps...Maranatha!

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Northern California Grace Fellowship

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