Thirsty4Truth

There is a little train that most Christians are familiar with. The teaching is widely accepted by almost everyone who hears it. The train consists of three caboose, and the names of them are Fact, Faith and Feeling.

Fact represents God and His Word.

Faith is our trust in God and His Word. (Which assures us of our salvation after repentance.)

Feelings are the result of our experiences, and daily circumstances.

According to the teaching, we must base our Faith on the Facts and not our Feelings. The Facts are that if we repent from sin and believe in Jesus; that He died for our sins and rose again on the third day, then we are saved and there is nothing that we can do to change this.

We must put our Faith upon these promises of God and are not to doubt them at any point in time. Even if we feel down or feel that we are not saved. We are told to ignore our feelings and believe that we are saved because the Bible tells us so.

The teaching goes on to state that we must claim every promise of God even if we have not yet achieved the spiritual gifts, or when we feel like He is punishing us for something that we did in the past. When we feel hurt, lonely, angry, or sad, we must not base our faith upon these feelings. Instead we must look past those feelings and to the facts and believe that we are a child of God.

Is it just me, or is there something wrong with this teaching. It sounds good, and it makes perfect sense in the human mind. But when I read my Bible, I can't find it there anywhere. I know that we are to put our Faith in the Facts. But what are the facts, and where does faith come from?

Can we really ignore our feelings as if they didn't exist and just trust in the Bible? Did God not give us feelings to help guide us along the way? I don't think that God would allow us to have feelings just so that we can ignore them. We might have said the sinner's prayer, and we might have been saved at one point in our life, but when our heart or conscience tells us otherwise, then we must listen to our conscience and make things right with God again.

Throughout the New Testament we are warned not to lose our salvation. Lets look at some of these verses and remember these are facts.

"Wherefore let him that thinketh he standeth take heed lest he fall." 1 Cor. 10:12.

"This charge I commmit unto thee, son Timothy, according to the prophecies which went before on thee, that thou by them mightest war a good warfare; Holding faith, and a good conscience; which some having put away concerning faith have made shipwreck: 1 Tim. 1:18-19.

"Ye therefore, beloved, seeing ye know these things before, beware lest ye also, being led away with the error of the wicked, fall from your own steadfastness." 2 Pet. 3:17.

"But when the righteous turneth away from his righteousness, and comitteth iniquity, and doeth according to all the abominations that the wicked man doeth, shall he live? All his righteousness that he hath done shall not be mentioned: in his trespass that he hath trespassed, and in his sin that he hath sinned, in them shall he die." Ezek. 18:24.

The above verses make it very clear that one can fall away into sin again after one has repented. So then, when we feel like we have sinned, and that God is not pleased with us, then we need to take it up with God and make things right. We cannot just shrug things off and hope for the best, because God does not owe us anything.

Next let's take a look at a few verses that speak about feelings. I think we can all agree that joy is a result of a happy feeling. Peace, and love are also feelings.

"But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace,..." Gal. 5:22.

"Rejoice in the Lord alway; and again I say, Rejoice." Phil. 4:4.

We are not saved unless we have the Holy Spirit in us, and if we have the Spirit in us we will bring forth its fruits of love, joy, and peace.

We are given a command to Rejoice always. This doesn't mean that we shouldn't feel sad when we lose a loved one. Nor does it mean that we shouldn't be sad or even get angry when we see others living in sin. Jesus became angry and overthrew the tables in the temple when He saw they were making money in His house.

But when we have the Holy Spirit, these feelings will never take a hold of us. Our love, joy and peace in Him will always be greater than any other emotion that we feel. When we have this love, joy and peace within us, no other feeling can ever make us doubt our salvation. No matter what our daily circumstances are, we are to rejoice in the Lord Always. If we cannot feel joy amidst our sadness or even anger, then we can be assured that we are not in the Faith, and thus are not saved.

Our feelings come from our heart, and our conscience dictates what our hearts feel. The Holy Spririt works through our conscience and lets us know whether or not we are right with God. When we sin against God the Holy Spirit lets us know right away, and our conscience becomes marred until we make it right. It causes us to feel sorry, sad and miserable. The Anti-Christ church however, is teaching us to blame these kinds of feelings on the devil, and just focus on the verses that state that we are saved. The Bible has something different to say...

"A merry heart maketh a cheerful countenance: but by sorrow of the heart the spirit is broken." Prov. 15:13.

"For if our heart condemn us, God is greater than our heart, and knoweth all things. Beloved, if our heart condemn us not, then have we confidence toward God." 1 John 3:20-21.

If the Holy Spirit through our conscience dictates how we feel, and our hearts condemn us, then that is the Holy Spirit telling us that we have fallen. Without the Holy Spirit, the heart would not know to condemn us. This is why it says that God is greater than our heart, because the heart on its own cannot know that we have done wrong. All conviction comes from God. Thus if our heart is heavy, we need to deal with it.

But if our heart does not condemn us then we can be confidant that we are saved. It is this confidence that enables us to rejoice in whatever situation that we are in.

According to this false teaching we are entitled to feeling down and depressed and still be saved. But the Bible makes it very clear that we are to rejoice in the Lord at all times. This leaves no room for depression, guilt and other negative feelings that might come our way. And if they do, then we have some repenting to do.

So the bottom line is that our faith needs to be based on the facts and our feelings. For it is our feelings that will let us know whether or not we are in the faith. We should never ignore our feelings as if they didn't exist. They are God's way of telling us that something is wrong and we must deal with them. Unless we deal with these feelings, we will enter into a delusional state, where we think we are happy and saved when in reality we aren't.

Now I am well aware that the Bible also speaks about satan coming and accusing us of our past sins, and perhaps many times when we feel down or guilty that it is just satan trying to get us to give up. If that is the case, or if we are not sure if that is the case, then we need to take it to God and ask Him to clarify the situation to us. We need to have that line of communication open 24/7 between us and God so that as soon as satan comes we can get rid of him before he can mess with our feelings.