It’s a discussion point.

There was a time when I used to be on the prowl for a girlfriend. It was only a short period of my life, 15 years to be precise, and not all of it was desperate, aaah, who’m I kidding, it was.

I was a desperate young man, wanting to have his first decent pash with a girl. Now I’m glad that none of the guys in our youth group are remotely like this. But I would frequently fall in love with the girls in the youth group. Oh boy. The confession is still coming…

I don’t know why the girls didn’t like me. Maybe they thought I was too intense, though I can’t for the life of me work out why. Too spiritual, yeah, I can see that…, not spiritual enough? Nope. Too clever? Too say I was just average at school is overstating it. That I liked to tuck my jeans into my socks because I thought it was cool (the world missed picking up on a great trend in those days). Maybe it was my red pants : and before you laugh, it was the eighties when that was cool.

I don’t know why girls didn’t like me, but it doesn’t matter, because the point is that I liked them. And I want to confide in you this particular story.

I remember it clearly. During an outreach programme, I was really attracted to this girl who we will call saucy elle. I used all my best jokes on her : what do you get if you skewer a beauty queen on a spike? A kebabe. And it was funny. She even cracked a smile.

So there I was. Doing my studly thing. A sight to behold. And I felt that she was the world. And I felt she thought I was the world. In hindsight, I don’t think I even thought about her feelings, I more or less assumed that she would pounce at the chance to go out with “Stuie horn” as I liked to call myself then —because I played the trumpet.

So after the outreach programme one day I went up to her : feeling like this was the moment, feeling like there was chemistry, sure that by the time the sun went down I would get my pash, certain I would be embarking on my road to marriage. The future looked bright. Me and saucy elle, together in bliss.

So I went up to her and I said this—I was really good at this sort of thing by the way—“hi…” good start…. “um I just want to call to your attention, if you don’t mind, that I’ve got feelings for you and that well that you have feelings for me, I’m feeling that we should, perhaps, negotiate a way forward for us to become more than friends and further our relationship to the next level.” Well, that went better than I planned I thought to myself.

“and what am I supposed to say to that?” she asked and then walked off.

I just followed her with my gaze. Umm.

As I unpacked this later, while in huddled in the foetal position on the floor of my room, I questioned myself. How could my feelings be so wrong?

I wouldn’t have approached her if I didn’t feel that she felt the same way…but it didn’t happen like that. I thought I felt her love. I thought I felt her attraction to me. But I got it wrong. I got it horribly wrong.

My feelings let me down. And over the years, I’ve learned that my feelings are probably the worst guage of what is real and authentic. My feelings need to be tested. My feelings are good to have, but they need to be tested before I act on them.

I’ve done things because they felt right, it’s called intuition. I’ve made important decisions based on my gut. Sometimes they’ve been good decisions. Sometimes they’ve been bad, like the time I bought a Jaguar XJ6 : a car that cost me $5000 to buy and $15000 to maintain over two years until I sold it to a wrecker for $300. but it felt good at the time.

So the question is this. Why would we and do we entrust something as significant as our eternal relationship with God, our day by day relationship with Jesus, our moment by moment filling of the holy spirit, why do we let the importance of these things, the truthfulness of these things, the concreteness of these things, hinge upon something so unpredictable as our feelings?

So the first question we need to ask and unpack in our groups is this:

How important are feelings for Faith? What contribution do they make?

I don’t know how to unpack this without treading on toes. I don’t know how to do this without jarring against other people’s experiences and what people hold dear to their faith. I can’t deny the fact that God often stirs within us a wonderful sense of his presence, blessing, love, power. These are things that happen. And they are important things that happen and they are important things to own.

But what I want to suggest is that feelings are not the sum total of what happens in our Christians experience—in fact I would go so far as to say that feelings actually make up a tiny part of what it means to have faith. As far as I can see there is no support in the bible for us to feel God. For us to feel his presence, or feel him during worship. There is a lot of support for us to know God though.

Faith is not just knowledge, sure, it’s an active knowledge, it’s knowing something to be true enough to be motivated to change, to do, to be a particular type of person. Faith operates on certainties not feelings : most of the time anyway. And it’s the most of the time we’re talking about here.

Knowing God’s presence is different to feeling it. I don’t know whether we can ever be sure enough to say “I felt God” in the same way we’re on dangerous ground when we state categorically “God told me …” . We can strongly suggest it, but to claim our feelings as mediators of truth is giving them far too much credit in my opinion.

I think that it’s dangerous to talk too much about feeling God’s presence in worship too. The idea that music conditions emotions and how we can perceive ourselves is obvious. If you like the music it can alter your mood. I like some house music, and when I hear it I feel lifted. Sometimes, like when I broke up with my girlfriend, I found comfort in listening to Pink Floyd’s Division Bell at a very high volume. Not only did it match my mood but it allowed me the freedom to stay in that mood. And make no mistake, music in church does the same thing.

Now it’s not bad for this to be a part of worship, in fact it’s fitting. I believe that’s part of God’s gift. It can free certain emotions to be expressed : we can get excited, or meditative according to what the music is doing, and that’s great. but we need to be careful that we don’t let our excitement or own emotions be a reflection of whether the holy spirit is working or not. It’s deceptive. The spirit will work when we open our hearts to him : regardless of the quality of the music.

Now the question is left begging. Why do we sing to God? Is it a transaction? That if we sing better then God will descend and make us feel him? Surely good worship is about us telling God how we feel about him, not God making us feel good about ourselves. Surely we should be saying this stuff to God whether we feel anything in return. Isn’t that what worship is? But we often come away from a song session with our appraisal of whether God was in that time or not. I just don’t see how that measures with scripture.

What is the difference between hype and the holy spirit?

Hype is not a bad thing. But it’s not the holy spirit. Some of the most frenzied congregations around don’t seem to exhibit anymore compassion for the poor, acceptance of the dejected than we do. My point is not that they are worse or better than us, it’s just that they’re no different. So with the extra holy spirit dose that they seem to be getting I just don’t see how it impacts them in a day to day way.

You see, I could put on the act if you wanted. I could prance around up here with lots of little stories. I could repeat myself over and over, and get you to repeat things to each other. I could speak with more emphasis and more power and more of lots of things and maybe we’d all be more excited about this faith of ours. But I would hope not. I sincerely hope that your faith does not require my passion to survive. Hype will pass, but the spirit will not. Feelings come and go, but faith does not.

There was this time when I was at a previous youth group and we were all just hanging around waiting for something. I did an experiment. I got two dice and got one of the guys to play a game with me. And I was so enthusiastic. “Look I’ve got this great game, ok. It’s really simple. I’ll throw my dice, and you throw yours and whoever gets highest wins!” and without waiting for his reply I threw my dice enthusiastically and then said “4! great beat that!” and then he clasped his hands together and vigorously shook the dice and rolled it. “5! I shouted, I lose! Play again?” and we did this, and altered our throwing technique and shouted and danced when we won and booed and hissed when we lost. It was really good fun! And it was contagious. We hyped up a stupid game and I kid you not, but we had people lining up behind us to go next.

Just because it excites people doesn’t make it great. In fact, no-one will go back to playing that dice game because at the end of the day when everything has calmed down and they can no longer feel the energy of the game they will realise how stupid the game actually is.

I’m concerned, deeply concerned that the hype that we see in music and at conferences and at camps becomes a focus for our Christian experience.

Hype can be misconstrued for the spirit. And just because we put a Christian label on it, doesn’t make it holy. Christians have got a history of burning people alive because we felt it was the right thing to do and got all hyped about it.

We can do better than that. In fact we must.

My dream for my contribution to those who are in this congregation is simple. I want to be helping you to have sustainable faith through the highs and the lows. And that is going to require depth, not hype.

So here are some honest observations from my end:

You will not always feel God. Be glad if you are stirred and you feel something, but this is not the norm and it is not the sign of a deep spirituality. The times I’ve felt God stir me have been when I have been least spiritual. Spiritual people don’t feel God, they know God.

Let’s get excited about God. But this is not always the right thing to be. There are times in the psalms when we find that the psalmist cries out in despair. We don’t always have to feel good to be spiritual.

If you don’t feel God you are not less of a Christian. Your are still precious. And no-one in this church is pressuring you to feel anything during the worship. Your faith is deeper than that.

If you do feel something it’s probably a response to the spirit : and there is a subtle but important distinction. I think the holy spirit can convict, comfort and empower us, and we might feel something in that, but we have not felt the holy spirit.

I want to finish with the story of Thomas which is fitting this close to easter. Some of the disciples have seen Jesus resurrected from the grave and they have been telling Thomas about it. Thomas refuses to believe them, I suspect calling them delusional. He says quite categorically, “unless I can feel his wounds with my hands I can’t believe.”

In the room one night where they were all gathered I suspect there was a lot of tension for on one hand we had the have seens and on the other the have not seens. Discussions would’ve been useless as they had gone over this ground many times. It seemed offensive to those who were trying to grieve the loss of Jesus that there were some who were fabricating stories about seeing Jesus.

It wasn’t right. And there wasn’t a lot of laughter taking place just unsure glances. Those who had seen wanted to be happy but felt the pressure not to, and those who hadn’t wanted to mourn but felt they couldn’t with the odd giggles and joviality from the other side.

Suddenly, even though the doors were locked, Jesus appeared before them : in the flesh. He said “peace be with you” and they didn’t feel it—they were too freaked. Jesus had suddenly appeared, Not a ghost, but in the flesh and he went up to Thomas and was quite blunt.

“Stick your fingers in here, here and here. Come on. Stop doubting and believe.”

We don’t know if Thomas did or not, but what we do know is that he had a profound reaction to this : “Jesus, my lord and my God!” is what he stammered out.

And we’d think that Jesus would be stoked about this. And he probably was on one level, but the story is told not so that we can be amazed at Thomas’ belief, in fact quite the opposite. Jesus goes on to expose the belief that Thomas has as being undesirable.

“You believe because you’ve seen me? Blessed are those who have not seen and yet have come to believe.”

Don’t you think? Blessed are you who have no tangible proof, even though that’s what we often yearn and desire. Even though that’s what we pursue. We can look out for this touch from God, this experience from heaven and get lost on the real act of living faith.

We can look out for the next high, the next recharge, the next camp and miss out on all the life in between that God requires our faith to be living : a life that is Loving God and loving people. Christian life often travels through the desert experiences, where God seems distant and obscure. And the only way to survive those times is to have a faith which is based more on the depth, the can’t live my life without it type of framework which is not the feel good feel happy faith we might be pursuing at times. In fact christianity is a gritty lifestyle, if it isn’t then we’re not doing it right.

Indeed there is truth that we experience God when we serve others, it’s not flashy, but it is profound. We experience Jesus when we give of ourselves to others in love.

Feeling the spirit during a song is meaningless and is probably just a feeling if it doesn’t change us and motivate us to be carriers of God’s grace and love to the world around us.

I want to encourage you if you are not feeling God to know that your faith can be deeper, no should be deeper than that and probably is deeper than you think. Locate it and hold onto it, because that’s the story you take with you throughout your week.

Feelings come and go, faith does not.

I want to open this up for discussion.