How to Walk With God When You don’t feel Him.

Sitting in the midst of individuals shouting and praising God and there I was forcing myself to say, “Thank You God.” I was not able to feel anything. What happen to the joy in my heart, where did the excitement run off too? I was unable to connect with anything the preacher was saying. All I could do was battle with my thoughts of not feeling God and being envious of others around me who were saturated in His presence.

Have you ever experienced this? You know you love God. You proclaim Him to be Your Lord and Savior. You read your bible, pray every day, striving to cultivate an intimate relationship with God and feel as if you come up short

We have all been here and if not, you will. Thankfully the love of God is not based off our feelings.

The thing that I love about God is He forewarned us how our body, mind, soul and spirit operate. This knowledge will aid us when we need reassurance of God’s loving presence.
Let’s look at how Feelings formulate

FEELINGS WHAT ARE THEE

Photo by Diana Simumpande on Unsplash

As humans we operate off of our sensory glands. Our moods are based off of what we feel and how we respond to the world around us. Our emotional state can literally shift from sad, mad, happy, joyful, and back to sad within a short time span. This solidifies how unstable our emotions are. 

Feelings by definition are: 

• Sensation experienced through this sense

• Emotional state or reaction 

• Belief especially a vague or irrational one 

• The conscious experience of emotional reactions

Sensation experienced through this sense

We experience emotions through our senses – touch, smell, taste, eyes, ears. An external or internal trigger stimulates one of these sense realms sending off an immediate reaction. Our first line of response is our emotions. How the trigger made us respond such as sadness, anger, disgust, surprise, fear, or happiness. 

Emotional State or reaction

After we have experienced an external/internal trigger communication about what we have experienced starts to formulate. In response our brain begins to go into problem solving mode.

Belief especially a vague or irrational one

How we internalize this experience i.e., the story we tell ourselves in reference to the trigger we are experiencing effects our belief system. If our trigger stimulated sadness feelings of disappointment begin to emerge. We formulate a story and dialogue with ourselves begins “thinking”. The story we tell ourselves directly effects how we feel. 

The conscious experience of emotional reactions

This is the process of analyzing the external/internal triggers and properly or improperly putting them into categories. The way we understand and process our emotions are correlated to how we learned how to deal with emotions in childhood, experiences, environment and past trauma. 

Now we see that feelings are stimulated by external and internal triggers that we experience through our five senses. Once something has triggered us an immediate response develops stimulating an emotion. Once the emotion is recognized we then begin to tell ourselves a story about the emotion. Depending on the story “our thoughts” we tell ourselves will produce how we feel in that moment. How we feel directly prompts our behaviors.

External/ Internal Trigger – Emotion – Story We tell ourselves- Feelings – Behaviors

What do I do when I don’t Feel God?

Now that we know our feelings are much deeper than the moment, we find ourselves longing to experience God. How do we overcome this place of aching to be close to God?

Proverbs 4:23 Guard your heart above all else, for it determines the course of your life.

God is telling us to take action. He knows feelings of despair will arise however they are not from Him. The issues and challenges of life are fighting for our attention. In order to stay in right perspective, we have to guard our heart. In Proverbs 4 it states multiple times “my child pay attention to what I say”. Instructing us to only accept what God says. I learned long ago if it didn’t come from God, I don’t accept it. 

We will literally have to combat all negative thinking. The only way to do this is to replace it. God has given us countless scriptures to aid in our defense against wrong thinking. When lies arise we have to say what God’s Word says. This will guard our heart and help us know God is for us.