Fact, Faith, and Feelings

"For we walk by faith, not by sight."

- II Corinthians 5:7

Being the fleshly, weak human beings we are, we tend by nature (especially us females) to walk by those dreadful things called feelings. We tend to make decisions based on whether it feels good or to think we are finally having a good day just because we feel happy. Deep down inside, we know it is wrong, but we nevertheless resort to leaning on our emotions.

I fall into this pattern regularly, often slipping into it unconciously. One area I have been struggling particularly with is surrender -- whether I have actually surrendered, or done so with the right manner, or truly surrendered myself completely, and so on -- simply because I do not often feel like I have surrendered.

I was so encouraged today when I read Hannah Whitall Smith's thoughts on surrender, or what she calls the act of consecration. I found out that I am most certainly not the only one who has faced that problem and that faith, just like in dealing with burdens, is the solution. More and more I come to realize that faith is truly the key to living the Christian life.

"As ye have therefore received Christ Jesus the Lord,

so walk ye in Him: rooted and built up in Him,

and stablished in the faith, as ye have been taught"

- Colossians 2:6-7

Hannah Whitall Smith begins, "Now, God's invariable rule in everything is, fact first, faith second, and feeling last of all; and it is striving against the inevitable when we seek to change this order."

Oh how often I reverse that order, finding myself tossed to and fro by the turbulent waters of emotion instead of resting on the unchanging rock of fact -- God Himself, His Word, and His exceedingly great and precious promises. To go back to the proper order, it is faith that must take me from one to another -- away from the dynamic sea to the sturdy rock.

She continues, "The way, then, to meet this temptation [of reversing the order] in reference to consecration, is simply to take God's side in the matter, and to adopt His order, by putting faith before feeling. Give yourself to the Lord definitely and fully, according to your present light, asking the Holy Spirit to show you all that is contrary to Him, either in your heart or life. If He shows you anything, give it to the Lord immediately, and say in reference to it, 'Thy will be done.' If He shows you nothing, then you must believe that there is nothing, and must conclude that you have given Him all. Then recognize that it must be the fact, that, when you give yourself to God, He accepts you; and at once let your faith take hold of this fact. Begin to believe, and hold on to it steadfastly, that He has taken that which you have surrendered to Him. You positively must not wait to feel either that you have given yourself, or that God has taken you. You must simply believe it, and reckon it to be the case. And if you are steadfast in this reckoning, sooner or later the feeling will come, and you will realize that it is indeed a blessed fact that you are wholly the Lord's."

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Feelings do have a place but that place is the third and last in the divine order. Emotions must not be the determining factor. We cannot doubt God's presence just because we cannot feel Him at a particular moment. In answer to this, she writes, "What we need, therefore, is to see that God's presence is a certain fact always, and that every act of our soul is done before Him, and that a word spoken in prayer is as really spoken to Him as if our eyes could see Him and our hands could touch Him....Sight is not faith, and hearing is not faith, neither is feeling faith: but believing when we can neither see, hear, nor feel, is faith; and everywhere the Bible tells us our salvation is to be by faith."

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 "Your emotions may clamor against the surrender, but your will must hold firm. It is your purpose God looks at, not your feelings about that purpose; and your purpose, or will, is therefore the only thing you need to attend to. The surrender, then, having been made, never to be questioned or recalled, the next point is to believe that God takes that which you have surrendered, and to reckon that it is His. Not that it will be His at some future time, but that it is now; and that He has begun to work in you to will and to do of His good pleasure. And here you must rest.

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"There is nothing more for you to do, except to be henceforth an obedient child; for you are the Lord's now, absolutely and entirely in His hands, and He has undertaken the whole care and management and forming of you, and will, according to His word, 'work in you that which is well-pleasing in His sight through Jesus Christ.' But you must hold steadily there. If you begin to question your surrender, or God's acceptance of it, then your wavering faith will produce a wavering experience, and He cannot work in you to do His will. But while you trust, He works; and the result of His working always is to change you into the image of Christ, from glory to glory, by His mighty Spirit."

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