God's Emotions

I’m caught off guard almost every time I hear a person say that they don’t feel God. What exactly is feeling God? Some extremists say that it is impossible to feel God. This conclusion is enticing but if it were so, almost the entire bible would not be applicable. I often wonder if these folks are experiencing the same God I am because Romans 8:11 says, “And if the Spirit of him who raised Jesus from the dead is living in you, he who raised Christ from the dead will also give life to your mortal bodies through his Spirit, who lives in you.” The previous verse talks about the Spirit being alive because of righteousness. With the Lord living in us how can you NOT feel Him? Right… well maybe… Sadly I have come to the realization that only dead things can’t feel and I’m afraid many people are dead in themselves and serving a dead God. On the flipside we have those emotionalists who attribute everything they feel to God! One day they joyously walk into the work place singing how they feel God, and the next day they are completely distraught and depressed. I indirectly ask to myself if they are still feeling God. Instead of blaming our feelings on the absence of God or attributing them to God, I would like to stand on the fact that we are in God and apart of being in God means that we should experience God at every level, including the complete emotional realm. God is not a feeling but he is a Being with the entire spectrum of emotions available for us to experience in Him. The fruits of the spirit for example, are traits involving deep emotions that are interwoven within the personality of our LORD. The problems arise when we aren’t in Him. You hear the urgency in Jesus’ voice as he explains it to his disciples in John 15:4 “Remain in me, and I will remain in you. No branch can bear fruit by itself; it must remain in the vine. Neither can you bear fruit unless you remain in me.” (NIV)

One problem Christians have is when we are in Christ but then the life we feel isn’t always what we want, so we disassociate this experience from God. Our arrived assumption is that we do not feel God. Sadly, this claim reminds me of the time in scripture when God cut Jesus off from Him. Jesus cried out, Eloi, Eloi, lama sabachthani, also known as “My God, My God, why have you forsaken me?” (Matt 27:46 NIV) Many Christians complain, in a sluggish way, that they don’t feel God and it crawls under my skin because the only time Jesus claims not to feel God is when he carried the weight of our sins, so that we can feel and experience life with Him. Our problem is not that we don’t feel God or are incapable of feeling him but that we still want control of our emotions and are not completely grafted into the vine, which is life. We don’t want to admit that experiences shape our emotions as opposed to God’s truth so we claim we don’t feel him. We think that feeling God needs to be a pleasant experience, when truly it’s not the emotion that gives contentment but the action of remaining in him. Paul’s contentment in prison is a great example. I believe what Paul wrote in Philippians was inspired by the fact he stayed in the vine. Our emotions should be so caught up in the Lord that we never fail to produce a harvest, despite what season or drought we are in because the harvest is not from our source but God’s.

Another problem Christians have is that we claim to be in Christ but our fruit isn’t alive. We get so caught up in the emotion that our obedience and behavior turns outside of God’s will. One of the saddest things I see in the church today is when mighty men and women of God, who are gifted, try to recreate what was done before by the spirit, in the flesh. It takes the life and joy out, and substitutes it for a mediocre replacement. We have many Christians today who are up one day and down the next because they put their value and emphasis on the emotion instead of the alignment to God’s emotion. God has an array of emotions but they are in sync with his pleasing and perfect will, not yours.


If our purpose for being in God is to feel good then it is impossible to be in God. Just as Christ died, so must every one die to their sinful nature. If you attribute, “feeling God” only to the times you, “feel good” then you are robbing yourself of the joy you can receive through suffering. Being in God is a choice we make every morning. We decide who is in control, and we can only serve one master. Have you surrendered to God and will you let him dictate how you feel?


(2 Cor 4:10-11) “We always carry around in our body the death of Jesus, so that the life of Jesus may also be revealed in our body. For we who are alive are always being given over to death for Jesus' sake, so that his life may be revealed in our mortal body.” (NIV)