Faith is Not an Emotion
Matthew 4:1-4 Then Jesus was led up by the Spirit into the wilderness to be tempted by the devil. He fasted forty days and forty nights, and afterwards he was famished. The tempter came and said to him, “If you are the Son of God, command these stones to become loaves of bread.” But he answered, “It is written, ‘One does not live by bread alone, but by every word that comes from the mouth of God
There are days when, for no apparent reason, you just wake up feeling blah! “I shouldn’t feel this way,” you reason. “Everything’s fine.” And yet … you do.
Our emotions go up and down for all sorts of reasons. Hormones have a huge role to play, how we slept, what we ate – our emotions are intrinsically linked to our physiology. But then, right when you’re feeling a bit off, something tricky, something challenging, something annoying, something scary comes along.
You thought you were a man or woman of faith, but your emotions are screaming at you, “Faith! What faith?!” Could it be that your faith, then, is intrinsically linked to your emotions; how you feel at any particular moment? Not at all!
Matthew 4:1-4 Then Jesus was led up by the Spirit into the wilderness to be tempted by the devil. He fasted forty days and forty nights, and afterwards he was famished. The tempter came and said to him, “If you are the Son of God, command these stones to become loaves of bread.” But he answered, “It is written, ‘One does not live by bread alone, but by every word that comes from the mouth of God.’ ” (NRSV)
How do you think Jesus felt in that moment, not having eaten for close on six weeks? Starving, weak, vulnerable perhaps? Yet from that place, what He was in effect saying to the devil, what He’s saying to you and me, is that faith isn’t an emotion. It’s a decision to stand on the Word of God.
And that, my friend, is God’s Word. Fresh … for you … today.
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