Lifetime Guarantee (21 page)

But even if He should give you a zingy feeling to boost you off the launching pad into the Christian life, it’s only got about a ninety-day warranty. It’s going to dissipate. It’s got to at times, because the Lord has no interest in strengthening your fleshly pattern of being controlled by your emotions. “Without faith it is impossible to please Him” (Hebrews 11:6).

God is committed to training you to walk in the Spirit by faith, and a critical part of that training is to teach you that you cannot trust your feeler, but you
can
trust Him. At times, He’ll give you all the zingy feelings you can handle, but He will not permit you to build a tabernacle there. Sometimes it’ll feel as though He’s gone to Mars for a summer vacation. He will withdraw all experiential evidence of His presence in order to train you, indeed, to box you in and force you to walk by what you know rather than what you feel. But has He left you in those times? No. How could He do that? Your earthsuit would fall over and die if He left, because He
is
your life. Your job is to keep believing He has everything under control. It’s just that He’s allowed a testing time to come upon you. Don’t be anxious about it (see Philippians 4:6). Keep operating by what you know.

With the passage of additional time in the Alaskan cabin, you will arrive at Step 3, which the King James Version of the Bible calls “works.” That means performance, activity, behavior. You’ve got to put some action to your faith if it’s ever to benefit you. Mind is going to say, “That bear can’t get into this cabin! Here I am with sweaty palms, dry mouth, heart palpitations, and shaky knees. I’m going to have a heart attack if I don’t get my act together! Get off this wall! Sit down on that floor and relax!”

Will is beginning to act on mind’s suggestion instead of feeler’s and is starting to slap feeler around a little. “Now, relax,” you tell yourself, “shake it out. Breathe slowly and deeply. Close your eyes. Don’t look at that bear. That’ll just get your emotions all bent out of shape again. Plug your ears; don’t listen to him. Unclench your teeth, and let your tongue unstick from the roof of your mouth. Now, imagine some relaxing scene in your mind like sitting in the sun out on the creek bank in the springtime. Relax!”

You are now choosing—forcing yourself—to “live like a safe man lives.” You are bringing your behavior into line with the truth, according to your faith. The Bible calls this “walking in the light.” You are choosing to go against feeler’s recommendation because mind has gotten more information about the security of your situation. You might say your faith has increased as a result of becoming better acquainted with the object of your faith (cabin). Will has now determined that it would be the wise thing to overrule feeler’s intense recommendation in favor of mind’s weaker one. You have thus arrived at Step 3.

As will forces all your members (except feeler) to relax on the floor and insists on exercising the authority that is his by God’s edict, Step 4 will evolve. We will label Step 4 “Feelings.”

Your feeler will gradually begin to respond because you have chosen to act the way safe people act. Notice that Step 4 says, “I finally begin to feel saf
er
—sort of.” In other words, you can never get complete control over your emotions. True, you can exercise some control over them, but never total control. It is humanly impossible to do so. God has created us to be unable to control the emotions. As a saved person, you can control your mind and your will, but not your feelings. God’s plan is for us to
believe
Him and choose to submit ourselves to His loving care and authority regardless of how we feel. All together now,
Rain on how I feel!

Jesus Christ could not control His emotions when He walked planet earth. Have you ever thought of that? He took on the form of a man and chose to acquire man’s limitations (see Philippians 2:5-8). Consider the scene in the garden the night before the crucifixion. The Bible says that Christ’s “sweat became like drops of blood” (Luke 22:44). Tell me, what were His emotions doing if His earthsuit was sweating blood? They were a fourteen.
Your
emotions have never been that high: “You have not yet resisted to the point of shedding blood in your striving against sin” (Hebrews 12:4). That passage isn’t speaking of Calvary, but of Gethsemane.

Let’s say that you were there in the garden with Him and spoke to Him, “Excuse me, Sir, but it would appear that You have lost Your peace that You speak of so often. Have You?”

He’d answer, “Oh, no, I have great peace. But it’s a peace that passes [human] understanding. The peace I have is
knowing something.
It’s a function of the mind, not the emotions. It is knowing that My Father has everything under control. He and I discussed the events of tomorrow before I became a human being. As it approaches, I dread what is to come and have asked My Father if there isn’t another way, but all I am getting is silence from Him.”

Do you know how I know Christ got silence? Because if the Father had answered
no
and He’d persisted in asking (which He did), that would have constituted rebellion, and He would have been unable to be our Savior.

Silence is a very normal part of the victorious Christian life at times. When that happens, we must just forge ahead based on what we believe the Bible teaches His will to be for us, trusting that if our fine-tuner is off, He will reveal it to us. I want His will for my life, and He wants His will for my life. If I’m seeking His will, it’s His move if I’m a bit off the course He wants for me. I am to behave according to my understanding of His Word and ways, believing that He is leading me.

Christ would then continue to say of emotions, “Human beings often cannot understand the peace of which I speak, because the only peace they typically comprehend is a feeling. They want to
feel
peaceful. They will tell you that they have great peace of mind, but they don’t. It’s just that they feel good, so they set their minds on how good they feel. Let adverse circumstances arise, and they’ll tell you they’ve lost their peace of mind. However, they never had peace of mind in the first place. It’s simply that their feelers have gone off the Richter scale, and now they’re keeping their minds set on how bad they
feel.
It was
feel
peace instead of
mind
peace all the time.”

Let’s look at an example of how the Evil One will use a woman’s stuck feeler to control her if he can. Let’s make her thirty-two years old and married to a believer. Sharon, we’ll call her, experienced considerable rejection from her dad. Her feeler was subsequently stuck on 7. She feels rejected by males at level 7 on her very best days. Thus, she’s got only three points of tolerance for rejection on her emotional Richter scale, and with that she attempts to handle perceived rejection (whether it’s actual or not).

On this particular day, she has planned a beautiful evening at home with her husband. Her idea is to surprise him, having farmed the kids out to grandma. She has her best tablecloth and china out with all the trimmings. She’s worked so hard, and now she has her nails painted and her prettiest dress on. It’s going to be hamburger steaks for two by candlelight. Oh, how she hopes nothing will spoil this exciting evening!

Then big daddy comes home. “Surprise, surprise,” she says. “Tea for two, and the kids are over at mom’s! Just you and me and the candles.”

He replies, “Oh, my soul! They called me from the church today, and they’re one man short on the church bowling team. I told them I’d fill in.”

“But, honey—candles, china, perfume, nails…’’

To which he responds, “Sugar, you know how much I’d like to stay, but we’re bowling against the Mormons tonight. This one’s for
Jesus.
Just put my hamburger steak between some bread. I’m sorry, but I have to go.” And out the door he goes, into his car, and down the street.

The poor woman’s brain processes this episode, and a printout (perception) is generated: “Husband going bowling instead of staying here to party with me.” Now an interpretation must be made by the computer analysts in Sharon’s head (mind, emotions, sin, and the Holy Spirit). Sin comes on loud and strong, “I
believe
Earnest is rejecting me.” Note that this is Step 2, Faith, from our hierarchy of steps that we developed in the story about the bear. When Sharon accepts sin’s thought, feeler reacts (Step 4, Feelings), “I
feel
rejected two points worth.”

We must remember, however, that our little wife has only three points of tolerance for feeling male rejection, so her feeler goes from 7 to 9, not from 1 to 3. Now, with the intensity of this high feeling to capitalize on, sin says to mind (Step 2, Faith), “Well, since I
feel
such intense rejection, I really believe Earnest is rejecting me!” Sharon swallows this line from sin. And once she accepts this thought, it’s
hers.

Feeler (Step 4, Feelings), triggered still higher by the process described in the rattlesnake story in Chapter 1, quickly tries to zoom up another three points. But wait a minute. Sharon’s elevator can only go up one more floor, and then she’ll be at 10. Thus, the intensity of the emotional strain becomes highly motivating. It’s at this point that sin “assures” her that she has arrived at Step 1, Truth. Sin says, “It’s
true.
Earnest has rejected me! Don’t bother me with the facts. I
know
how I
feel
.”

Do you see how the power of sin has taken a circumstance in this lady’s life and, capitalizing on her unique version of the flesh, has deceived her into arriving at “truth” through her emotions? This dear lady may be quite logical in her thinking when it comes to following a recipe’s instructions, but when it comes to interacting with other people, herself, or God, she makes her emotions the object of her faith and goes by what feeler says is truth. This whole process takes perhaps two or three seconds, and then she’s under sin’s control.

About two minutes later, however, here comes hubby’s car back up the drive. He walks into the house, repentant over his mistake. It seems the Holy Spirit showed him he was making a mistake before he reached the stop sign at the end of the block, and he responded in obedience by returning with nary a bite taken from his hamburger steak. “I’m sorry, honey,” he says. “The Lord showed me how wrong I was to disappoint you after all your plans. Here, pop my burger into the microwave while I go change into something more comfortable for our party.” And off he goes into the back bedroom.

Now her sound mind generates, “Wow, he didn’t reject me! He’s back. Oh, thank You, Lord, for answering my prayer.” You see, mind has the capacity to change instantly. Whereas it formerly believed she was being rejected, it has now dismissed the thought. But how about feeler? It’s still sitting on 10, and it’s going to stay there for a while. In fact, since it was energized to try to go to 12, it’ll have to experience at least two and a half points of “cool-down time” before she’ll feel any relief at all.

Now, the devil isn’t going to let this golden opportunity pass. Capitalizing on the wide “credibility gap” between the belief mind is attempting to embrace and the way she feels, sin is going to feed thoughts rapidly into her “sound mind” to try to take advantage of feeler’s inability to respond quickly to truth. Sin will do its dirty work in accordance with this woman’s flesh pattern. If she has “pity-party flesh,” sin will serve up thoughts such as these to her mind: “As hard as I worked and planned for this evening to be special! And for him to treat me this way! Sure, he came back, but the louse left in the
first
place, didn’t he! Does
he
ever plan anything nice for me? Oh, no, he’s too busy worrying about how he can be the big Christian helper at the church! He always takes me for granted!” See how effective this would be, especially if it is laced through with truth and near-truth?

On the other hand, Sharon may have “beat-on-myself” flesh, and if so, sin will give her thoughts such as these, “I never do anything right. I try so hard to plan things well, and it seems like everything
always
turns out wrong for me. I’m so yukky! I just hate myself. If only I were different! I can’t even compete with a bowling ball! I can’t blame him for not wanting to stay home with a dullard like me.”