Title:- Finding Felt Forgiveness
Jeremiah 17:14 Heal me, O LORD, and I shall be healed;
Blaise Pascal wrote “All men's miseries derive from not being able to sit in a quiet room alone.” Now follow me on this will you?
I wonder if an inability to be truly at peace with one's self is directly related to not being able to experience the fact of our being at peace with the Father, through Jesus Christ our Lord? Consequently, I wonder if our being at peace with the Father, in a living experiential sense that is, is directly related to our experiencing “that felt forgiveness” which we have through Jesus Christ our Lord? If this combination then of “fact and felt wonder” is a necessary truism of our experience of peace, then experiential peace is directly related to the right kind of knowing feeling?
We conservative evangelicals don’t like feelings very much, so much so that we almost despise them, yet I tell you friends, felt forgiveness is a cup we would all really like to drink from on a daily basis, no more than that, it is a cup we must gulp on first thing each and every morning and the very last thing at night.
Unfortunately, once I begin to thoroughly taste that which we I often so quickly swallow, then be assured that it is not only my favourite hot, black-leaved sweet tea which I will now begin to thoroughly taste, but iced water, maybe dosed with angostura bitters. Maybe I shall now also begin to feel the real destruction of the dancing tingle of gut rotting carbonated soda, indeed, funny flavoured theological concoctions of every kind might now be tasted. Are you with me? For you see once our inner mouth is drinking in feelings, then the felt taste of both the pleasant and the not so pleasant, may now be sensed to pass our feeling lips. Yup, to be able to drink, we need to gulp from an open mouth and an open mouth can take in many things. In this same way friends, to be able to feel the facts of our so great salvation we need to open our emotions and so I suppose it is the fear of opening our emotions to such possible emotional pain and the often uncontrolled incongruity which often comes with gulping a cup of feeling, which lies the at roots of our conservative evangelical reluctance to fully emotionally engage with the Gospel and with Jesus!
You see the taste of “feeling” from emotions that have been steeped in the deep wounds of the heart, or boiled in badly bruised souls, or of emotions soured by sorrowful spirits, reflecting even our own broken lives and betrayed hopes, well this kind of emotional tasting, is always experiencially so very painful. So painful in fact that we have often with one eye closed and stuck out tongue, ran gagging into that safe and manly cave of emotional protection called “head knowledge” and in so doing, have found ourselves in the darkness of denial regarding our true emotional selves. I wonder if the pain of tasting our own bitter cup has forced many of us to become immensely doctrinal and fervently evangelical but at the terrible cost of becoming “less than human”? And surely, if we have become less than human, then we have in fact become less than Christ? If that is the case, you will agree no doubt, that this is not The Way.
Spiritual maturity cannot occur without emotional connectivity. For lots of people, and especially for many emotionally disconnected men, such a difficult path has become the hidden path, the hard way, the road less travelled and consequently, all that is left is the faint pale and shadowy figure of Marlboro man, who for years has roamed the planes alone, seated high on his horse of disconnected self whilst slowly dying of lung cancer, the disconnectedness finally closing down all possibilities to suck in life. Yes, though pretending to be aloof, alone and above mere emotion, Marlboro man has been sucking up the pain and sucking in the foul stench of an un-kept and unkempt disconnected heart whilst rotting away his insides. To be doctrinally correct but dying is a terrible sight to see.
Some people would suggest that emotional connectivity is the interface between the material and spiritual worlds. Think about that. If it’s true, then emotions are not the lying and untrustworthy biting snakes we have come to regard them to be, but rather they are the absolutely vital link that allows us to feel, or experience, or validate, or truly know, just what is going on in our spirits and consequently in the spiritual world; and if this is the case, then surely we need to feel! So, some people would go so far as to say that unless we travel this path of deep emotional connectivity, we shall never truly experience all we can of God, neither shall we experience any true depth of inner healing and despite our apparent theological soundness, we shall in truth be disconnected from the spiritual world. Now that is worth thinking about!
I acknowledge that the navel gazing of expensive psycho-babble and new age philosophy can be a very pleasurable attraction for the post-modern community and in turn might become so very, very distracting and misleading for the true seeker! So no, I’m not talking about naval gazing today, but I am encouraging us all and even imploring you in particular dear friend, to engage with God with your whole being, for it is imperative for both our wholeness and for our holiness, that we experience in full that good news of which we talk so lovingly, so longingly and so deeply about.If you cannot sit in a quiet room alone with yourself and God, being at peace with both yourself and with God, then maybe your felt forgiveness through Jesus Christ our Lord is sadly and most terribly lacking. Peter Scazzero in his book, The Emotionally Healthy Church, points out that “the Gospel says that you are more sinful and flawed than you ever dared believed, yet you are more accepted and loved than you ever dared hope.” This side of heaven then, the disturbing and fantastic incongruity remains. Accept it. Never the less, my I encourage you today, to dare to feel and dare to experience the felt forgiveness that comes from the gospel of Jesus Christ. For this precious cup of felt forgiveness is one we should all drink very deeply from most every single day.
Listen: -The LORD has appeared of old to me, saying: “Yes, I have loved you with an everlasting love; Therefore with loving kindness I have drawn you. Again I will build you, and you shall be rebuilt, O virgin of Israel! You shall again be adorned with your tambourines and shall go forth in the dances of those who rejoice. Jeremiah 31:3-4
Pray: - Lord, help me to allow myself to feel and to be fearless in doing so. Above all things O Jesus let me feel You and Your great love for me. Fill my life with dancing O dearest Jesus mine! In Your great name I pray, Amen and Amen.
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