The Spirit is Emotion

"If we love one another, God dwelleth in us, and his love is perfected in us" (1 John 4:12)

Another quality of the indwelling Fire is "emotion." What God is in His unique essence cannot be discovered by the mind nor uttered by the lips, but those qualities in God which may be termed rational, and so received by the intellect, have been freely set forth in the sacred Scriptures.

They do not tell us what God is, but they do tell us what God is like, and the sum of them constitute a mental picture of the Divine Being seen, as it were, afar off and through a glass darkly.

Now the Bible teaches that there is something in God which is like emotion. He experiences something which is like our love, something that is like our grief, that is like our joy. And we need not fear to go along with this conception of what God is like. God has said certain things about Himself, and these furnish all the grounds we require.

Once the seeking heart finds God in personal experience there will be no further problem about loving Him. To know Him is to love Him and to know Him better is to love Him more.

~A. W. Tozer~

_____________________

Emotional On A High Plane

"The Lord thy God in the midst of thee is mighty, he will save, he will rejoice over thee with joy; he will rest in his love" (Zephaniah 3:17)

This is but one verse among thousands which serve to form our rational picture of what is like, and they tell us plainly that God feeds something like our love, like our joy, and what He feels makes Him act very much as we would in a similar situation; He rejoices over His loved ones with joy and singing.

Here is emotion on as high a plane as it can ever be sen, emotion flowing out of the heart of God Himself. Feeling, then, is not the degenerate son of unbelief that is often painted by some of our Bible teachers. Our ability to feel is one of the marks of our divine origin. We need not be ashamed of either tears or laughter. The Christian stoic who has crushed his feelings is only two-thirds of a man; an important third part has been repudiated.

The language of those who love God is that of rejoicing: "I will greatly rejoice in the Lord; my soul shall be joyful in my God."

Spirit-filled souls are ablaze for God. They have love with a love that glows. They believe with a faith that binds. They serve with a devotion that consumes. They rejoice with a joy that radiates.

~A. W. Tozer~