I’m sure that title gets your attention. No, I’m not talking about the drug, cocaine. However, it is about as addictive. It is the emotional high so many seek Sunday morning at church. For some believers, if they get emotionally pumped up during church, they feel it was a great service and God was there, regardless if the Word was preached. If they don’t get their emotional high, then they feel they didn’t receive God’s blessing. I have nothing against emotions in church and I’ve been on both ends of this spectrum. I’ve been in services that range from being able to hear a pin drop and to jubilantly loud Pentecostal services.
Recently, I began a study of feelings and emotions in relation to God. One conclusion I can already make is that God, Himself, is an emotional being and He created us in His image with those same emotions. However, He also created us with a mind and ordained that the primary means of gaining knowledge of Him is through our minds. The Biblical balance is not one or the other, but both—intellect and emotions. The problem arises when Christian’s are led to believe that emotions are synonymous with God’s presence and blessings. Any preacher knows that it is easy to manipulate people’s emotions. Music and lively preaching can both stir our feelings—even if God is not in them.
Elijah learned that God didn’t always manifest Himself in the spectacular, noisy, and dramatic. After his victory over the prophets of Baal, and Jezebel threatened him, he withdrew to the wilderness and finally to a cave. Elijah believed he was the only prophet left and that God wasn’t doing anything about the sinful conditions of Israel. When God came to Elijah, He told him, Go forth and stand on the mountain before the LORD. And behold, the LORD was passing by! Elijah witnessed three dynamic events, a great wind, then an earthquake and finally a fire. Yet, after each of the three arousing forces of nature, scriptures say but the LORD was not in any of them. Elijah had personally witnessed or knew of the LORD manifesting Himself through all three of these mediums, but not this time. Then God spoke through a sound of a gentle blowing. Some versions translate this, a still small voice. Elijah knew this was the LORD. When Elijah heard it, he wrapped his face in his mantle.
God was teaching Elijah His manifestations weren’t always spectacular, noisy, and dramatic. Being in God’s presence didn’t have to be an emotional charged event. Sometimes God is like a gentle breeze that’s hardly noticeable. If you’re looking for an emotional high, it’s easy to miss the gently blowing and feel God wasn’t there. When you leave church with only stirred emotions and haven’t received something solid from the Word, you really don’t have anything to help you through the week when the difficulties of life arise. Emotional highs can quickly turn into emotional lows. Without a foundation of the Word to sustain you; you’ll be looking for the ’emotional cocaine’ to pump you back up—probably by Monday night.
Emotions are an integral part of our makeup. However, being emotional or even emotionally high should be a secondary to the Word. Jesus even put eating secondary to the Word, when He was hungry and tempted by the devil. Jesus had a tremendous feeling of hunger, but He put God’s Word first. After this, the angels came and ministered to Him. Emotions should flow out of hearing the Word preached, singing scripture based songs, or reading and understanding the Bible. The Word may at times make us feel low with conviction, or fill us with fear like Isaiah when he saw the Lord sitting on a throne, lofty and exalted, with the train of His robe filling the temple, or make us weep over the condition of our sinful world.
So many churches simply pump people up on Sunday morning and never teach the Word. The congregation leaves feeling good, but as soon as they face the issues of life, they are left without a means of victory and plummet from high to low. All they know to do is seek another high which creates a desperate cycle. Only getting a solid foundation in the Word of God can break this cycle.
Elijah was an emotional, animated man. He had highs and lows, but after he heard the LORD through the gentle blowing, he spent the remainder of his life fulfilling God instructions.
Sustaining Word for the Week:
Don’t attend church to get an emotional ‘buzz’. Go and look for God through His Word. Yes, He may fall like fire, blow like a tornado, or shake like an earthquake. But He also may come like a gentle blowing.