I believe there is a difference between feeling as an emotion and feeling as a sensation.
I don’t believe God manipulates our emotions. But I do believe a spirit can affect the space it occupies. Sensations of heaviness, depression, and fear can be an experience caused by the presense of a type of spirit. Especially if there is no other cause like an event, a trauma, or a brain chemistry issue that it can be traced to.
In a similar way, when the Holy Spirit fills a space, like a sanctuary, a lot of those sensations fall away and are replaced by sensations of freedom, healing, compassion, release, and being greatly loved. But I think these are special moments.
In every day life, the experience is more subtle. And I don’t think God is looking for us to walk around every moment of our days like we are high, drunk on the Spirit. I could be wrong, but I just think it would be distracting and impractical.
There is a point where those qualities of the Holy Spirit must be born in us and nurtured to grow. The Holy Spirit won’t just do our loving acts of kindness for us. God isn’t looking for puppets. But we are guided to grow, question, heal, learn, thrive. A little bit here, a little more there. And that guidamce can be subtle or extremely loud. Leading to quiet meditation or a drastic change of direction. Even moments of great boldness and strength like none we have ever seen in ourselves betore, appearing in a moment when it most counts. The Spirit has a way of picking us up in an updraft and taking us to flight and task.
At least, that is what I believe.
But I do not believe we go on faith alone. We may wonder where God has gone, we may feel alone and ache for change, but God is present no matter what we feel. It is not God Who has moved but us, when our capacity to see God in the everyday has been clouded. We can find God in both the words of our parents and in the silence that holds us when we grieve and suffer loss. My faith informs me that God is moving and allows me to see the shadow of His wings, though the world may tell me that there is no God. They say, that shadow is a cloud and nothing else. But that cloud appeared when I needed it most, so I know better.
Faith allows us to see, but God gives us the moment to be perceived. Thomas did not have faith, so Christ guided his hands to the wounds. God does not leave us with a promise alone but evidence in the parting of waters, mana from heaven, oil taking much longer to burn. Precisely timed moments where a second more could have taken us a different way. These are real moments that people have everyday. But only faith allows us to see them, that a hand is guiding them and us.
