Biblical Thinking

"The cross centered life starts with biblical thinking. Will you therefore build you life on what is real -- or merely on what you feel?

Please don't misunderstand. I'm not advocating that we completely ignore our feelings. Nor am I criticizing genuine spiritual experience, the kind of vibrant passion for God that Jonathan Edwards referred to as "religious affections". Quite the opposite! I'm in fact a passionate advocate of genuine spiritual experience and religious affections -- it's just not where we're meant to begin.

"We think with our feelings," Ferguson has said. It's true. We allow our feelings to guide our thinking, and we shouldn't. Emotions are a wonderful gift from God, and our relationship with God should bring strong godly affections to our lives. But our emotions shouldn't be vested with final authority. This should be reserved for God's Word alone.

Let me ask you: Where do you consistently direct your faith? What does it rest on? Is it your emotional state ... or the objective realities that the Word of God and Spirit of God have revealed? When you read or hear biblical truth proclaimed, what internal conversation takes place in your soul? Is your first reaction, What do I feel about that?

If so, do you plan to continue submitting everything ultimately to your feelings? Or will you instead trust in God's testimony, so that whenever you encounter biblical truth, your initial question will always be, Do I believe it? That the only reliable way to transform your emotions .. and to take them into a realm of love and adoration for the Lord that you've never before experienced."

Living the Cross Centered Life by C.J. Mahaney