The Hour We First Believe
“I feel really, really good right now. Peaceful.”
The other week, a coffee shop meeting with a stranger who had visited our church one time turned into much more than I anticipated. I met Billy on a Monday morning at 10 AM to answer questions he had about prayer. Billy came to that meeting dead in his trespasses and sins (Ephesians 2:1); he walked out having met God, “rich in mercy,” who makes us “alive together with Christ” (Ephesians 2:4). The Spirit’s sovereign guidance over the whole encounter is a remarkable story, worth sharing in full. However, here I want to explore Billy’s response in those first moments after believing the gospel.
How do you explain that feeling that comes over you in the hour you first believe? From our vantage point, we reach for words like “peace” and “happy” and “new.” As soon as Billy mouthed those words, I was taken back to my own experience twenty-two years ago. I felt brand new. For the first time in my life, I didn’t want to do the things I had devoted my whole life to pursuing. Instead, I wanted to pray. I wanted to worship. Like the Samaritan woman at the well, I wanted to tell other people what had happened to me (John 4:39). God’s presence felt as real to me in those moments as I’ve ever experienced since.
Theologically, the hour we first believe is also the moment when God’s Spirit enters our souls and causes us to be born again. We go from death to life. We were blind, but now, because of God’s saving grace, we can see. I put it to Billy like this: “You feel that way because, for the first time in your life, you are in Christ, which means that the God who has been against you is now for you.” Imagine that. In one instant, alienation from God transitions to becoming one with God as God enters our souls through his Spirit. For the first time in your life, all your sins are forgiven through Christ, and you are right with the God who made you. How can we not feel it in the very depths of our souls?
But I also know what follows. At some point, the emotional high turns into a struggle. The feelings that drove you to such pure devotion fade. You wake up one morning and don’t feel like praying or reading your Bible. You find yourself in a conversation at work and miss the opportunity to talk about your Lord and Savior. You notice flaws in the church that you didn’t see before. Temptations that you had put in your rearview return. What has happened?
Some of us spend the rest of our lives chasing those early emotions, concluding that something has gone wrong. We come to believe that, somewhere along the way, we took a wrong turn. Maybe we joined the wrong church. Perhaps we turned Christianity into a religion when it was supposed to remain a relationship. Is there unrepentant sin in my life?
What if, however, this emotional transition is God’s plan to mature you? What if our sovereign God uses our emotional struggles to lead us into a deeper relationship with the Triune God?
Think about marriage. Not everyone has the exact same experience, but what I’m about to describe should be familiar to most. Most couples begin in some sort of “in love” state. They initially adore each other and struggle to see one another’s flaws. Pre-marital counseling for me is usually me trying to explode ideals and dreams to set the new idealistic couple on the surer foundation of Christ. As life progresses, the “in love” experience becomes something different. It’s not that the couple quits loving one another. I would argue, rather, that their love matures. It becomes deeper. It grows because it is less dependent on fleeting emotions. The will is now involved as each one wakes up and chooses to stay committed to one another. If the emotional highs continue to provide all the fuel, it might hinder love from growing in this deeper way.
Could God be doing the same thing? What are we really chasing when we chase emotional highs? Are we pursuing God or are we pursuing the feeling God has given us in the past? Our obsession with the peaceful feeling may actually become an idolatrous substitute for God. You could argue that it’s God’s mercy that leads us down from the emotional mountaintop. He wants us to know him in a deeper way. He’s inviting us to pursue him with our whole hearts—our wills included. He’s teaching us the true nature of love by teaching us how to remain committed even when we don’t feel it.
Don’t chase the emotional high. Enjoy it when it comes, but chase Christ instead. Commit to him every day in response to his total commitment to you. That’s how we learn to love. That’s how we truly grow in the grace of the gospel.
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