Feeling, Knowing, and Believing

Our world is changing.  At an ever-increasing pace, these changes are impacting family and societal relationships, value of our currency, health care, education, employment, and constitutional rights.  All of these can impact our emotional, rational, and spiritual sense of well-being and our outlook on the future.  On any given day or even hour of the day, if we are asked how we are doing, we might choose a different emoji to describe our feelings.

Complexity of issues, sheer volume of information, and politically biased reporting make it more and more challenging to stay accurately informed.  Rational thinking skills and wise decision-making based on objective reporting of information are becoming more and more critical—and harder to find.  In this article, we consider some challenges we face and some factors to consider in order to navigate them wisely. 

To begin, let’s say that someone asks us a question.  There are several ways we might respond:

(1)   “I feel ….”

(2)   “I think ….”

(3) “I believe ….”

When someone asks us how we are feeling, we typically reply with #1, “I feel….”  Responses #2 and #3 are how we might begin to share our opinion or a faith-based answer, respectively.  Let’s consider Response #1 first.

Emotional Responses
Our “feelings” are an important part of our self-awareness and our physical and emotional health.  Our physical and emotional health require that we maintain a relationship with at least one person; or if necessary, with pet animal.  We are strengthened and encouraged through face-to-face communication with others or through letters, phone calls, and social media.  

Many of us have pressed “smiley face” stickers on our letters to convey a wordless message of encouragement.  Now that we have cell phone apps, we can digitally insert our choice of emojis along with our text messages and e-mails to communicate briefly how we are “feeling” about something in a wordless fashion.

Health professionals routinely ask their patients how they feel before or after a medical procedure.  Recognizing the difficulty that some patients have in expressing how much pain they actually “feel,” medical facilities often post a “pain scale” consisting of cartoon faces ranging from very distraught (“worst pain imaginable”) to a smiling face (“no pain”).  Health care professionals and all of us need to be aware that a person’s “feelings” have roots that go deeper than physical pain and reach into our emotional and spiritual state.

For many of us, it is easier to describe “how we feel” when someone asks us about our physical pain than when they ask “how we feel about our pain.”  How we feel about joint-replacement surgery during recovery is affected by both the severity of our physical pain and by the degree of our concern about whether we will ever recover.  Some people recover very quickly and have a positive outlook all the way through their pain and physical therapy.  Others struggle with both the physical pain and the related fear it causes.  Why is this?  The truth is, how we see our condition at a given time depends on our physical condition (1, “how we feel”) and our frame of mind (2, “how we think about” our situation.  The differences in how different people respond to similar situations also depends on how they “choose to think” about their situation.

Rational, Faith-Grounded Responses
Dr. Caroline Leaf, a communication pathologist and audiologist has conducted research for years in the field of cognitive neuroscience.  She believes that God created our minds in His image and has given us the free will to choose “how we will think” and react to our circumstances.  Therefore, Dr. Leaf has based her research on God’s revelation in Scriptures.  In Romans 12: 2, God commands us to be transformed by the renewing of your mind, and in Deuteronomy 30: 19, God lovingly invites us to choose life in order that you may live….

Dr. Leaf integrates this Scriptural principle with neuroscience in her book entitled Switch on Your Brain (Baker Books, 2013).  She writes,

Free will and choice are real, spiritual, and scientific facts. Your mind (soul) has one foot in the door of the spirit and one foot in the door of the body; you can change your brain with your mind and essentially renew your mind.

The author cites scientific research pointing to a cause-and-effect relationship between “what we believe” (Response #3 above) about God and our capacity to overcome challenges to physical health. 

As we have cited in a March 22, 2020 Oikonomia article, Dr. Leaf describes a University of Miami study of patients being treated for (Human Immunodeficiency Virus).  The researchers concluded that the most significant factor affecting healing in HIV-infected patients “was their choice to believe in a benevolent and loving God.”  These kinds of scientific findings emphasize the important link between “how we think” (2), how we “choose to think,” and “what we believe” (3).  [Note:  We also recognize that in the eternal span of time before each of us came into being as creatures in God’s image, capable of making choices, He chose us in Him (Christ) before the foundation of the world, that we would be holy and blameless before Him.  In love He predestined us to adoption as sons through Jesus Christ to Himself, according to the kind intention of His will…(Ephesians 1: 4-5). The "Doctrine of Election" is a subject for another time, but those who wish to study the subject can begin HERE with a resource by Dr. John MacArthur.]

Although feeling, thinking, and believing are interconnected, “feeling” is heavily based on our physical senses; whereas, “thinking and believing” are heavily based on our rational ability, our faith, and our worldview that forms through our experience and learning.

How would you respond if someone were to ask you, “Do you believe there is a God?”   Which of the following would your choose to begin your response:
(1) “I feel ….”
(2) “I think ….”
(3) “I believe ….”

Clearly, our response to “the God question” cannot be based solely upon “what we feel” or “what we think.”  Unless we claim to be God, we have no capacity to claim whether or not God exists.  However, it appears that more and more people are presuming to take the place of God when they deny the existence of objective truth.  The term objective truth applies to a proposition that is considered true no matter what we believe to be the case.

Worldview by "Cut-and-Paste"
We have amassed great knowledge, yet increasing numbers of people question whether objective truth even exists.  This trend is supported by a recent study.

Based on a survey of 2,000 adult Americans (1,000 by phone; 1,000 online) taken in February, 2021 by George Barna, over half (54%) embrace the postmodern idea that all truth is subjective and there are no moral absolutes.  Barna concludes (emphasis added), “We’re just at a place in our country’s history now where that’s the default view.  Most people would say all truth is subjective and there’s no kind of objective truth based on an external standard.  They would say they’re the standard that determines what truth is.”

Barna’s survey, conducted through the Cultural Research Center at Arizona Christian University, offered a series of questions designed to determine the personal worldview of each respondent.  The results, reported in the American Worldview Inventory 2021, are very disturbing, not because of the views expressed but because the views were not based on well informed and coherent thinking.

Based on the respondents’ answers to the questions, only 6% were identified as truly holding to a “biblical worldview.”  Given this low percentage, it is at first puzzling that the biblical worldview was “the most prolific of the seven worldviews tested.”  Another approximately 6% of respondents were scattered among six other worldviews with no more than 2% qualifying to be assigned to any one of the six particular worldviews (see table).   What about the remaining 88% of respondents?

Instead of “developing an internally consistent and philosophically coherent perspective on life,” 88% of Americans are adopting points of view or actions that feel comfortable or seem most convenient” – i.e. using a cut-and-paste approach to making sense of, and responding to life.”   As a result, most Americans who claim adherence to a given belief system are insufficiently developed in both their intellectual understanding and in their behavior and lifestyle to qualify them as being true representatives” of that particular worldview.  For example, 9% of respondents “have a moderately strong set of beliefs and behaviors related to Marxism, Eastern Mysticism, or Nihilism, but “an insufficient breadth of such beliefs and behaviors to qualify as being a true representative of any of those worldviews.”

Feelings Rationally Grounded
Returning to our range of responses, feeling, thinking, and believing, we can explain at least one cause of the troubling trend detected by George Barna’s 2021 worldview inventory; namely, emotion-driven reactions and decisions are replacing those based on careful exercise of critical reasoning.  At the very time when our culture faces both great societal challenges and great tools for addressing these challenges, we seem least prepared to respond emotionally, rationally, and spiritually.

The table below lists seven major societal issues followed by a brief statement we might commonly hear in the media or in conversation.  Notice the prominence of an emotional component in the responses.  However, even though compassion and empathy are important qualities we ought to express toward those who are struggling, these qualities must be guided by rational and moral policies if we are going to solve these problems.

Each of these societal concerns have grown out of a history of what many believe are deviations from God’s commands revealed in the Bible.  The Old Testament, in Exodus 20, reveals how God gave His chosen people, the Israelites, the Ten Commandments, or the ten “Thou shalt not’s.”  God’s purpose was not to “steal their joy” but to give them a moral foundation for a society that would protect them from evil and help them become a “shining city on a hill” for the rest of the world to see and want to copy.   To the extent that Israel followed these commands, they prospered.  But deviations from these spiritual laws gradually caused the Jewish nation to lose their godly distinctions and eventually to be exiled by pagan nations.

Out of His mercy in order to redeem His people Israel, God came in the incarnate form of His Son, Jesus Christ.   Jesus came not to replace the Law but to fulfill the Law through His sinless life, atoning death on the Cross, and resurrection in victory over death that whoever believes in Him as their Savior from sin “should not perish but have everlasting life (John 3: 16).”  Jesus added,

For God did not send the Son into the world to judge the world, but that the world might be saved through Him.  He who believes in Him is not judged; he who does not believe has been judged already, because he has not believed in the name of the only begotten Son of God.  This is the judgment, that the Light has come into the world, and men loved the darkness rather than the Light, for their deeds were evil (John 3: 17-19). 

God has already come to us with objective truth claims in the Bible that He is the Creator, His creation reveals His power and nature, and that it is so obvious that we are without excuse if we deny it (Romans 1: 20).  The Apostle Paul elaborates about how the tendency of mankind has been to reject and suppress God’s truth (Romans 1: 18).  Those who reject God’s truth, will fall prey to accepting nonsense and be morally and spiritually corrupted to the core of their lives.  Paul described this awful result in Romans 1: 21-23:

For even though they knew God, they did not honor Him as God or give thanks, but they became futile in their speculations, and their foolish heart was darkened.  Professing to be wise, they became fools, and exchanged the glory of the incorruptible God for an image in the form of corruptible man and of birds and four-footed animals and crawling creatures.

The rest of Romans 1 reveals the tragic downward path of those who reject God’s authority and absolute truth.  They are left to live in the darkness of moral relativism in which “truth” is what each individual deems it to be.  Returning to the seven (7) commonly heard statements above we can see how each cultural problem results from a deviation from the moral standards given in Scripture.  Each statement is also rooted in one or more misconceptions expressed by a person who has rejected or is ignorant of God’s moral and ethical principles.  In each of the seven, we briefly point out how the problem can be corrected by addressing the deviation from God’s ideal.  However, in no way do we want to imply that the solutions are simple.

Summary: Feeling, Thinking, Believing
In summary, each of us have physical, emotional, rational, and spiritual dimension to our lives.  All of these are interrelated components of our personality; but by itself, each is limited as a way of knowing and judging truth and reality.  We may answer a question about “how we feel” in words, or by our facial expression, or by pointing to a cartoon face or an emoji.   However, to answer questions related to “how we feel about” or “how we choose to react” to our situation, we must draw more heavily upon our rational and spiritual components.  We must be aware of our worldview and what we are basing our reasoning upon.   Recall Barna’s statistics on poorly grounded worldviews?

Thinking carelessly and communicating with tweets and emojis will not be adequate.  And problems in family, church, community, and government resulting from rejection of God’s revealed wisdom in the Bible will certainly not be solved by atheistic, humanistic approaches.  First Corinthians 2: 14 states, the natural man does not receive the things of the Spirit of God, for they are foolishness to him; nor can he know them, because they are spiritually discerned.

The proper function of family, church, school, private corporations, and government depends upon documents such as the U.S. Constitution as well as various bylaws, legal codes, and covenants, all written in words in a rational manner.  Most of these in turn, rest upon the objective revelation of the Bible concerning the nature of man.  Due to our tendency to lust for power, there is a need to avoid the concentration of power and its corrupting influence, and to incorporate ways to hold individuals morally and spiritually accountable. 

God’s Word makes clear that ultimate reality is not this physical, temporary universe which we can see, hear, touch, taste and smell.  We can only discern spiritual reality when we submit to the Word of God and His Holy Spirit (1 Corinthians 2: 13) to renew our minds (Romans 12: 2) and teach us to discern spiritual truth (John 14: 26).  Then, the Peace of God will replace our anxious feelings, and His love and care will uphold us for the challenges we face.

We hope this article will help you toward better discernment of issues in our world through proper exercise of your capacities for feeling, knowing, and believing.  As always, we welcome your “Comments” using the link below; or, please write privately to silviusj@gmail.com.  You may want to express how you feel, or what you think about this article, and share what you believe and why. 

Hearing the Voice of Jesus: Role of Faith, Facts, and Feelings

I wrote most of this article in September but its completion was interrupted by a traumatic event in my life on October 8.  I did not expect that God would bring about this situation, but I am both thankful for and amazed at how God prepared me for this time of pain and dependence by allowing me to study the subject of spiritual discernment and write about it beforehand in this article.  Maybe at least some of what I have written will be of help to you.  I hope to give an account of my actual experience in a future article.


It is not uncommon to hear Christians share how God has intervened in the challenges and decisions of life.  Here are some expressions that I have heard and even uttered myself:

“God spoke to me and I have decided to...”
“I’m still waiting on God’s leading before I...”
“After I prayed, God gave me a real peace.”

Perhaps you too have heard these expressions or sensed a time when God was speaking to you.  Like me, you may have asked,

Discerning God's voice for the decisions of life.

“What is God saying to me at this particular time and in this particular situation?” or,
“How can I know whether the “voice” I am hearing is really from God?” (or Jesus…or the Holy Spirit?)

The Bible teaches that God’s Spirit guides obedient Christians (disciples, or Christ-followers) in times of decision-making (e.g. Proverbs 3; 5-6; James 1: 2-8).  However, we must be aware that other voices may compete with the voice of God—voices that may simply reflect our current emotional state; or voices that echo from our own self-delusion. 

A person who is living in open rebellion against God’s principles or who is in self-delusion is unwilling and perhaps incapable of discerning the voice of God (James 1: 5-8).  We are all prone to wander and be influenced by sin, selfishness, and Satan.  So, how can we be sure when God is speaking; and, what He saying to us?

In September, I began reading The Voice of Jesus:  Discernment, Prayer, and the Witness of the Spirit (InterVarsity, 2003).  The author, Gordon T. Smith, defines life in Christ as “an intentional response to the voice of Jesus, a voice that comes through the presence of the Spirit.” It follows, according to Smith, that discernment is “the discipline of attending to this presence [of God’s Spirit] and responding to this leading.”  The author adds that “discernment is possible only if we are alert to several dynamic tensions [including] the tension between heart and mind.”

Obviously, we must be cognitively engaged if we are to be discerning.  But Professor Smith also emphasizes that Christ-followers must be in touch with their emotions if they are to discern the voice of Jesus. Really?  Emotions?  I must admit, I cringed when I read Smith’s claim that we do not mature in our Christian experience unless we mature emotionally.  Smith adds, more bluntly, that …people who are out of touch with their emotions are out of touch with God, for God speaks to us through the ebb and flow of our emotional lives.

Perhaps you too are cringing upon reading Smith’s claims.  You may have even concluded that The Voice of Jesus is not worth reading.  After all, doesn’t the Bible teach that we are to be controlled by the Holy Spirit and not by our emotions (Ephesians 5:15–18; 1 Peter 5:6–11)?  Doesn’t Scripture emphasize that maturing Christ-followers are those who are being transformed by the renewal of their minds (Romans 12:2)?  Shouldn’t our faith rest on facts and not feeling?

I remember the “Faith-Fact-Feeling Train” illustration which was popular in the early 1970’s through Bill Bright’s “The Four Spiritual Laws” booklet.  The founder of Campus Crusade for Christ (now Cru) wanted Christ-followers to avoid hitching their faith to feelings.  After all, our feelings can change faster than the weather.  According to the train illustration, facts are the engine, and without an engine the train will not operate.  Feelings, on the other hand, are represented by the caboose which is unnecessary for the train to move.  But are our emotions really of no more importance than an optional caboose?  Because the train illustration gives this impression, Gordon T. Smith rejects it.

Today, I wonder how many Christians are spiritually stunted or even deprived of a fruitful life of faith because they have found no way to integrate their personality and emotional makeup into a healthy relationship with God through His Spirit.  Perhaps they have learned to store their emotions in a useless caboose rusting away on a side spur.  Study the accounts of when Jesus encountered men and women in great spiritual need and tell me He didn’t address their emotions (e.g. Luke 19: 2-6; John 4; John 8: 3-11).

Thankfully, Professor Smith emphasizes that an obedient and fulfilling spiritual walk with Christ involves more than simply mental, or rational, capacity.  Much more than simply being primates with a large brain, humans have personhood and personality which is an important expression of what it means to be image-bearers of a personal God, and Creator.  God’s gift of personality includes an emotional dimension that is a major part of who we are as individuals.  Our emotions enrich and empower our expressions of love, joy, and hope; or, fear, anger, and loneliness?

Our emotional dimension occupies what is called the affective domain and is included in what Scripture refers to as the “heart.”  Therefore, as we read and study God’s Word, our minds become engaged (cognitive domain) and we are moved by the joys and sorrows of Bible personalities with whom we can easily relate, both cognitively and affectively.  God’s Truth in turn influences our will (volitional capacity).  As we submit our wills in obedience to God’s Spirit, He empowers us to “walk in obedience” (action). 

According to Smith, true spiritual discernment employs mind, emotion, and will.  He concludes that discernment requires “listening with both mind and heart.”  Then, when we act upon what we discern we are exercising what Rev. Bob Tuck (1) referred to as a “quartet” made up of mind, emotion, will, and action.

As a result of my reading, I have become more aware of the importance of emotions in the spiritual disciplines of worship, prayer, discernment of God’s purposes, and sharing the Gospel.  I can now relate to the message of God’s Word in a more complete way by being more alert to the biblical account of the emotional dimension of biblical personalities like Abraham, Jacob, Joseph, Moses, Joshua, Gideon, David, Abigail, Daniel, Mary and Joseph (parents of Jesus), Peter, John, and Jesus.  In biblical characters we find expressions of both negative emotional traits like fear, anger, and despair; and positive emotions associated with the fruit of God’s Spirit such as love, joy, and peace. 

It seems clear that, central to our spiritual awareness and discernment, is a healthy understanding of our emotions and how God’s Spirit ministers in and through us by our emotional response to daily life.  The challenges and the blessings of our lives produce an “ebb and flow” of our emotions.  If we do not have the habit of entrusting our hearts, representing our cognitive, affective, and volitional facilities, to God’s guidance and comfort, we can become spiritually sluggish or “double-minded and unstable in all our ways (James 1:  5-8).”

Instead of being double-minded, God commands us to be filled with the Spirit (Ephesians 5: 18-21) by which we become attentive to the ministry of God’s Spirit with a “whole heart” (Psalm 119: 10). —i.e. fully engaged in mind, emotion, and will. The Apostle Paul teaches that when we are alive to the Holy Spirit, He becomes a channel through which God’s love is poured into our hearts…(Romans 5: 5 ESV).  This blessed pouring of God’s love occurs in the context of trials and suffering.  Paul writes that it is precisely when we encounter trials and suffering that we are best prepared spiritually to receive this outpouring of God’s love through His Spirit.  Because of this love, Paul explains, we can …rejoice in our sufferings, knowing that suffering produces endurance, and endurance produces character, and character produces hope… (Romans 5: 3-4).

According to Gordon T. Smith: The suffering that is spoken of here represents all difficulty—the pain we experience physically, emotionally, and spiritually—explicitly because of our identification with Christ, but then also implicitly in all suffering that comes as a consequence of evil in our world.  The apostle indicated that we should actually boast in our suffering…--accept it, walk into it and choose that through suffering we will grow in grace and hope.  Later, while cautioning against doubting God’s love, Smith encourages those who remain faithful: This surely is what it means to live by faith—believing that God loves us, despite the contrary evidence.

In conclusion, how can we be sure when God is speaking and what He saying to us?  We have seen the importance of developing a proper understanding of the role of both our minds and our emotions in discerning and following the will of God.  Yet, many days we experience what can be an unsettling ebb and flow of our emotions similar to those recorded about heroes of the faith in Scripture.  Therefore, if our walk IN CHRIST is to be robust, steady, and alive, we need to learn more of how to discern the inner voice of Jesus. 

I have been motivated through my recent reading of both the Scriptures and The Voice of Jesus to learn more of what it means to discern the voice of Jesus through disciplines noted by Gordon T. Smith.  Discernment is learned through the practices of private worship and prayer, reading and study of Scripture, reading what our church fathers wrote about discernment (Smith recommends Ignatius Loyola, Jonathan Edwards, and John Wesley), and ministry to those in spiritual and physical need. 

Sequal to this Article:   Hearing the Voice of Jesus--2:  When Suffering Comes

_____________________
^[1] Rev. Robert S. Tuck served as pastor of Central Christian Church, Wooster, Ohio from 1923 until 1967.  I “met” this man of God through a collection of his sermons he published in 1939 entitled “A Sermon Bouquet (Picked Along the Way)” which I purchased from Walnut Street Antiques.

Tears for Good Reasons…At Least For Now

A great diversity of land animals can secrete tears which lubricate the surface of their eyes against the dehydrating action of dry air around them.  Tears also contain antibacterial agents that can prevent eye infections by destroying at least 90 percent of bacteria on the surface of the eye within 10 minutes. However, it is generally believed that only humans can produce emotional tears.  The shedding of tears, either in response to sadness and grief or from sheer joy and elation, is unique to humankind.  

In his article, “The Miracle of Tears,” Dr. Jerry Bergman explains two important functions of emotional tears.  First, weeping and shedding of tears cause an emotional release that improves the physical and physiological state of the person afterwards.  This greater sense of well being after weeping is associated with the excretory function of the tear glands, or lacrimals.  Emotional tears contain a higher concentration of toxic excretory products that have built up in the body fluids during the period of emotional stress than reflex tears, tears produced in response to eye irritants.  Studies have shown that emotional tears compared to reflex tears contain up to 30 times more manganese, and higher concentrations of other compounds related to mood and temper.

Tears not only serve to wash away irritants and stress-related chemicals.  They also serve to communicate a heart-felt empathy, love, and concern to others who see our tears.   Likewise, one who weeps can more readily solicit the empathy of those who observe this outward expression of the inner emotions.

Evolutionary biologists used to assign tear glands to the list of vestigial organs, the useless anatomical structures left over from the time when they had survival value.  Now that we know more about the chemical, physiological, and psychological importance of tears in humans, we ought to conclude that they are much more than the result of random mutations and natural selection. Indeed, those of us who believe in a purposeful God as revealed in Scripture believe that He created Adam, the first human being, as a living person in His own image (Genesis 1:  26-27).   Even in our fallen state, we as image bearers have personality traits such as rationality and emotions that reflect our Creator.  As emotional beings, we can readily identify with our Creator Whose emotional dimension is revealed in Scripture.

The inspired revelation of the “Easter Story” in the Bible reveals how the great heart of God in the incarnate Christ was emotionally touched by events He encountered.  For instance, only a few days before Palm Sunday, the Apostle John explains how Jesus arrived too late at the home of His dear friends, Mary and Martha, to heal their brother Lazarus before he died.  John 11: 35 records Jesus’ response when He observed the grief of the sisters and their friends.  We read simply that “Jesus wept.” 

The English translation of the verb, wept, is “to cry silently.” Jesus Who, according to Hebrews 1: 3, is the radiance of [God’s] glory and the exact representation of His nature, responded with tears as He identified with the tears and distress of Mary, Martha, and others.  Verse 36 reveals that, upon seeing how Jesus wept, the Jews responded, “Behold how he loved him!”

I love this wonderful account because it reveals the great empathy of God toward mankind, mired in the consequences of sin and the curse.  He shows the same empathy toward me when I am grieved and frustrated by my own shortcomings and sin.  Mary and Martha had faith in Jesus up to a point, but doubted that Jesus was still in control.  How many times do we view our circumstances through silent tears, needing only to remember that our Savior knows intimately and exactly how we feel?  King David, reveals his intimate understanding of God’s compassion and nearness toward us in Psalm 103: 13-14:

Just as a father has compassion on his children,
So the LORD has compassion on those who fear Him.
For He Himself knows our frame;
He is mindful that we are but dust.

I take great comfort in knowing that, as God’s child by faith in His Son, He is my loving Heavenly Father.  Indeed, God reveals Himself as our “Abba! Father!” (“Daddy”) in Romans 8:15; Galatians 4:6.  God my Father welcomes me when I need His presence, comfort, or wisdom.

Jesus, the incarnate God, wept.

But, there is another account in the “Easter Story” in which Jesus Christ wept.  Luke 19:41 tells us that, during His Triumphal Entry to Jerusalem on Palm Sunday, riding meekly on the foal of a donkey, when Jesus saw the city, He wept over it.  The Greek verb here for “wept” can be translated “to wail aloud.”  Jesus wept aloud, knowing the impending destruction of the rebellious city of His beloved people by the Romans in AD 70.  Jesus was also saddened that the Jews were seeking merely a political deliverer rather than one Who could deliver them spiritually for all eternity. 

In Jesus’ Triumphal Entry, we see the heart of God burdened for lost souls like many people all around us.  May we each share in Christ’s burden for the lost, mourning our own sin, and mourning the sin which binds our family members and friends in whose case the god of this world has blinded the minds of the unbelieving so that they might not see the light of the gospel of the glory of Christ, who is the image of God (2 Corinthians 4: 4).  Have I shed tears as I have earnestly prayed and sought to present Christ’s compassionate Spirit to my loved ones and friends?

Through her tears and confusion, Mary did not recognize Him.

Finally, John’s gospel gives us the account of Mary Magdalene weeping at the empty tomb of the risen Christ on the first Easter morning.  In John 20: 11-18,  we can meditate on the comforting truth that Jesus draws near at times when we wonder through tear-filled eyes where He is when we need Him.  Mary’s emotional turmoil, perplexity, distress, and tear-filled eyes prevented her from seeing Jesus standing near her, thinking instead that He was the gardener.  But, she recognized Jesus’ voice when He said, “Mary.” This was the comforting voice of her familiar Friend (v. 16).  Jesus then told her not to cling to Him (v. 17) and assured her as He does us, that He promises much more than we can imagine if by faith we look forward to His return and the establishment of His kingdom. 

Even though we often view our circumstances through tears today, in Christ’s coming kingdom on Earth, things will be very different, thanks to what He accomplished through His death, and then His resurrection in victory over sin and death on that first Easter morning.  The Apostle John, later in his life saw a glimpse of Christ’s coming kingdom, and wrote in Revelation 21: 1-4 of a time when there will be no more crying or tears:

And I saw a new heaven and a new earth:
 for the first heaven and the first earth were passed away;
and there was no more sea.
And I John saw the holy city, new Jerusalem,
coming down from God out of heaven,
prepared as a bride adorned for her husband.
And I heard a great voice out of heaven saying,
Behold, the tabernacle of God is with men,
and he will dwell with them, and they shall be his people,
and God himself shall be with them, and be their God.
And God shall wipe away all tears from their eyes;
and there shall be no more death, neither sorrow, nor crying,
neither shall there be any more pain:
 for the former things are passed away.

In this world we have reason to weep. Like the Apostle Peter following his thrice denial of Christ, or like Mary Magdalene at the empty tomb, we also shed tears at our own failings or the failings of our loved ones and friends.  And so it ought to be because Christ in us also weeps when our actions deny Him or when those we love reject Him. 

As Jesus wept over rebellious Jerusalem on that first Palm Sunday, so we ought to weep for those who may soon die without accepting God’s saving grace provided through His cross and His resurrection (John 3: 1-17).  While an end to crying and tears forever awaits those who have trusted Christ for forgiveness, those who refuse Him will be condemned to the place of outer darkness where there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth (Matthew 13: 41-43).   For those I know who still sit on the throne of their lives which rightfully belongs to Christ, I pray that on this Easter, and Resurrection Sunday, they will surrender their lives and invite the King of Kings to take charge.  After all, tears of heart-felt repentance under conviction of sin now can give way to tears of joy; and, eventually no more death, neither sorrow, nor crying…but Eternal Life in God’s presence. 

How About You?  You may have read this article and are left with a sense of confusion, uncertainty, and even fear.  If you have never encountered the “Good News” or Gospel, let me help.   The “Good News” is summarized in an outline called “Steps to Peace with God” which explains God’s love, our predicament (sin and separation from God), what Jesus has done to address our predicament, and what you can do by faith to receive God’s righteousness (right standing with a Holy God).  If you have additional questions or comments, I’d love to hear from you.  Just post a “Comment” below or e-mail me at silviusj@cedarville.edu

Related Article:
“Recognizing Loved Ones in Heaven”
http://oikonomiajes.blogspot.com/2015/10/recognizing-loved-ones-in-heaven.html