Do you feel God?

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Do you feel God is a question many students have asked this question in their lives. Students, adults, and everyone in between struggle with this issue of feeling God. It is a tough question because often is reveals how people are doing in their faith life. When we forget about who works faith in us we start to ask the question do we feel God.

Your emotions are what make us human. We cannot follow Jesus without at least thinking about our emotions. I get very frustraited with Lutherans who say emotion has no part in the life of a Christian. Chrsitians will always have emotional responses to the world around us. We will respond in worship with some emotion. Think about the last service you went to and tell me you didn’t have some response to the music, liturgy, readings or sermon. You can’t avoid emotion but you can put it in the proper context. Emotion is a gift of God but it isn’t what saves us.

So how do I feel God. I think it is the wrong question. What people are really saying is I don’t feel God do I have faith? So here is my answer. Remember your baptism. Remember in your baptism God declared you his child. In my life I have had moments of ups and downs. I have had moments of time when I struggled in my faith and wondered if it is really there. I remember a professor I had in college who reminded us all one day that when we have those moments we should remember our baptism because it is the one thing we couldn’t mess up, it was done to us. You see in baptism we don’t have to trust in our works or how much we feel Gods presence. We receive the gifts of forgiveness of sins purely by the Grace of God connected to the word. We are saved not because we feel God’s presence but because of what Christ has done for us in that moment. Remember your baptism it will help when you are going through those moments of doubt.