Have you ever run across someone who seemed to be stirred up in their relationship to God? Perhaps you've wondered why you don't feel the same way. Not that religion consists in emotion, or how you feel about God, but some people seem to really be moved when they talk about God. How can a person get the gospel, which they believe with their mind, down to the level of their emotions? It's not by trying really hard to feel as Charles G. Finney explains in his
"Lectures on Revivals of Religion":
People talk about religious feeling, as if they thought they could, by direct effort, call forth religious affection. But this is not the way the mind acts. No man can make himself feel in this way, merely by trying to feel... We cannot say, "Now I will feel so and so towards such and object." But we can command our attention to it, and look at it intently, till the involuntary affections arise... So if a man thinks of God and fastens his mind on any parts of God's character, he will feel--emotions will come up, by the very laws of his mind.
If your relationship to God seems cold and dry, perhaps the thing you need to do is fasten your thoughts on one aspect of the character of God. Hold Christ in your mind, think about him, don't let him go, until at last you feel something. This is what Christians have called meditation. King David did it, and if it was good enough for him...
