“If you abide in my word, you are truly my disciples,
And you will know the truth, and the truth will set you free.” John 8:31-32
Over many years the persuasive power of personal emotion and experience has become the determining factor for guidance and direction for the lives of many people. Cultural standards are ever on the move as ethics and morality are like shifting sand, being driven by these unstable faculties of our personhood.
In other words, societal laws on morality and ethics have seen major shifts because what society once considered wrong, it now considers normal and right. And all this adjustment is determined by the ever-changing experiences and emotions of the people.
But what about the Church? What about us as individual believers in Jesus Christ? Do we allow and depend on our emotions and life experiences to guide and direct our living before God?
This is where there is a major difference between us and the culture at large. The culture has only themselves, their experience and emotions to drive their decision-making processes for living. It is devoid of God, devoid of the Holy Spirit and clearly devoid of the Holy Scriptures as being the outside influence that dictates the terms. Hence, culture is enslaved to its shifting experiences and emotions. It has nothing else to set them free from its downward spiral.
But we have. We have the infallible, all sufficient Word of God. The directives for life and godliness in Scripture set us free from depending on unreliable experience and emotions. I like how Tom Wells wrote in his book, ‘Christian Take Heart’ “ We must always judge our experience by the Word of God. We must never make God’s Word conform to our experience.”