This Week on Soul Talks
All of us have experienced times in our lives that we have not felt God’s love and presence as deeply or as apparently as other times. It can leave us discombobulated and discouraged, asking ourselves, “Is my faith real if I don’t feel it?”
In these times of doubt, the Lord offers an invitation of emotional honesty – to bring those feelings even more into our relationship with him.
Tune into this Soul Talk where Bill and Kristi explore why it is Biblical and healthy to experience these seasons at “The Wall.” You’ll be encouraged to learn why both thinking and feeling are critical in your journey with Christ, and what you can do when you feel they are lacking!
Resources for this episode:
Is Faith Real if You Don’t Feel It? Transcript
Bill & Kristi Gaultiere
Kristi
Hi friends. Thanks for joining Bill and I again on Soul Talks.
We are celebrating with you today. It has been one year since Journey of the Soul was released in print, and each of you have encouraged us so much.
We’ve loved to hear from you.
Thank you for the reviews that you’ve written on Amazon for Journey of the Soul.
And Good Reads and other websites where you’ve purchased the book.
Thank you for sharing it with friends.
Some of you have led groups through Journey of the Soul and it’s been so fun for us to hear about your experiences with that.
Others of you have had us come to your church and have started series and small groups in your church on Journey of the Soul.
So thank you.
We’re just so grateful that you are helping people to understand where God is with them on their journey, and to see their story, his story, and the personalization of that.
The way that you’re partnering with us and helping to free people from shame, because they don’t understand these different seasons that the Lord leads us through in our life.
And you’re bringing that light of that understanding of God’s grace into their life.
We couldn’t do it without you. We’re so grateful for you.
We always love hearing from you and being with you.
One of the things I really enjoyed this year is the travel that we’ve done, Bill.
And speaking about Journey of the Soul.
We’ve gotten to see and meet so many of you in our Soul Talks community. And that is just such a joy.
To get to hear your stories is an honor and a joy.
I often get to sit with people and let them share their journey maps with us.
We do this at the Institute too.
We set a time for people to make their journey map and then share it.
It’s just sacred and holy ground, when I am listening to somebody share their story, their map.
“The Wall” Can Be Many Different Walls
Bill
Yeah.
We get to share our story with Jesus and understanding the different stages that we’ve been through.
And seeing how God repurposes, in wonderful ways, all the things that we go through.
These different experiences, desolations, consolations, the ebb and flow of our sense of God’s presence.
These times where we hit the wall and we’re wrestling, and struggling, disoriented, it’s darkness.
Those are such hard times.
I’m sure that there are many of you listening that might say, “Yeah, I think I’m at a wall.”
Because everywhere we go, as we talk about the Journey of the Soul, that’s the biggest takeaway.
People are at the wall, and the different types of walls that we can experience.
Whether it’s burnout, or a time of spiritual dryness, or some personal family health challenge, that we’re experiencing.
People are just trying to persevere through that, not feeling God’s answers to our prayers, and getting to a place where we just feel stuck and our spiritual life isn’t working the same way it used to.
These are experiences that we describe as “The Wall.”
There is a light bulb that turns on when we get this map of the Journey of the Soul with the different CHRIST stages.
And we come to realize that when I’m at a wall, when I’m spiritually dry or stuck, or hurting with unanswered prayer, this is actually an invitation for some inner journey work.
This is a different stage, the “I” stage, a different season of the soul.
If we will embrace it and, as we say, “get out the shovel” and do some digging up of some of the mess in our life, and some of the distress, that we don’t of course don’t wanna feel.
But if we will do that with Jesus and ideally with a friend or a Spiritual Director (who’s really great at listening and guiding us), then things begin to open up.
And in God’s grace we’ll move, over time, through that inner journey work.
Kristi
One of the things that continues to be helpful to me personally about this model of spiritual and psychological growth and development is just having empathy for people at every stage.
Remembering what it’s like to be at that stage and having hope for people at every stage because I know so well how God is working for good.
That’s been really helpful during this pandemic, to have that understanding as so many have been at the wall, that it seems like the church at large has been at a wall.
Even in this environment, where we hear so much about deconstruction, there’s maybe a temptation to kind of panic because we know so many people that are in deconstruction.
But just remember how normal it is to go through some deconstruction, and actually, it can be healthy and it can be Biblical.
So we talked about that on our webinar that we did last week on deconstruction, understanding it and having hope because deconstruction is a part of our celebration of the Journey of the Soul.
Bill
If you missed that webinar, you can still get it. It’s in our Soul Shepherding Network.
If you haven’t heard, we have a new Network for you to join us in community.
It features new webinars every month.
The whole library of webinars is available to you.
Plus places to gather in community with other friends.
Hundreds of tools for your soul care and for your ministry to others, as you seek to guide and encourage others closer to Jesus.
Is Faith Only Feelings?
Bill
So today, Kristi, we want to especially talk about the question:
“Is your faith real, IF you don’t feel it?”
This is something that has been coming up as we’ve been going around to churches, and different groups talking about Journey of the Soul. And as we’re helping people make that journey map of “what’s my timeline.”
And the ebbs and flows of my sense of God’s presence and these different stages in my discipleship to Jesus.
There are times that we don’t feel God’s presence.
In Journey of the Soul, we call this desolation.
There are times where it’s not that God has left us, or is not loving us, but there’s times where we don’t experience it.
We don’t feel that.
And it can leave us really discombobulated and discouraged, asking ourselves:
“Is my faith real? I’m not feeling it anymore.”
And some of us sort of go to the other extreme, saying to ourselves:
“Well, faith isn’t a feeling. So I don’t even need to feel it.”
While it’s true, faith is not a feeling, if we never feel God’s presence, there’s probably something else wrong in our emotions, our psychology, or our relationships with God, or other people.
Where we’re probably hurting and needing some care so that we can sometimes feel God’s presence.
Kristi
Yeah. If we let our emotions be the range on truth or reality, that’s a problem.
And yet, if we totally ignore our emotions as having any truth or gauge of reality, that’s a problem as well.
We see people that do make that error on both sides.
People that have come to the wall in their journey, and they kind of resign themselves to this sense of:
“Well, I guess kind of I’m through the emotional infatuation—falling in love with Jesus, and I’ll never feel that again.”
“Now, I just won’t depend upon my emotions anymore in my spiritual life. And I’ll just plug along, and grin-and-bear-it out and do the ‘right thing’, and think and do and obey and duty.”
“That’s okay. That’s what the Christian life is really about. That’s what scripture talks about with perseverance.”
There is some truth to that.
There are seasons when that’s definitely the truth.
We need to not be dependent upon emotion.
Our faith needs to be stronger than our emotions.
But God really does want us to feel love, and to be emotionally alive, and whole, and healthy, and to be able to move within the experience of all the emotions he’s created.
I’ve Got An Emotional Allergy To This
Bill
I’m thinking about the example of a woman in our Institute.
While we were doing our morning “Soul Food reading” — which is one of my favorite parts of each of the five days at the Institute: at breakfast time, we share one brief excerpt from one of the classic writers of Christian devotion.
These are the books that have really shaped us, both Kristi and I.
In particular, I have a great appreciation for the old writers. So I share one of my favorite readings every morning at breakfast.
And then we “squeeze the sponge.” We talk about our responses to [the reading].
I was sharing a reading from William Law, A Serious Call to a Devout and Holy Life.
Yeah, that’s actually the title.
A Serious Call to a Devout and Holy Life.
Probably not a title that would make the bestseller list today, but it’s one of the all-time great classics by William Law.
It is just so moving, his heart for God.
His devotion and the insights that flow from that.
And one woman, thank God she felt safe to be honest with us, when we were “squeezing the sponge,” she just blurted out:
“I had a hard time with that reading. I’ve got an emotional allergy to this. And that just sounds like a lot of duty, obligation, legalism, burdens, and responsibility. And I didn’t like that.”
Kristi
I’ve had that same allergic reaction to that reading before [laughter].
Because, this is the side (that reading in particular) that comes across with an emphasis on what we do.
Not on what we feel.
And that we do it, despite what we feel.
That is definitely a truth, that’s really important.
It’s important that we are able to do and engage in discipline, even if we don’t feel like it.
That’s part of maturity.
Bill
William Law was in a different place when he wrote this. He had a time in his life where he hit the wall.
And he came through that.
So he is really writing about a heart full of love and adoration for God that is intending to thoroughly demonstrate reverence and affection for God in everything he does.
And the best and happiest life is to be a disciple of Jesus.
To seek and to obey the Lord from our hearts in all that we do.
It’s a wonderful reading, but maybe not when you’re at the wall.
When you’re burned out on Christian disciplines and Christian activity.
When you’re not feeling God’s presence and you’ve been just grinding it out.
When you’ve been dealing with obligations and duties for a long time, and you’re not feeling God’s presence, it’s easy to misinterpret that reading.
The Lord Has Something Different For Us In Each Season
Bill
That was the case for our friend.
We had a very fruitful discussion, just to empathize with her and where she was at.
And say to her, “Yeah, this is not a good reading for you right now.”
To bless her where she was.
The reason this is such a great story with such a happy ending is because she needed to take some time.
And the Institute weeks (that she went to every six months) really helped her frame this journey.
She came to us burned out at the wall.
She had been there for some time and was just gutting it out, in her church service and ministry.
Then she learned the language of the CHRIST stages and the Journey of the Soul.
She learned to rest and she learned some different spiritual disciplines.
Instead of just going through the one-year-Bible every year and being dutiful in all of her responsibilities and all the ways that she could serve, she started to rest.
She opened up to her emotions.
And she met with the Spiritual Director and started talking about her life with her Soul Shepherd.
She stayed the course with the things we were teaching in the Institute.
She learned to bring her emotions into prayer, like from praying a lament in Psalms.
She began opening up to things like poetry and art — whole different ways of connecting with God’s presence that are not the traditional spiritual disciplines that we think of.
This opened up her soul and she did begin to feel God’s grace and God’s beauty again.
And she found friends on the journey with her, where she could be emotionally honest.
All of that really shifted her.
Then after that season, which was quieter in terms of ministry activity, she was able to re-engage her ministry with more joy and from a deeper place because of that inner-journey work she had gotten.
After she’d gotten out the shovel.
Now she’s in a new season—a spirit-led ministry, and really happy with that.
Kristi
There are seasons where we really need to change up our disciplines because they’ve gotten dry, they’ve gotten dutiful, they’ve gotten boring.
We’re not feeling any effect from them.
The Lord has something different for us.
Something we need to try, that we need to engage with.
Or we are needing some care for our soul. We’re needing care for our emotions.
There’s an invitation there, even to get emotionally honest and to understand our emotions and to bring those more into our relationship with God.
For me, in that season, that’s where disciplines like lament and disciplines that actually brought some ministry and comfort and consolation to me, were really important for me to awaken my heart’s love for God.
In a season where it had gone flat, it had gotten cold.
One of the reasons that we like to read these soul food readings—these devotional classics, is because so often we’re reading people who are in a season of great, emotional feeling experience with God.
They’re writing about that. They’re articulating that and it can warm our hearts.
It can help us to remember a time when we felt that way, which can be really helpful, or it can help us long to feel that way.
To get the vision that we need to move us towards heart engagement with God.
Sharing Stories Helps Us Realize We Are Not Alone
Bill
It becomes like a mirror that we can look into that cultivates our own heart for God.
Because this writer is on the inner journey or spirit led ministry the “I” or “S” stages.
They’ve experienced a spiritual renewal as they’ve worked through their own “wall” experiences or their own dark night of the soul.
They’ve come into a deeper, richer appreciation of God’s grace and we can take heart from them.
Kristi
Yeah. It’s so helpful to hear other people’s stories.
Whether they’re early stories of conversion, those are celebratory stories for us—they encourage us and they remind us of God’s goodness and power and grace.
Whether it’s stories of people sharing how they’ve gotten help and discipleship, how they’re growing.
That encourages us too.
Because that reminds us, “Oh yeah. You know what? I wanna study scripture more because I’ve forgotten the treasures that can be mined there.”
Or as we’re hearing stories of service that remind us of what a great feeling it is to be a part of the body of Christ.
To be his hands and his feet.
To be serving, to be making a difference, an impact.
Or if it’s stories at the wall where we feel like,
“Oh, I’m not alone when I’ve hit the wall. This is normal.
This is natural.
I don’t have to go to shame. I don’t have to go to doubt.
I don’t have to question my faith and leave the church.
I’m not alone in this.
This is a part of the journey and I can understand it and I’ve learned what to do.”
We Need Thinking AND Feeling In Our Faith
Bill
You’re just going through the Christ stages there: “C” “H” “R” and “The Wall” and then into the second half.
But, yeah, “C,” if you haven’t read Journey of the Soul, that’s “Confidence in Christ.”
That’s where we’re born from above and appreciating God’s forgiveness of our sins and probably getting involved in church.
And then the “H” stage of “Help and discipleship.”
That’s where we’re learning spiritual disciplines, getting in a small group, digging into God’s word.
The Bible is the symbol of this stage.
So often, and wonderfully, that centers around our church community.
Then the “R” stage of “Responsibilities in ministry,” where we’re using our gifts and we’re serving and making a difference.
We’re working with others who have spiritual gifts, partnering together on team Jesus, reaching people for Christ and developing a healthy, loving community.
At each of these stages, we celebrate the stages, because there are good things that we’re experiencing in our relationship with God and in our ministry.
Kristi
Well, yes, but what I’m saying is that at each stage there are times when our emotions will be engaged and it feels so celebratory, it feels so exciting.
We feel close to God. Our emotions are positive in our faith.
Our emotions are helping and even fueling our faith.
But there are times in each stage (the most at the wall) when we’re feeling a lack of positive feelings or we’re feeling flat.
Or our feelings aren’t really helping our faith and growing our faith.
In fact, at times they might be contrary to our faith.
Bill
So, is faith real if I don’t feel it?
And what we’re saying is, “Well, yes! It is.”
And if I can’t feel it for an extended period of time, at some point that might be a symptom that my faith is broken.
Faith is trust.
To have faith in God is to trust God.
It’s relational.
So if I’m never able to sense or feel God’s presence, there’s a pretty good chance that something is hurting.
Or there’s a deficit in my soul where maybe I’ve been living my life without empathy.
Maybe I was raised in a dysfunctional family situation without the nurture and compassion of a parent.
And so I haven’t learned to find the language of emotions, or maybe my emotions are…
So another way we get distorted and damaged here is if our emotions are controlling our life.
And so sometimes we try to shut ’em down because they feel so unsafe.
That’s one of the things that we’re doing in Journey of the Soul—we can find the language for our feelings and our faith and how they integrate.
It’s really helpful, we listen to people’s stories through our Institute retreats.
Or when we go to churches and groups and we talk with people and hear about their timeline through the CHRIST stages.
Faith isn’t only intellectual and reasonable.
Certainly, it is that.
What we think about God, what we think about our life is so important, but our feelings are also important.
So we’re really integrating thoughts and feelings as part of our discipleship to Jesus.
Sometimes it’s because that integration process has not gone well.
And we have not been well-loved, or we haven’t been emotionally honest through that.
We get this separation between reason, cognition, and intelligent thinking on one side, but then emotion, feeling, and desires on this other side.
And the two don’t talk to each other. And one is really strong but not the other.
But we need both.
We have a saying, “We want to think and feel before we say and do.”
That’s a really good dictum or wisdom for life, decision making, work, family, and relationships.
Which is to be feeling and thinking about things.
Commitment Can Carry Us When Our Emotions Fail Us
Kristi
Well, I think that it’s very similar in our marriage.
There are times in our marriage where the feelings, the emotions of love, aren’t super strong there.
But there’s a discipline of fidelity and of love that takes a commitment.
More commitment, more functioning out of past decisions and faith.
Then there are seasons where the emotions are strong and it’s easy to be loving.
And it’s effortless to do acts of love and services of love for you.
And I think it’s the same for us in our relationship with God.
We don’t want to never have any positive emotion in our relationship.
But we also don’t want to have to be dependent upon emotion in order to love and to be faithful.
That’s another example where just because maybe at a time I’m not feeling love doesn’t mean our love isn’t real. Our marriage isn’t real.
Bill
Love is to will good for somebody.
It’s a choice we make from our heart.
It’s not in its essence a feeling, but normally, in a healthy way, it would include some emotion.
But we need to be able to love and do the right, good, and kind thing.
Even if we don’t have the feeling.
Kristi
It’s the same in our relationship with the Lord.
Bill
As it is with people, like in marriage.
Kristi
And yet, it’s a good thing to have positive emotions as well.
And the same in our relationship with God.
Bill
Now, I really like hearing you say that because when I met you, you didn’t feel that way.
It’s a really good and positive thing to have emotions.
That shows, Kristi, how much you have been healed up in this area and how much you have been strengthened in the Lord’s grace over the years of your discipleship.
Because in the early years of our marriage, you struggled with a lot of shame about your sensitivity and your emotions.
Sometimes, of course, that still comes on you and you need to work it through.
But for the most part and increasingly, you’ve really learned to embrace that actually God has made you sensitive and he has made you a feeler.
As we’ve studied from the Bible, and we talk about it in Journey of the Soul, Jesus is a feeler too.
We can look at Jesus as a thinker, but we can also look at Jesus as a feeler.
He feels things very deeply, and it’s a good thing.
Kristi
That’s been a grace for me because growing up, I internalized so many people in authority who made me believe that emotions could never be trusted.
Emotions are always suspect.
Emotions are immature.
Emotions are dangerous.
And all of that was very hard for me as someone who felt emotions very deeply.
Being able to come to understand that emotions can be a gift too.
Emotions can be positive.
Emotions are a form of intelligence and have rounded out my ability to function in the strength of a whole soul.
Bill
So you’re a wounded healer in this message, and following Jesus with feelings and faith.
Kristi
And that we can follow Jesus with just faith without the feelings.
But that doesn’t mean that the feelings are less than, or secondary or aren’t important to faith.
Bill
Yeah. As you’re bringing up your story, it’s reminding me of what we’ve learned from the Enneagram.
Friends, we’ve got an Enneagram book that we’re writing now!
Kristi
So pray for us!
Bill
We’ve got a new book contract.
And some of you might be thinking, “I think there’s enough books on the Enneagram”, which is what we initially thought.
But we’ve got a different message: it’s on the Enneagram and your emotions.
So pray for us about this.
Just a thought I had here, that some of our listeners might relate to, Kristi.
You grew up in a context where you are a heart person, in the Enneagram.
You’re in that triad and all of your other family members were in that head triad.
And your mom was straddling the gut triad and the head triad.
So you were alone over there in the heart triad, as a feeler.
All the rest are thinkers and doers.
And so that was part of what was hard for you and hard for your family.
Growing up in a loving family, a Christian family who really loved you and believed in you.
And yet they didn’t very well understand your emotional nature.
And so that was a journey that you had to take in adulthood.
Kristi
Well, the reality is Bill, our family, you and our children are all head or gut types too.
I’m the only heart type in our family too.
Bill
You’re back there again.
Kristi
Yeah.
Bill
I keep working on that two wing of mine that gets me in the heart triad for you.
Kristi
I know you’ve been very empathetic and understanding of my emotions. I am grateful for that.
Yes, in every one of us we have different areas where we can grow and bring more of our full, true self into our faith, into our relationship with God.
And that is a grace.
