Renovation of the Heart
Transforming the Mind, Part 2 (3|5)
Pages 128-133
• Modernity and Deciding by How We Feel
• Images and “Moods”
• The Godly Feelings in the Spiritually Transformed Person
• Hope and Faith
• Faith and Hope Lay the Foundation for a Life Full of Love
TOGETHER read the devotional and the scripture.
INDIVIDUALLY take notes in your journal on what stands out.
Galatians 5:22-25 (NIV) But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, forbearance, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control. Against such things, there is no law. Those who belong to Christ Jesus have crucified the flesh with its passions and desires. Since we live by the Spirit, let us keep in step with the Spirit.
Romans 8:24-25 (NIV) Hope that is seen is no hope at all. Who hopes for what they already have? But if we hope for what we do not yet have, we wait for it patiently.
2 Corinthians 4:17-18 (NIV) For our light and momentary troubles are achieving for us an eternal glory that far outweighs them all. So we fix our eyes not on what is seen, but on what is unseen since what is seen is temporary, but what is unseen is eternal.
Romans 5:1-5 (NIV) Therefore, since we have been justified through faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ, through whom we have gained access by faith into this grace in which we now stand. And we boast in the hope of the glory of God. Not only so, but we also glory in our sufferings, because we know that suffering produces perseverance; perseverance, character; and character, hope. And hope does not put us to shame, because God’s love has been poured out into our hearts through the Holy Spirit, who has been given to us.
TOGETHER pray for one another.
INDIVIDUALLY answer the questions in your journal - process your devotional notes and pray.
Modernity and Deciding by How We Feel
”In the ‘modern’ condition, feeling will come to exercise almost total mastery over the individual. This is because people in that condition will have to constantly decide what they want to do, and feeling will be all they have to go on. Here lies the secret to understanding contemporary Western life and its peculiar proneness to gross immoralities and addictions. People are overwhelmed with decisions and can only make those decisions on the basis of feelings.”
What are some of the problems you see with basing decisions on feelings? Can we decide without feelings?
”Self-control is the steady capacity to direct yourself to accomplish what you have chosen or decided to do and be, even though you ‘don’t feel like it.’ Self-control means that you, with a steady hand, do what you don’t want to do (or what you want not to) when that is needed and do not do what you want to do (what you ‘feel like’ doing) when that is needed. In people without rock-solid character, feeling is a deadly enemy of self-control and will always subvert it.”
How have you experienced this? - What is an example you have of how you did not choose and pursue self-control? What is an example you have of when you did?
Images and “Moods”
“We must be very clear on how the negative feelings rest on ideas and images. Those feelings can themselves be transformed by discipleship to Christ and the power of the gospel and the Spirit, through which the corresponding ideas and images are changed to positive ones. And we must be clear that the person given to moods faces special difficulties, though not insurmountable ones, in spiritual formation.”
What does this mean and what is your response?
The Godly Feelings in the Spiritually Transformed Person
“What then, are the feelings that will dominate in a life that has been inwardly transformed to be like Christ’s? They are the feelings associated with love, joy, and peace. - These three dimensions of ‘the fruit’ are in fact not separable from the three things that remain of 1 Corinthians 13:13 (faith, hope, and love) and, of course, are partially identical with them. All are focused on goodness and what is good, and all are strength-giving and pleasant even in the midst of pain or suffering.”
How can feelings be “godly’ (lowercase/small g) Which ones are? Which ones are not?
Hope and Faith
“Hope is anticipation of good not yet here, or as yet unseen. It is, of course, inseparable from joy. Sometimes the good in question is just deliverance from an evil, which is here. - Hope is closely related to faith. Faith is confidence grounded in reality, not a wild, desperate ‘leap.’ Faith sees the reality of the unseen or invisible, and it includes a readiness to act as if the good anticipated in hope were already in hand because of the reality of God.”
How are hope and faith related to love, joy, and peace?
Faith and Hope Lay the Foundation for a Life Full of Love
“Character is a matter of our entire personality and life, which have now been transformed by the process of perseverance under God. Hope therefore now pervades our lives as a whole. And this new and pervasive hope - which is an outgrowth of our initial ‘hope of the glory of God’ but now covers our entire lives - ‘does not disappoint, because the love of God has been poured out within our hearts through the Holy Spirit who was given to us.”
What is your response to this statement?
EXTRA READING:
“Love without courage and wisdom is sentimentality, as with the ordinary church member. Courage without love and wisdom is foolhardiness, as with the ordinary soldier. Wisdom without love and courage is cowardice, as with the ordinary intellectual.”
- Ammon Hennacy (1893 - 1970)