Quote of the Day

There was a time in my own life when I would “practice the presence of God”; then, when I felt his presence, I would pray. All went well until the day I didn’t feel his presence. I waited for hours, filled with tears, but I never felt The Presence. I tried to pray but I felt that both I and my prayers were in a hermetically sealed room. The Presence finally came the next day when I was asking for counsel from a good friend. His comment was simply this: “Why didn’t you just pray by faith?” He taught me one of the most important lessons of prayer: that prayer depended on God and his promises, not my own quixotic emotions.

Keep looking around. You can find the exaltation of feelings everywhere. For example, you can find it in the way we have revised our idea of shame. Shame was originally viewed as the result of a problem between God and ourselves. Now it is reduced to whatever prevents us from feeling good about ourselves.

[Edward T. Welch, When People Are Big (Presbyterian & Reformed Publishing, 1999), p. 83]