Day 1: You Must Decide

This is a theme which I intend to apply in a very direct and personal way to each one who is reading. First of all, you need to understand that the decisive element in human experience is the will, not the emotions. Probably many people would accept this as true in the secular realm, in the nonreligious realm. In daily living, in areas such as business or finance, people expect to use their will. But for some strange reason, when it comes to religion or spiritual experience, most people seem to have the impression that in this area of spiritual experience, things are different. Here suddenly our experience depends upon our emotions and is determined by our emotions. If you hear of somebody in the world speaking about someone who’s religious, they tend to give the impression that that person is very emotional and rather unstable. In other words, such a person is ruled by emotion not by the decision of the will. I want to say that this is a complete mistake. The decisive element in genuine spiritual experience, just as in other areas, is the will. This mistake, so commonly made both by believers and by nonbelievers, explains why the spiritual experience of many professing Christians is often so weak and unstable. They’re relying on their emotions, which fluctuate and are unstable and consequently their spiritual experience is as weak and unstable as their emotions. They don’t realize that the decisive element is not their emotions but their will.

Now, if you have that attitude about emotion being decisive in spiritual experience (and I’m calling it an attitude but I could call it a problem), I believe that this message is going to help you tremendously. In fact, I believe they can revolutionize your entire spiritual experience.

To understand the part played by our will in our spiritual experience, we will turn tomorrow Psalm 103, where we’ll see David says a very strange thing, and seems to be talking to himself.