Believing Is An Experience
Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ, and thou shalt be saved.
Acts 16:31
Believing is an experience as real as any experience, yet multitudes are looking for something more—some electric sensation that will bring a thrill to their physical bodies, or some other spectacular manifestation. Many have been told to look for such spiritual thrills, but the Bible says that “a man is justified by faith,” and not by a feeling (Romans 3:28). A man is saved by trusting in the finished work of Christ on the cross and not by bodily sensations or religious ecstasy.
But you will say to me, “What about feeling? Is there no place in saving faith for any feeling?” Certainly there is room for feeling in saving faith, but we are not saved by it. Whatever feelings there may be is the result of saving faith, but feeling never saved a single soul.
When I understand something of Christ’s love for me as a sinner, I respond with a love for Christ, and love has feeling. But love for Christ is a love that is above the sensual accompaniments of human love. It is a love that is free from all self. The Bible says, “Perfect love casteth out fear” (1 John 4:18). And those who love Christ have a confidence in Him that raises them above all fear.
When I understand that Christ in his death gained a decisive victory over death and over sin, then I lose the fear of death. The Bible says, “Forasmuch then as the children are partakers of the flesh and blood he also himself likewise took part of the same; that through death he might destroy him that had the power of death, that is the devil” (Hebrews 2:14). Surely this is a feeling. Fear is a kind of feeling, and to overcome fear with boldness and confidence in the very face of death is feeling and experience. But again I say, it is not the feeling of boldness and confidence that saves us, but it is Christ who saves us, and boldness and confidence result from our having trusted in Him.
Our Father and our God, I believe in the Lord Jesus Christ. I believe He is Your one and only Son and that He died in my place. My heart wells up in gratitude, Father, for His sacrifice and great love for me. Because of His love I am not afraid of life, and through Him I pray. Amen.
Billy Graham, Unto the Hills: A Daily Devotional (Nashville, TN: Thomas Nelson, 2010).