1- Trusting and professing the truth of who God is, based on knowledge of Him and understanding of His ways which is unwavering as steadfastly founded upon revelation through His Word (even as ever corroborated by His Spirit), need arise and remain regardless (and sometimes despite) emotion or passion or heartfelt reliance and conviction Accepting truth as true, accepting God at His Word is the right and just thing to do, no matter how I feel (or don't feel) about it.
2- Based on His Word, when feelings run amok and fear and anxiety and doubt crowd in and mock and taunt and batter faith, believing He is who He says and will do as He says He will do all the while is likewise the right course. No matter appearances. No matter confusion of circumstances. No matter lack of passion. No matter whether my heart and mind are fully aligned, and no matter what intellect might try to construct as argument against. Accept truth as true, rather than trying to conform reality to expectation entails allowing that I don't and cannot understand everything, simultaneously accepting that He can and does.
Likewise the course:
3- When things go differently than what seemed to be His will, submitting entirely to Him rather than persistently demanding explanation, requiring understanding, expecting Him to justify Himself to me (woe, to even dare such a stance). Rather, accepting whatever is as from Him, thus unto ultimate good, so given as unto to His glory and our good.
4- Crying out to Him for help to feel what ought be felt, and to do what ought be done, renewed in awareness of abject inability and incapacitation from mustering even a right thought.
5- Trusting Him to guide, lead, empower, and direct...without "requiring" awareness (let alone understanding) of the process, but instead accepting His sovereignty entails He is capable of leading without our awareness being required.
6- Submitting to His leading, then, as whatever comes. Desiring He would lead by whatever means. Yet without needing to know, while still being grateful to be aware that He does and will lead and direct all things to His glory, ultimately, regardless what any of us do or don't do. He's God. He can and does and will do what He wants. He has glorified His name, Himself, and He will be glorified evermore.
7- Reminded that His sovereignty and perfection means the perceived strength or weakness of our faith, the perceived aptitude or failure of ourselves to do right, to do good, to do His will...has no bearing on our salvation, ultimately, because the strength or failure within us doesn't alter Christ's perfection and ability to save, doesn't tarnish His righteousness one iota...reminded that salvation and our "safety" in Christ's keeping doesn't waver dependent on our moods, perceptions, perspectives, falterings, and frailties allows for further gratitude and surrender to the truth of His goodness and ability and the sufficiency of His grace toward those who know Him and love Him as God.
8- Further, being prompted to rejoice, not out of a sense of obligation but because of the remembrance that He's worthy all praise. Whether my heart's in it or not, I know and can know that He is worthy of praise, so it's true regardless whether I feel anything regarding the process, regardless what I may or may not feel. It's true. He's worthy of praise, and I will praise Him.
9- Similarly, doing whatever can be mustered as turning to Him: in prayer, in worship, in devotion, in attuning to His Word...whether through the hearing of it per recorded preaching, through the reading of even a verse or two at a time, or howsoever else, as just desperately clinging to whatever there is, longing that He would give grace and strength to passionately revel in His Word, in His Presence, in His fellowship again.
10- Grieved to see, again and again, how those blessed times of fellowship have yet still shown the wretchedness of the flesh as so pervasive and perverse, in how oft that blessed communion is turned from a place of sacred respite to a place of secret pride and self-congratulatory (thus other-demeaning) exultation. How wretched is this human nature even to ever turn against the One who is good and kind and loving and perfect, even as turning inwardly against those else whom He loves by taking on an air of superiority for having perceived to "reach a point of right devotion."
11- Despairing of wretchedness, then, but in context of seeing how great is His goodness, how consuming His love, how vastly overwhelming His grace, and how perfect His righteousness, that He would have mercy on such, even as unto allowing insight into both depravity of self and further insight into the depths of His mercy.
12- Reminded again that His righteousness isn't altered nor tarnished nor lessened by such falterings, that salvation rests in Him, not in me, there's deeper peace and gratitude. Apart from salvation being in God, by God, from God...I couldn't maintain a right stance, couldn't manage to remain unwaveringly steadfast sufficient to be worthy. The only worthiness is in Christ, Himself: If I am to walk worthy, it will be by similar grace as that which saved me. And His grace is sufficient.
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