The Believer and Emotion 425
Such phenomena exist because a person is controlled by feeling
and not by spirit. Since the dominant impulse in his walk continues
to be emotion, it not having yet been delivered to the cross, his spirit
will receive no strengthening of the Holy Spirit. Wherefore this one’s
spirit is weak, helpless to subdue emotion and through it to govern
the whole man. If, however, by the power of the Holy Spirit he has
his emotional life crucified and accepts the Holy Spirit as the Lord
over all things, he most assuredly can avoid this kind of alternating
existence.
Emotion may be denominated the most formidable enemy to the
life of a spiritual Christian. We know a child of God ought to walk
by the spirit. To walk this way he needs to observe every direction
given by his inner man. We know also, however, that these senses of
the spirit are delicate as well as keen. Unless the child of God waits
quietly and attentively to receive and discern the revelation in his
intuition, he never can secure the guidance of his spirit.
Consequently, the total silence of emotion is an indispensable
condition to walking by the spirit. How often its small and delicate
motion is disturbed and overpowered by the roaring of one’s
emotion. On no account can we attribute any fault to the smallness of
the spirit’s voice, for we have been endowed with the spiritual
capacity to be able to hear it. No, it is entirely the mixing in of other
voices that causes the Christian to miss the spirit’s voice. But for that
person who will maintain his emotion in silence, the voice of
intuition can be detected easily.
The upsurge and decline of feeling may not only disqualify a
believer from walking in the spirit but may also directly cause him to
walk in the flesh. If he cannot follow the spirit he will naturally
follow the flesh. Because he is unfit to obtain the guidance of his
spirit, he invariably turns to his emotional impulse. Be it therefore
recognized that when the spirit ceases to lead, emotion will do so.
During such a period the believer will interpret emotional impulses
to be motions of inspiration. An emotional Christian can be