Mark 12:30
Love God with Your Heart, Your Soul, Your Mind, and Your Strength
30 Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength.’
John 20:24-29
Thomas Doubted
But he said to them, “Unless I see the nail marks in his hands and put my finger where the nails were, and put my hand into his side, I will not believe.”
26 A week later his disciples were in the house again, and Thomas was with them. Though the doors were locked, Jesus came and stood among them and said, “Peace be with you!” 27 Then he said to Thomas, “Put your finger here; see my hands. Reach out your hand and put it into my side. Stop doubting and believe.”
28 Thomas said to him, “My Lord and my God!”
29 Then Jesus told him, “Because you have seen me, you have believed; blessed are those who have not seen and yet have believed.”
I often feel like God is hiding from me, and on those days my faith has doubts...Generally the doubt is mostly about my feelings and I do not feel that He is near...I think that faith does have doubts, or I believe that faith has some doubt or doubts at one time or another...That is why it is called faith...Where there is faith, there is doubt...If one had absolutely no doubts about Jesus or God (or anything for that matter), then He and They would be a fact and the Truth...Something you have no doubts about is the Truth instead of being faith...I think St. Thomas very much doubted Jesus before he touched Him...But St. Thomas got to feel the nail marks from the cross, and was able to put his fingers where the nails were in His body...And when St. Thomas could actually see and put his hand into His side where one of the soldiers pierced Jesus’ side with a spear, which brought a sudden flow of blood and water from His crucified body (John 19:34) -St. Thomas believed without doubt...Jesus was the Truth for St. Thomas at that point -after he had touched His Master...
Our feelings can fool us sometimes...There is such a thing called emotional reasoning...Emotional reasoning is when we use our feelings and our emotions to figure out our personal truths and our beliefs...When we start to use our feelings only (and use nothing else) to reason and figure out the facts and the truths of our lives we can miss out on things...We can confuse the Truth and our beliefs, with our feelings...Rationalizing truths and beliefs with only our emotions is not reality, and not the real world...That is why, I think, Jesus told us to love God with not only our hearts, but also our spiritual soul, and also our minds, and include in that all our strength...Look at God and Jesus from many perspectives and many angles to seek Him, and to find Him, and to love Him...We should not just use our feelings to love Him and to find Him...We may have a certain mood about us, that will always cause us to doubt, and doubt Him...This feeling or mood would also probably have us amplifying a wrong way of thinking about other things we believe in...
So, I think, we can use our feelings to seek and find God...And we can use our feelings in our faith, but it should not be the only thing we use to believe...We can use our rational minds to believe...We can use our spiritual souls to believe in those things we think that are sacred and holy...Jesus told Thomas to stop doubting and believe...Jesus knew Thomas had all the evidence that was needed to recognized Him as the Truth, after he touched Him...When we use our feelings to complement our thinking with our minds, and realize there are those things which are spiritual and sacred in life and do those things with a zeal and all our strength -then we may also be able to say My LORD and My God...Blessed are those who have not seen and yet have believed...