[SoothingDave]

Because feelings can deceive you. Your assureance of salvation comes from knowing what God says in His word and trusting it. I know when I am not as close to God as I could/should be, and I do feel bad, but I KNOW I am not close because of what God says not because of what I feel.

Yep, right on target!

I don't think I agree. God is not just an idea, somethign we KNOW from His Book. God and our relationship with Him, for good and bad, is also something that can be experienced directly.

Yes, feelings can be deceptive (but so can what we think we "know"). But God can reach out to us directly. This is a huge difference between P and C. I neither believe God only speaks to us through His Book, nor that it is the only way we can gauge our souls.

SD

[malakhi]

God and our relationship with Him, for good and bad, is also something that can be experienced directly.

Oh, I agree. But His actual Presence is not dependent upon our feeling that He is there. The "spiritual dryness" or "dark night of the soul" of the mystics is not the actual withdrawal of God's Presence, but rather the withdrawal of the sense or perception of God's Presence.

[PayNoAttentionManBehindCurtain]

I did not mean to imply that just knowing God is what it takes. We do/can have a very real relationship with Him, which generates feelings, but the way we have this relationship is to know Him, the only way we know him now, in these times is thru scripture. When we get those feelings and feel God is speaking to us, the only way we can know for sure if it is God is if it lines up with scritpure. If our feelings are telling us something that contridicts scripture, no matter how right or good it feels it is not of God.

Becky