"DO YOU FEEL ME?"

 

“DO YOU FEEL ME?”

Peanut and I laid out on the grass to get some fresh air and sunshine. A couple of hours later, my back felt itchy, so I put my arm inside my shirt and scratched where it itched. But it was still itchy afterward, and I couldn’t figure it out, that is, until I went to bed! I took my T-shirt off and saw that there were all kinds of foxtail stickers in my shirt! No wonder I was itchy! It was from the outside of me, not the inside.

Many times, Jane and I take a ride down the Strip here in Las Vegas to check out the atmosphere. And many times, we don’t even have to go there, because we can feel it right in our living room. We can tell when people are really having a great time, and on the other hand, we can feel when the people are depressed. I’m sure you have felt this in your own cities, towns, and villages.  You can be perfectly happy, and then you go out, and all of a sudden you feel something come over you, and you know it’s not from within you, but it’s a feeling coming from without. We feel it sometimes on a Sunday afternoon when it’s football season. We can sense the tension in the air, the people losing money on bets, the women angry because their men are out at the casinos, that kind of thing—the atmosphere in the air.

There’s a slang phrase: “Do you feel me?” Well, yes we do, and more than you think! In the Bible, we find out why this is so.

Because we are human, we are connected to all humans. We can feel the atmosphere created by the people around us, and even far away from us, if we think about it.

But this is what God says specifically about Christians:

“So we, being many, are one body in Christ, and every one members one of another” (Rom. 12:5).

In our physical bodies, if we are hurting in one part of our body, our whole body, mind, and emotions can be affected by it. It’s the same way in the body of Christ.

And in First Corinthians 12, God has Paul put it like this:

“God hath tempered the body together… that there should be no schism in the body; but that the members should have the same care one for another.

“And whether one member suffer, all the members suffer with it; or one member be honoured, all the members rejoice with it.

“Now ye are the body of Christ, and members in particular” (1 Cor. 12:24-27).

Okay, so it’s good to know that we’re going to feel things from the bigger body of Christ, but is there anything we can do about when we get the bad vibes, when we feel itchy like I did, and we don’t know the source?

The answer is yes. There is a reason we feel certain ways when we do. God is trying to tell us something. These days when I get a bad feeling or something just doesn’t feel quite right, I ask myself right away, “Is it something with me?” If I can’t find anything that makes sense with what’s going on with me, then I go straight to God. Most of the time I’ll get a quick, specific answer, but if not, I can always pray, “God take this atmosphere away. It has nothing to do with me. Show me what to pray for, and what to do, if specifics are needed.” And every time, He does.

It’s a fact: We’re all going to be affected by events that are outside of us. Everything we feel isn’t going to be about us. It’s not. We can learn to recognize what’s us and what’s not us. For instance, we wouldn’t necessarily need to take an anti-depression pill for the oppression we’re feeling from others. Right antidote for the right problem.

We feel the foxtails that itch us, but sometimes we just need to take the T-shirt off and wash it. We have Holy Spirit in us so we can empathize with what others are feeling, and we can do something about it in prayer, and many times God inspires us with wholesome good-sense actions to take as well.

Learning to discern the origin of our itches is an important key to living from a standpoint of accuracy and wisdom.

Love, Carolyn