An abundant source of awe for well-being
About 85 percent of the world identifies with a religion. A religious person believes in a higher power, such as a God or gods. Religion is a system of behaviors, beliefs, worldviews, texts, sanctified places, prophecies, ethics and morals, or organizations. It is to which people regard as holy, divine, sacred, or spiritual. Beliefs vary based on religion.
— World Population Review
Science Says
Religion is thought to enhance spirituality. They can though, exist one without the other. When we bring science into the picture with religion and spirituality, it can lead us to an even more interesting intersection. As does the science of feelings. The following two passages shed a light on the corner of the feeling of awe and religion, as reported by Andy Tix, Ph.D.:
Scientists investigated three general factors: how much church attendance helped participants understand their faith; how much it helped them connect with others attending with them; and the extent to which they felt several self-transcendent emotions during church. In the end, it was the self-transcendent emotions individuals experienced, such as awe, that played the biggest role in accounting for the positive link found between religiousness and well-being.
Tix went on to share some additional insights from others in the fields of science and religion.
Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel famously said “The higher goal of spiritual living is not to amass a wealth of information, but to face sacred moments.” Yet, as the venerated psychologist Abraham Maslow speculated, religious traditions tend to lose connection with their experiential base over time. If religious and spiritual communities could return to their experiential core, and if they could do a better job of supporting individuals’ journeys to experience positive emotions such as awe in daily life, they very well may experience a real revival and return to a cultural center capable of nurturing well-being and peace.
Feelings and Faith
No matter what lights a person’s religious or spiritual life, most people explain moments of awe as part of their experience. Pastor Steven Furtick explains it like this:
Pure devotion — an uncontaminated place that you access occasionally where you know God’s got you and everything is going to be alright. You have that feeling but no reason and no facts to back it up. A feeling like, I am going to make it and God’s going to do it even though I can’t prove it on a flow chart or anything like that.
This type of inexplicable feeling is often expressed as awe — faith and awe in the power of a force from outside of ourselves. Many make reference to miracles. Others find awe in the biblical definition of coincidence, what occurs together by God’s providential arrangement of circumstances. (gotanswers.com)
Feeling Awe
I felt this force of divine coincidence in my life today. I took the day off work to write. Before I got started, I was enjoying a cup of coffee with my husband. He often cues up a YouTube video in the morning. I am usually focused on publishing and getting out the door on time for work.
Today, amongst the typical car, wristwatch, and sports videos suggested based on his preferences, I saw one by Pastor Furtick. It stood out and it seemed divine, a perfect title for this moment: Restoring Your Mind.
We watched the video and it did help me restore my mind and ready it for a day of writing. I am pondering the idea that writing is one of my newly discovered gifts. Self-doubt is often what slows my writing process. I will not be disturbed by doubt today.
A couple of the messages from the video that stood out:
The enemy can deceive us but he can’t take what God gave you, but if he can make you catch a thought that opposes it, he can keep you so weak that you will not walk into it.
Even when things are going good, you sabotage the gift because you’re not secure in it. Even while it’s happening you don’t believe it’s real.
One thought of the goodness of God can lift you above any wave of worry. A thought brought me into despair and a thought can lift me out.
Final Thoughts
No matter what beliefs we hold or what religion or spiritual practices we engage in, we all face worries, pains, trials, and tribulations. We can all experience an awesome force from outside of ourselves to make our way through. We can all experience feelings of awe as we ponder how everything that we witness is created and aligned in such a way that our lives unfold the way they do.
Thank you for reading! I hope that everyone recognizes and realizes the power of their gifts and feels awe in the religious and or spiritual beliefs that deliver and define them.