Feelings and Faith: Reflections on God's Gifts for Life's Journey (Hardcover) (ISBN-13: 9781636306933)

Feelings, feelings, feelings! We all have feelings. How are you handling your feelings? How do you understand your feelings? Do you embrace, suppress, or deny them? How do you feel about your feelings? Good? Bad? Confused?

Author Louis Accola invites the reader of Faith and Feelings into a personal reflection and discernment journey. The book is an insightful, positive, affirming, empowering exploration, and analysis of nine feelings: anxiety, doubt, anger, guilt, fatigue, fear, joy, peace, and wonder. The author does this exploration and analysis in the light of the meaning and the significance of each person being uniquely created in the image of God.

We are created in God's image. We each express in our own personhood the presence, the nature, and the feelings that we see attributed to the God in the Scriptures. We encounter those same feelings that are in our birthright package in the actions and teachings in Jesus's life story as the Living Word of God in human flesh. Designed by God, our feelings are a gift in the "makeup package" of our natural essence as human beings. Feelings are to be recognized, affirmed, expressed, and shared in all our relationships, potentially for good in our words and actions along life's journey.

Feelings and Faith: Reflections on God's Gift for Life's Journey is deeply inspiring and informative. It provides practical insights and guidance for self-affirmation, for a positive perspective on feelings, and for embracing and expressing our feelings in daily experiences and challenges along life's journey. This book's final chapter talks about "the faith that counts" for free and abundant living and in its challenges and special needs. The author clarifies faith as a gift in our birthright package to be recognized and affirmed as the spirit of life's presence, empowerment, guidance, and blessings along life's journey.

From his years of pastoral and counseling ministry experience, the author understands deeply the pressures and changes impacting feelings and faith. In this time of rapid and constant changes, especially intensified by the COVID-19 pandemic and its resulting current economic crises, the author invites the reader to examine the impact of these changes on feelings and faith. Accola evokes new insights for the reader to embrace and affirm for "feelings and faith." This book invites the reader to purposeful, positive, and healthy living based on insights from the lifestyle and teachings of Jesus of Nazareth.