So, how can we clearly distinguish between that which rises from our feelings (emotions) and that which rises from regenerate hearts?
Obedience. There is a reason God has set this up, because as it turns out, disobedience wrecks our confidence in our decision, but causes us to cling to his mercy, which produces obedience.
I've had times when my selfish rebellion should have been discovered, and myself publicly shamed, to the point that I feared God would altogether distance himself from me, or worse, to kill me by awful, slow, but well-deserved, means. Instead, nothing came of it, and knowing the power of God, and what he could still at any moment do, and I would be found out, is a grateful fear I lack the ability to describe further.
And this is (in part) what drove me to reject the notion that I could by any means but regeneration, produce my own faith. Faith from within myself, and not 'generated' by God, has so often and continually been shown to be false and vapid. It continuously drives downward. But the faith that God gives continually picks me up and carries me forward. And I find myself obeying because I MUST obey. We do so because it is so. Sinning makes me sick at heart, sometimes sick to my stomach. Buttressing up my own faith does nothing to relieve that—in fact, it cripples me even further. But the faith given by God is the work of the Spirit of God in me, constantly picking me up.
