One of the most powerful forces believers have to navigate each day is the reality of their feelings. Our feelings don't always reflect what is good and best. Often, when our heads come off the pillow in the mornings, what we need is not always what we want. Most of us are aware of the things we should desire, but still wrestle with the fact that we often don't naturally desire them anyway. How do we manage this reality?
You Are Not What You Feel
Things haven't been made easier by our culture. Our age prizes authenticity above truth. "Doing what you feel" has become equated with who you are. "You doing you" has replaced other ideas as the prime goal. Indeed, our culture has so equated our feelings with our identity, that even Christians have a difficult time discerning between how the Bible speaks about us and how we've been trained by modern (unbiblical) notions to think about ourselves. Perhaps the biggest lie our generation has swallowed - with little examination - is the lie that we are what we feel.
But for Christians, the danger of this trap is clear. We understand ourselves to be a Genesis 3 people. We labor with minds, hearts, desires, and bodies that have been broken by the curse of sin that entered the world so many generations ago. What this means is that believers should expect that we won't always desire what we ought to. Paul affirmed this very reality when he said:
For I know that nothing good dwells in me, that is, in my flesh. For I have the
desire to do what is right, but not the ability to carry it out. For I do not do the
good I want, but the evil I do not want is what I keep on doing. Now if I do
what I do not want, it is no longer I who do it, but sin that dwells within me.
So I find it to be a law that when I want to do right, evil lies close at hand.
For I delight in the law of God, in my inner being, but I see in my members
another law waging war against the law of my mind and making me captive to
the law of sin that dwells in my members. Wretched man that I am! Who will
deliver me from this body of death? (Rom 7)
Believer, resist the temptation to imbibe the world's vision of our desires. We expect to war against broken hearts and desires. We expect to do battle against fallen emotions. But the good news of the Gospel means that we are not defined by what we feel! Our identity is tethered to the risen Christ (Gal 2:20). He speaks a truer word about who we are.
The Engine and the Caboose
And when we embrace the identity Christ has conferred to us, things begin to change. We begin to say with Paul, just after the passage above, "Thanks be to God through Jesus Christ our Lord!" We begin to feel equipped to make decisions that can reform our very feelings.
So Christian, begin thinking about your feelings in a new light. They are not in the driver's seat. You aren't obligated to follow their demands. They are not your king. As Dr. Wayne Mack has said, Christians should think of their feelings as the caboose on their train, not as the engine. The engine is our desires, our actions, and our decisions. The caboose follows those. There is hope in this vision. If we begin to take our thoughts captive and make the decisions God has revealed in his Word are best for us, soon our feelings will follow. Our hearts, which often lag behind our decisions, will begin to catch up with us.
So to the one who might say "Pastor, I'm not feeling it today," I offer this gentle reply:
"I am likely not feeling it either, brother/sister. But Christ is better than my fallen feelings. Would you chase after him with me?"
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