“And without faith it is impossible to please God, because anyone who comes to Him must believe that He exists and that he rewards those who earnestly seek Him” (Hebrews 11:6).
“I’ve got a bad feeling about this.” – Han Solo
As long as I’ve been actively involved in church, I’ve heard feelings and faith interchanged. It’s not unusual to hear someone say, “I just felt the Lord was leading me to . . .” Then again, it’s not unusual to hear someone else say, “I believe the Lord is leading me to . . .”
The terms seem to be interchangeable, but the meaning can be very different. Faith must always be the basis for our relationship with God, never feelings. We come to Christ by faith, not by feeling. We respond to God by and with faith, not feelings.
And yet, we tend to express our relationship with God as a feeling. We often do things based upon our feelings. The trouble with feelings is that they can paralyze our relationship with God, or at least distract us from actually doing that which God calls us and expects us to do. This is not to say that emotions have no part in our relationship with God. But it does mean that we should not let our emotions cloud our relationship with God.
Satan often appeals to our feelings to distract us, while faith enable us to be where and what God wants us to be. When we listen to our feelings, we tend to get distracted. We turn to the emotions and turn away from the faith that should guide us.
How Do Feelings Distract Us?
One of the classic “feelings/faith” issues that evangelical Christians often have to deal with are the times we don’t “feel” saved. (For those who are not evangelical, “being saved” is being in a right relationship with God through our confession of sin, repentance and profession of faith that Jesus alone can atone for our sins and, thus, “save” us.) It’s not unusual for someone who has not been walking as he or she should be to begin to question their salvation experience. They begin to “feel” they may not be saved. If a person dwells on that feeling, it can lead to a sense of lost-ness and hopelessness. The quick cure for such a feeling is to quickly respond to the invitation at the end of the worship service, and rededicate one’s life to Christ. (Again, for the non-evangelicals, the invitation comes at the end of the worship service, after the sermon. It is a time to respond to the prompting of the Holy Spirit. A “rededication” is reaffirming one’s faith in Christ, acknowledging that a person hasn’t been where God wants them to be, and re-commits to living for Christ.)
Typically, the rededication kicks in for a few weeks, but unless there really is a genuine change in one’s lifestyle, then the cycle will return. Satan will use the fact that nothing has really changed to lead that person to once again “feel” they are not saved, that the rededication didn’t work because of that sense of still being lost.
The way to overcome this feeling is to go back to Scripture and re-examine the events that led up to the salvation experience. If a person genuinely came to an awareness of their state of sin, repented of that that sin, turned to Christ as the only means of cleansing and the One who can guide us from this day forth, then that person has been saved. That is a statement of faith, not of feeling. When the feeling comes upon the person, that person takes that feeling and submits it to the faith statement. When it comes to our relationship with God, faith always trumps feelings. It may be the feeling of lost-ness may be a result of not living as Christ would have us to live. In that case, there is a need to re-examine the life and resolve to seek to live in a Christ-like manner. But never question the salvation experience again.
Feelings can also lead us to make fools of ourselves in the name of Christ, and I don’t mean it in the context that Paul refers to being foolish. I mean we can sometimes say or do stupid things “in the name of Christ” because we act on feelings, not faith. I one time heard a young woman talking about going on a helicopter ride. There was nothing redeeming about her “sharing,” but she nonetheless felt God wanted her to say it. I think it was more a case that she was nervous and felt she had to say something, so she shared it and used her feelings to justify what she said.
Sometimes, people will do something—“I felt the Lord was leading me to buy this car”—that really had no bearing on God or His kingdom purpose. Then again, we allow our feelings to keep us from doing that which we know God would have us to do. “I knew I should have gone to church today, but I just didn’t feel like it.” “I knew I should have said something about Christ in that conversation, but I didn’t feel like it.” In such instances, the feeling is clearly not from God. God does not contradict Himself.
How Can We Know the Difference?
Sometimes, it is difficult to discern God working in us and our going with our feelings. As we’ve already discussed, it’s important to know the difference between the two.
One way to discern the difference is to ask God’s guidance in the matter. Sometimes, God’s instructions are very clear. Think of Paul and the Macedonian Call (Acts 16:6-10), or Moses at the burning bush (Exodus 3). Isaiah’s calling in Isaiah 6 is another example. There are many more such examples in the Bible. If God is able to speak to clearly to those who are in the Bible, it stands to reason that He should also be able to speak clearly to us as well. He hasn’t changed.
But more often than not, God’s direction is not a burning bush or a vivid dream. Sometimes, it’s a sense—a feeling, if you will—of God’s moving in our lives. At those times, the best thing to do is to go to Him in prayer. Acknowledge that you are feeling something. Ask Him, if it is from Him, to confirm it—to replace the feeling with faith—through some more concrete indication. Ask Him to remove the feeling if it is not from Him.
I had a friend, a pastor like me, and asked him how a person can tell when God is moving in ones’ life. He shared with me a moment early in his ministry when he sensed God was leading him to seek a new church. He liked his current pastorate, but he began to sense that God was preparing him to move to another church or ministry. He said he prayed about it, and he prepared a resume. He drove from his home to a mentor/pastor he knew well who lived an hour or so away. My friend shared with his mentor what was going on. He left the resume with that person, and began to drive home. For some reason, as he neared a particular town, he decided to drop in on someone else he knew. The relationship was cordial, but not too close. He stopped and they began to talk. My friend said the person he was talking with knew of a church looking for a pastor and thought my friend would be perfect for the church. He asked my friend for a resume and sent it on to the prospective church. Within a few weeks, my friend was at the new church.
There have been times that I thought God might be moving me in a different direction. All I’ve known to do is prayerfully seek His guidance, trusting in Him to lay the ground work and preparing myself for whatever He may have in store. I never act on the possibility that God may be moving me until I am much more sure than not that it really is God doing the moving, that I am walking in faith, not feeling.
When Feelings Hinder Our Walk with God
There are times that we let our feelings come in between us and God’s will for us. We allow ourselves to be convinced that we don’t feel right about something and so we tend to disregard what we know by faith to do.
Let me share to personal examples.
I was 30 years old when my father died unexpectedly. My wife and then eight-month-old daughter had been driving in from New Mexico. We had been on the road for most of the day, driving across New Mexico and Texas. We pulled into Irving, Texas, around 10 p.m. at my in-laws’ house. I was surprised my father-in-law was still awake, since he usually got up early to work. It was then they told me my father had died.
My feelings immediately went into automatic drive. I pushed through my in-laws, went straight to the phone and called my parents’ house. My sister answered and we talked about when my family would arrive in Tyler and funeral plans. I then sat down in the living room, where my wife, daughter and mother-in-law were. I was sitting there, watching my daughter and realized she would never know her grandfather that called her his little ray of sunshine. The emotions hit me like a ton of bricks, and I hurriedly went upstairs to our bedroom.
I fell on my knees before God, and I angrily told Him that I felt completely alone in the world. I felt so empty, and I didn’t like the feeling. I wanted and demanded that God do something about it. His response?
As soon as I made my demand, God’s answer was to remind me that it was natural to feel the way I was feeling—I had just lost my dad, and he was never coming back. But then God reminded me that the feelings I was feeling were temporary, but that He was with me, and He would always be with me. He brought to my mind the end of the Great Commission in Matthew 28—“And I am with you always, even to the end of the age.”
I rose from my knees, still feeling empty and alone, but I knew that I was never alone—God, my heavenly Father, would always be there for me, even in a devastating time such as I was feeling. I walked in that faith over the coming days, weeks and months. There are still times I have to embrace God’s promise to me that night.
Another example.
My younger daughter is getting ready to travel half way around the world to do missions work. Although the initial journey is for two years, the reality is that she will probably be doing this for a large part of her life.
I asked her when I saw her recently if she was excited to finally be going to the mission field. Her response was surprising in a way, but not so surprising, either.
She told she wasn’t really excited about going at all. In fact, she was not looking forward to going at all. She said it was going to be hard to leave her home, leave her family and friends and go somewhere she’s been to a couple of times, but never for long. She said she’ll miss her church family and her community. So, no, she wasn’t excited about going. If she followed her feelings, she’s probably tell everyone “never mind” and find something else to do.
But, she then went on to say that she was excited about going where God was leading her. She was looking forward to how God was going to work in and through her as she begins a new phase in her life in a place where she will be completely dependent upon God. She and I both agreed that the mission field was where God was leading her, and that she would learn to like the people and the place as she acclimated herself to the new surroundings.
Still, this is a case where faith must take the lead, with the faith that the feelings will follow.
And that’s why faith is so much more important in the life of the believer than are feelings. Our feelings can mislead us, they can misdirect us and they can greatly hinder God’s will for our lives. When we know what God’s will is, even though we may not feel like doing it, we know that it really is what we will do.
Jesus in Gethsemane the night of His betrayal is a classic example of faith over feelings. From the first prayer Jesus prayed, it was clear that He really didn’t want to go to the cross, even though that was what His life had been about all along. He yielded Himself once again to the Father in that garden, praying, “Not My will, but Yours be done.” Even though, at the end of that long night of prayer, there is no reason that Jesus then allowed Himself to be taken prisoner, tried and forced to Calvary with an avid excitement and eagerness akin to a child on Christmas Eve. Still, He went to Calvary, submitted Himself to the humiliation and degradation of a crucifixion, with a confidence and assurance that came from a deep faith in the Father’s will.
There are plenty of other examples in the Bible of men and women who didn’t feel like doing God’s will, but acted in obedience any way (think of Abraham with Isaac, Jeremiah and his entire ministry, Joseph and the hardships he endured in Egypt, to name but a few). In every case, the faith was confirmed and the assurance of obedience led each person to know that their faith was greater than their feelings.
Conclusion
There are many a day when we wake up and don’t feel like doing something, even though we know it’s something God wants us to do. Putting one “faith foot” in front of myself, we learn to walk that path, telling our feelings that can come along or not. To paraphrase Joshua, “Choose you this day whom you will serve. As for me and my house, we will walk by faith.”
© 2018 Glynn Beaty