Avoiding Dark Streets with Dead Ends

Confession is good for the soul. I should know, I do it a lot.

I am your guy friend who is always the sensitive one out of all the fellas. I admit it. I prefer giving people hugs rather than shake hands. I listen to classical music while I’m in the bathtub. And watch this: I think beer is nasty, but cry during the Budweiser commercials with the little puppies and the horses. I know I’ve lost a lot of cool points already with the brothers during this blog and have made some of the ladies go “aww, isn’t that sweet!”, whatever your response, I confess I am a sensitive brother.

I am an artist to my core. Sunrises inspire me, I can feel seasons change internally, and warm colors make me think of melodies when I sit down at the piano. I am a man who has been very steeped in his emotions. For every good, there is a bad.

My feelings have always been an enemy to my faith. Certain things in the Bible are very foreign to me because they require you to act before you feel. That makes no sense to me.  For some of you, your emotions have been the biggest giant to your spiritual growth. Like me, you may have had deep bouts with depressive feelings.. doubt and disbelief have caused your growth to be shipwrecked in the middle of melancholy. I too have struggled with phrases that sound like a foreign language to the inner rumblings of my spirit and my tears. One of which is the Mt. Everest of my Christian experience:

IN EVERYTHING, GIVE THANKS.

At first I believed this meant I needed to lift my hands, dance, smile, and celebrate in connection to human emotions.  Since then, I’ve been taught that – instead – this is a call to obedience: no matter how I feel, God the Father charges me to do what he says, in spite of how I feel.

That’s was hard for me to believe. Basically,

OBEDIENCE IS NOT AN EMOTION.

Living in a human body that is feeling based, I had to fight through my own human make up to learn that

FEELINGS ARE THE CABOOSE, NOT THE ENGINE.

See, I always believed if I didn’t feel what I was doing in my emotions, I was being fake. If I prayed for something which I believed God wanted for me to no avail, it was almost insulting for me to say “God, I give you thanks even in you saying no.” It felt like the biggest lie in the world. I soon learned (and am still learning) that it makes God smile the most when I choose to do something He wants over what I feel.  He knows how powerful feelings for us can be.

That means what I told myself for many years was exactly wrong; it’s not being fake when we give thanks, even when we don’t feel it.  Actually, it is the greatest act of faith we can give God. Abraham probably didn’t throw a party when God told him to give up his son, and God is not expecting us to “turn down for what” when we have to sacrifice our dreams for worship as well.

I understand now that

FEELINGS CAN BE THE ENEMY OF FAITH

There’s nothing sinful innately about feelings.  But if they aren’t submitted to the word, they’ll drive us down dark streets full of dead ends. They have lured many away from the faith, have caused many hearts to grow cold, and have blinded the eyes of the tired who’ve been waiting for God to do something in their lives’ corners of hopelessness. People leave their families because they don’t “feel in love” anymore.

It’s a rigorous discipline to beat our bodies to come under subjection to the truth that feelings have no intellect and simply connect themselves to fleeting thoughts. Consequently, feelings must be slaves to truth — period — or they’ll drive you crazy. Paul told the Philippian church to always give thanks because it was a safeguard for them. Meaning, giving thanks protects you. It covers your mind. It keeps you from going off the deep end. It’s a safety net.  Give thanks in everything. And don’t wait until you feel it. Do it, and trust God to let your feelings catch up.  They ride, they don’t drive.

I write this to you out of deep corners of my life. Feelings have been my nemesis most of my time on earth. I don’t “do” music, I “feel” music. Almost everything in my life has been built on what I feel. So when you read this, this is from a work in progress, but a work that has seen the power of truth that was greater than any attempt to self medicate the inner war I’ve fought my entire Christian life.

IN EVERYTHING, GIVE THANKS.

Choose it. Don’t wait to feel it.

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