Feelings are a tricky lot. At their best they offer a gauge on life’s vibrancy, at their worst they can distort reality with deadly deception. Truth on the other hand is the anti-trickster. If truth had a business card you might read a clever little slogan like, “No shenanigans. No deceit. Just reality.” Feelings are bound by the flesh and therefore tainted by our sin nature. Truth is bound by nothing and exists as God exists, because all truth is God’s truth. Take away God and you can know absolutely nothing for certain.
Jesus said, “I am the way, and the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me.” (John 14:6) I take that to mean Jesus, and all he brings to the table (which as it turns out, is an awful lot), is the very embodiment of truth. Put another way, truth is God’s self-expression of himself. His promises are truth foretold, his teaching is truth applied, and his commands are the outflow of truth by which we are to live. God’s Word is truth and anything found in contradiction to it is false and from the devil himself (John 8:44).
And that includes feelings.
To which someone might say, “Ah, but what’s truth got to do with my feelings?” I can relate. After all, I rather like my feelings; I’m quite fond of them actually.
Here’s the rub. Where feelings lead us away from truth, whether it be God’s promises, commands, or his revelation of reality in general, we’re being led away from God himself. And sadly, it’s a well-traveled road.
You hear it all the time. “I just don’t feel like God would want me unhappy, so I’m…” Or, “I feel like God would want me to be happy, so I’m embracing…” Or, “I don’t feel like that command is really applicable in our day and age, so….” I could go on.
“The human heart is deceitful above all things and desperately sick; who can understand it?” (Jeremiah 17:9) Calvin said that man’s nature is a perpetual factory of idols. And the heart loves nothing better than idolizing self. It’s actually the root of all sin (Genesis 3). Our heart, our feelings, will lead us astray, if we let them.
And that’s why the Christian journey was characterized as a fight by none other than the apostle Paul himself (1 Timothy 6:10-12; 2 Timothy 4:7). The fight of faith is truly a fight. We are called to believe God’s promises and obey God’s commands when everything in us tells us otherwise. It’s a fight, a struggle.
Quick example. When God commands his children, “do not be anxious” about anything (Matthew 6:25; Philippians 4:6), but our feelings and situation tell us we must, our job is to fight for truth to win out and by God’s grace, for our hearts to rest in his control of all things. When it doesn’t and we worry, we sin. Even then, the fight is not over though. We can’t lay down in defeat at the hands of Satan. We repent, we regain our footing knowing there is no condemnation for those in Christ, and we live to fight another day.
The good news is that we don’t fight this fight alone. God is there in those moments, those hard, world-collapsing, fearful, tempting, painful moments when our feelings are telling us we’re weak and it’s useless to fight. God is there and he’s bigger than our feelings.
