Feelings have always had a seat at the table, but in recent years, they have definitely taken center stage. With the cultural focus on mental health awareness and therapy, people finally started talking about their feelings and society as a whole really took on an all-or-nothing approach with our feelings.
Think about it…
When the baby boomer generation made up most of society, nobody ever talked about their feelings. It was taboo mostly because they were hard-working men who didn’t want to show “weakness” and content women who didn’t want to cause “waves,” or mess up their image while “keeping up with the Jones’.” I think this mindset was completely understandable for the time but I do think it had an impact on how people learned to connect to one another, even today.
Then, as the years went on, feelings became more and more important as people started to associate their feelings with truth. How “I feel” about something became “my truth” on the matter and there wasn’t anything that you could say that would change what my truth is for me, because it’s MY truth.
Opinions became slurred with facts and what it left in its wake is a generation that doesn’t understand THE truth from opinions. And sadly, it’s only getting more confusing every day.
Where Did It All Start?
I don’t want to seem cynical, but if you really think about it, Satan has a way of using things that SEEM like good things but either aren’t really good things or are taken to such an extreme level that they become bad things, and most of the time, humans don’t understand where to draw the line of something going “too far” until it’s too late.
For example, look at this movement of focusing on emotions that we’ve had over the last 40-50 years. It may have started as innocently as people trying to connect and communicate better with one another. Like I said at the beginning, I think the lack of communication and showing emotion really hindered a lot of the baby boomer generation in creating and nurturing positive relationships, even today. But, when feelings and emotions gained so much importance that they started to become synonymous with truth, that’s where we have a problem.
THE truth was something Satan could never mess with before, although he’s been trying since he was with Adam and Eve in the garden of Eden. At the end of the day, there was nothing he could do to stand against it, it’s truth! But I think he realized that if he could blur the edges of it enough that he could convince people that maybe what the Bible says is truth isn’t actually truth, then he can turn some away from Jesus, or keep us distracted long enough that we’re not effective for the kingdom.
Maybe he thought that if he could use something as seemingly positive as your feelings and emotions, it would affect every single human because everyone has emotions. Maybe he wanted to use something that has been known to control us. Hello: anger, sadness and jealousy.
He’s not stupid, he will use all of these tactics and more to further his glory but if we, as Christians, can stand firm and hold on to the ONLY truth, then nothing he does can shake us.
How Do We Become Unshakable?
First and foremost, we have to know our heavenly Father. We have to know His voice, His promises and His Word to even start to stand firm on the truth. As we study His Word and begin to learn the promises that He made to us, then we can discern when we hear that still, small voice that it is Him speaking to us, in accordance with His Word and His promises.
“Jesus said to him, “I am the way, and the truth, and the life; no one comes to the Father except through Me.”
John 14:6 NASB2020
From this verse in John, we can discern that Jesus is the way, the truth, and the life. Therefore, if anything is against the Son of God, Jesus, or doesn’t include Him, it’s not the truth, no matter how we may feel about it.
“I have not spoken in secret, from somewhere in a land of darkness; I have not said to Jacob’s descendants, ‘Seek me in vain.’ I, the Lord, speak the truth; I declare what is right.”
Isaiah 45:19 NIV
God speaks the truth. He declares what is right. If we are trusting other things, like our feelings and emotions over His voice, then we are not following the truth. We can also take from this verse that God will not hide the truth from us.
“The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom, and knowledge of the Holy One is understanding.”
Proverbs 9:10 NIV
Once we understand more about God, we will begin to be able to discern the truth for ourselves.
Feelings Aren’t All Bad
Just like it’s untrue to say that our feelings are always fact or “our truth,” I think it’s also wrong to say that they’re always irrelevant or untrue. I think God uses our emotions and our feelings to help us be more like Him or help guide us in the way we should go, in a number of different ways.
When we show compassion or empathy for others because of how we feel when we see their situation is one way God uses our emotions to help us be His hands and feet. I’ve also been in a lot of situations that may have looked normal on the outside, but I got a gut-wrenching or a bad feeling about it in the moment that made me change my course of action. I’m not saying that these feelings can always be trusted, either, but I think God does use our feelings and emotions to guide us and it is up to us to discern the truth, despite how we may be feeling.
The problem arises when our feelings contradict God’s Word, promises or voice. When God is asking us to do something and we feel afraid or nervous and we validate those feelings by saying God surely didn’t want me to do that because “I don’t feel right about it,” this can be an excuse to not get out of our comfort zone. So we have to be careful to check our emotions against God’s Word to see if we should give them validity in any given situation.
So How Do We Move Forward?
Growing closer to God through His Word, His promises and getting to know His voice, will all help us discern the truth when faced with any decision. Only then, can we begin to shape our attitudes, our behaviors, our FEELINGS and our lives into a true image of God.
