This week I had a conversation with a friend regarding a recent sermon on submission. The sermon stirred up troubling, even resentful feelings in some members of the congregation.  That conversation caused me to think through the reality and the powerful hold that feelings have over our lives. More specifically, I pondered what role they should play in our spiritual formation.
 The temptation we face when our feelings are doing an “emotional squirm” as we listen to a message from Scripture is to reject the uncomfortable message. At that moment, I think we began to ask ourselves the wrong question–we ask ourselves, “How do I feel about this?”. If the answer is,  “I feel guilty or uncomfortable or ashamed” we are tempted to reject the message that incited those feelings. I wonder if we would be better served to ask “What does God want me to believe about this in spite of my feelings?” In Living the Cross Centered 
Life, C. J. Mahaney addressed this issue by quoting D. Martyn Lloyd-Jones.  Jones warned “Avoid the mistake of concentrating overmuch upon your feelings. Above all, avoid the terrible error of making them central” He adds, that those who make their feelings the focus are “doomed to be unhappy…what we have in the Bible is Truth; it is not an emotional stimulus…and it is as we apprehend and submit ourselves to the truth that the feelings follow.”  Mahaney goes on to clarify why this is so important to consider, “Knowing and believing the truth will always bring you, in time, to a trustworthy experience of truth. But if you trust your feelings first and foremost, if you exalt your feelings, if you invest your feelings with final authority—they’ll deposit you on the emotional roller coaster which so often characterizes our lives.” The only thing I can guarantee about my feelings is that they will change–they shift like beach grass in the wind and cannot be relied on. Today, I want to offer up my feelings to the Lord and trade them for His laser-beam, solid, unchanging truth! Remember–Feelings are always real but they are not always True!
