I used to be one of those people who had a hard time grasping the truth and reality of God’s love because I couldn’t feel it. Heck, I’m a trained actor. I’m trained to feel. We are trained and encouraged to live out of our feelings and emotions. UGH, the drama!
But guess what? Our feelings are not facts, and they’re definitely not reliable enough to guide our lives. If I allowed my feelings to lead my life, I’d be in prison because there are a couple of people I would have tried to take out by now. What? I’m a work in progress.
I was always searching for a feeling when I was in the early stages of growing closer to God. I expected to feel Him all the time, to feel spiritual. But God doesn’t work like that.
Here’s a quote from Tony Evans about feelings that I love:
“Feelings are important. God created them, and He expects us to experience them. He doesn’t expect us to be emotionless machines. But feelings have no intellect. They are real and powerful, but they do not think. All we can do with our feelings is react. Feelings will react to a lie just as they react to the truth. Feelings even react to things that are not real. That’s why feelings must always be the caboose of the train, never the engine.”
There’s a song I love by Lauren Daigle. She’s a Christian artist. The song is called, “Hold on to me.” In the last verse of the song she says this:
I could rest here in Your arms forever
‘Cause I know nobody loves me better
Hold on to me
Hold on to me
As you can see, I put the lyrics “‘Cause I know nobody loves me better” in bold. Lauren said she knew this. A lightbulb went off as I listened to it, and I said to myself, “I know it too because it’s in His word!”
And THIS…this is the beautiful thing about the Word of God. No matter how we may be feeling at any given moment, no matter what we can or can’t see, we can open that book and know exactly How God feels about us at any given time.
Many things contribute to our feelings. People who think they’re in control of their feelings don’t realize that spiritual forces are always at work, causing us to think, feel, and possibly even react a certain way. But the beautiful thing about the Word is that we can open that book at any given time and determine whether that little voice inside our heads is telling us the truth or a lie.
But that’s a hard thing to do when you doubt the validity of the Word of God. I know it was hard for me to do before I actually surrendered my stubborn will and asked God to show me who He is in His word.
Until then, I remained in confusion. I was waiting to feel something. I was waiting to feel the presence and realness of God. Plus, I was around all these people who claimed to have these spiritual experiences. They always talked about how they FELT things, or they had these encounters they could see. And maybe they did. But all spirit is not God’s spirit:
1 John 4:1-3
Beloved, do not believe every spirit, but test the spirits to see whether they are from God, for many false prophets have gone out into the world. By this you know the Spirit of God: every spirit that confesses that Jesus Christ has come in the flesh is from God, and every spirit that does not confess Jesus is not from God. This is the spirit of the antichrist, which you heard was coming and now is in the world already.
As you can see, God even gives us a way to test and see if these things we feel, hear, and/or see are real. For example: if you’ve got a constant voice in your head telling you something as dark as suicide is your best option, then you know that’s not from God because God says in His word that He came to give us life and give it to us more abundantly.
Or if a voice constantly tells you how worthless you are, you know that’s a lie because God said in His Word that His plans for you are to give you hope and a future. So the voice telling you these things is not the voice of Christ. That is the voice of the antichrist.
And that’s just the tip of the iceberg. There are so many things we may think or feel about ourselves or someone else on a daily basis that are just flat-out lies. But you can always check whatever is being said to you to see if it stands with or against what God says about you.
What’s that saying the world encourages? “Fake it till you make it!” We are encouraged by society repeatedly to fake a state of mind or a state of being until we actually arrive at that place. But isn’t it a beautiful thing to have a TRUE WORD for yourself to refer back to and know FOR SURE who you are created to be?! Even if you don’t FEEL God’s word is true for you, it is!
So you don’t have to fake it! Say it until it is ingrained in you. Say what God says about you until you have actually caught up with the TRUTH OF WHO YOU ARE! That’s why it says in Hebrews 4:12:
For the word of God is living and active, sharper than any two-edged sword, piercing to the division of soul and of spirit, of joints and of marrow, and discerning the thoughts and intentions of the heart.
You see that?! The Word is LIVING, BREATHING, and ACTIVE!! So while you’re saying it, even if you don’t FEEL it, it is doing a work inside of you that you can’t even begin to comprehend because it’s not just some mantras or quotes given to you by some spiritual guru. YOUR CREATOR SAID THIS ABOUT YOU! So who are you gonna listen to?
A Girl's Guide To God 