From "Faith Is Not A Feeling" by Ney Bailey
(spripture references at the bottom)
We are created as emotional beings
When I’ve been tempted to condemn myself for how I feel, it has helped me to remember that God created us in His image and that part of His image is that we are emotional beings. Feelings aren’t wrong. Even Christ had feelings. He didn’t “try not to feel.” He did not hide His emotions; instead, He took them into His relationship with His Father. He was honest, real, authentic. In the Garden of Gethsemane the night before His crucifixion, Scripture tells us that Jesus was “distressed,” “deeply grieved,” “troubled,” and “in agony.”15 Jesus expressed how He felt and trusted the Father in the midst of His feelings.
We, too, have immeasurable freedom to be candid with the Lord about our feelings, to tell Him honestly where we are and what is going on in our lives.
How do we respond?
The Bible promises that, for those of us who truly love God, everything that happens in our lives will have the effect of molding us into Christ’s image.16 Some of us may have prayed a prayer similar to this: “Lord, I pray You’d make me more like You. I pray that You would conform me to the image of Christ.” Often, what we really want is for God to give us an anesthetic so we can be unconscious while He performs surgery on our hearts in order to conform us to Christ’s perfect character. We don’t want to wake up until the transformation is complete! We want the result but not the painful process.
But God doesn’t work that way. The Lord is concerned about what we go through, but I believe He is more concerned about how we respond to what we go through. That response is a matter of our wills. He allows the trials, temptations, and pressures of life to come so that we have the opportunity to respond either by trusting our feelings and life experiences or by taking Him at His word.
I have learned to get into the habit of taking God at His word—and now it is a habit! You and I can either grow accustomed to listening to our feelings, thoughts, and circumstances, letting them control us, or we can be in the habit of taking God at His word despite our feelings and life experiences. We need to choose with our wills to believe that His Word is truer than our feelings.
I have made a lifetime commitment to bank my life on the Word of God, and God has honored that commitment. And yet, there have been times when I could have easily gone back on my commitment because I couldn’t believe that anything was truer than what I was going through—times when my feelings have screamed 180 degrees in the opposite direction of God’s Word but over and over I have found God to be faithful to His Word.
1Romans 1:17, KJV
21 John 5:4
3Luke 7:7
4Luke 7:9
5Hebrews 11:7
6Hebrews 11:8
7Hebrews 11:11
8Mark 4:40
9Matthew 24:35
101 Peter 1:25
11Isaiah 40:8
12Jeremiah 31:3
131 Corinthians 13
14Acts 10:34
15Matthew 26:37-38; Mark 14:33; Luke 22:44
16Romans 8:28-29