Just imagine: Every single day, as soon as you wake up, the Tyrant comes into your room and starts bossing you around. He insists you immediately go his way, no questions asked. All day long, you are tossed back and forth by his every-changing demands. One minute, he insists on this. The next, it’s something else. It’s exhausting, never knowing what is next, as you bow before his tyranny day after day. Others can’t expect much of you, because you are constantly busy obeying the Tyrant. In fact, everything else and everyone else have to take a back seat to the Tyrant’s ever-changing will. It’s a full-time job to say the least. Actually, it’s more like slavery.
This sounds absurd, but sadly this is the reality, one one level or another, when we believe we have to live by our emotions.
In our culture, where we’ve rejected absolute truth, oddly enough our feelings are the one non-negotiable we treat as absolutes. Paul Miller writes,
“Modern psychology immobilizes us… Emotional states are sacred. If I’m grumpy, I have a right to feel that way and to express my feelings. Everyone around me simply has to get over it. One of the worst sins, according to pop psychology, is to suppress your emotions.”
For the month of January, two dozen ladies from my church family did a fast together. We all fasted various things, including fasting from fasting (ha!). It looked different for each of us, but one constant was that we each had marching orders from God: What He wanted us to abstain from, engage in, focus on, or give ourselves to. We had an ongoing email thread throughout the month to share the things God was doing and showing us. It was SO COOL because everyone had different experiences, but there were some common threads throughout.
At the risk of sounding dramatic, in some ways I feel like I “got saved” all over again. There were some significant shifts in my understanding of the gospel that have creoriented my perspective. I’m still unpacking it all, but I hope to share bits and pieces here as I’m able.
But one of them was this: You don’t have to obey your emotions. They are legitimate. But they aren’t absolute. They are part of my fallen nature that is being redeemed by Christ.
Christ is Lord, not my feelings.
His Word is truth, not how I feel.
In just one week, God allowed me to see several different situations where I had feelings about something, only later to discover the truth, and realize that my feelings had been completely mis-informed. Similarly, day by day He keeps reminding me that I don’t have to live out of how I feel. If I’ve been up all night with a baby, and my body is tired, that’s fine, but I don’t have to therefore live out of grumpiness. I don’t have to let that fatigue define me. If I’m irritated with my family, I don’t have to sulk or sigh or give them the silent treatment or whatever.
I can tell my emotions to please be quiet because I’m going to go ahead and be like Jesus who came not to be served but to serve and give His life for the sake of others.
Do you see it? Jesus! Jesus is our example, not this world that tells you to look out for yourself and “be true to yourself” by indulging in every emotion that comes your way. That’s just slavery. It’s bondage to the Tyrant of feelings, and as long as we shackle ourselves to our senses, we’ll never be free.
I can feel hurt, feel neglected, feel rejected, feel angry, feel agitated, feel forgotten, but I do not have to obey that Tyrant of feelings. I can choose Christ. I can choose love. I can choose forgiveness. I can choose to die to myself and take up my cross and love people who don’t deserve it because Christ did that for me when I most certainly did not deserve it.
Freedom, friends. Freedom.
Go, be free.
{Thanks for reading.}