Are Your Feelings Determining How You View God, Or Is God Determining How You Feel?Are you acting like a child? Are you following people who act like unreasoning beasts, and encourage others to do the same? A child allows his emotions to rule him. He is without discipline and only knows want. A false teacher promotes what is against God. He acts like an unreasoning beast, “But these, like unreasoning animals, born as creatures of instinct to be captured and killed, reviling where they have no knowledge, will in the destruction of those creatures also be destroyed,” (2 Peter 2:12 NASB)
Do you let your feelings determine how you view God, and treat others? Love is a big deal. People go on and on about feeling like they are in love, wanting to feel love. People also feel other emotions like, hate, impatience, greed, jealousy, envy, apathy, and pride. People desperately want others to validate their feelings, by agreeing with them. When we allow feelings to determine how we treat others, and how we view God, we are behaving like children. All they know is what they want. Their wants are not informed by anything else, just their will alone. As they get older, hopefully their parents discipline them, and train them. If you are an adult, and your feelings rule you, then spiritually speaking, you are a sinful little child. If you believe all of the self-help gurus out there, teaching you how to get in touch with your feelings, and how to be happy. God tells us how we should feel about others, about situations, and He also tells us how we should feel about Him. When we obey our feelings that are against what God commands in His word we are definitely in sin.
Viewing God through any other lense than His word is creating an idol in your mind. When you just go by your fallen, sinful, emotions, to build a picture of God, it will most certainly be a false god, not the one true God of the Bible. If you find yourself disagreeing with long-held orthodox doctrines, in favor of your own personal interpretation, chances are you are worshipping a god of your own making. Repent, and worship the God of the Bible. Let your mind be informed by the word of God, so that the God you worship is the true one.
As Christians, we are not to behave, think, or feel like the world. We are to obey God in all things. So when God tells us to love our enemies, that is what we must do. Love needs to be thought of as an action as well as a feeling. All of the emotions must be thought of as actions as well as a feelings, because they move us to action. Unless God changes your heart and mind, in regeneration by the power of the Holy Spirit, you will not be able to think or feel rightly. When you are truly born again, and you resist feeling the way your know you should or you indulge a feeling you know you shouldn’t, you are sinning. Sinning this way is accepted by the world and encouraged. We are not to be like the world.
There are benefits to obeying God. Yes, God gave us emotions, but they are under the effect of sin. They are affected by the fall. Knowing this, hopefully you can see how they need to be conformed to God’s will as expressed in His word? Don’t reject the will of God, for your own childish feelings. Bring your feelings into obedience to God. You can do it with His help. It will be a blessing to you and to all of the people you come in contact with. God’s will is always better. So next time you are feeling your way through life ask yourself if those feelings are sinful or are they in obedience to God?
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