Fickle Feelings

Our feelings are fickle but God’s word is unchanging. There may be several factors, righteous and otherwise, which will influence our emotions, yet the Bible stands as our unalterable source of divine information providing eternal clarity regarding God’s values and priorities. This is why the Bible must serve as our perpetual guide for decision-making. God repeatedly warns us to “not lean on our own understanding” (Pr.3:5) but instead to affirm with David that God’s word is “a lamp to my feet and a light to my path” (Ps.119:105).

It is tragic that much of modern Christianity has advocated a shift from objectively thinking our way through the Christian life in the light of God’s written word, to subjectively feeling our way through the Christian life being pushed and prodded by our fluctuating emotional impulses. How many clear passages of Scripture are ignored because Christians don’t “feel it”? How many express commands in the Bible are disobeyed because God’s people don’t “feel led”? This should never be. We must act on God’s inscribed directives, not our shifting sentiments.

So may we all reaffirm the historic Christian resolve to subject the entirety of our lives to the authority of God’s word, even when our feelings are left to catch up.