Don’t Look to Your Feelings, Look to Christ!

Category: Excerpts
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Basically what you’re trying, is you’re trying to hold onto this feeling that you’ve gotten. You’ve got this feeling and the reality, and you’ve heard this preaching. You’ve been able to spend time in the Word, and you have this feeling. And you want so much to go home and to hold onto this feeling. And so you make your entire focus of your spiritual life on whether or not you feel good. And whether or not you feel reality, and whether or not you feel strength. And you’re like Peter. He steps out of the boat and as long as he’s got his eyes on Jesus everything’s going fine. But when he takes his eyes off of Christ he begins to sink. And that’s inevitably what happens. As you know you go on. Wednesday hits, and Friday hits, and the kids are crying, and you’ve got a stack of papers on your desk that you can’t even see over. And life is busy once again. And you feel these feelings that you’ve got, and they start to wane(linger). They start to leave. And so what you do is you try to redouble your efforts. Ok. “I am going to try and read my bible… instead of 9 chapters I’m going to be reading 18 chapters.” Then you miss one day and now your something like 30 something chapters behind in your Bible. And then what happens? You start, “Ok Lord, I am going to start squinting my eyes harder.” You’re just trying so much to retain this feeling, but you feel it starting to rot. Because your eyes are on that feeling.

I’ll tell you this. The one place your faith hates to look the most is at your feelings. That is the one place on the face of the earth that your faith hates to look the most. And that is your feelings. Faith was never designed to thrive on feelings. Faith thrives on a fresh glimpse of the Lord Jesus Christ! So what inevitably happens is you go home, this starts happening, the feelings start leaving, You start despairing, you’re squinting your eyes harder, you’re trying so much to muster this thing back up. And eventually you get exhausted and you just collapse. And you glance up and you see Christ and it all comes flooding back. That’s the way it works. Faith doesn’t thrive on feelings. Faith thrives on Christ. If you go home and the only thing you try and do is try and work up this feeling, it will rot. Like the hymn writer said, “I dare not trust the sweetest frame but wholly lean on Jesus name!” “On Christ the solid rock I stand.” Not my feelings! Not the way I feel when I go back home. “On Christ the solid rock I stand, all other ground is sinking sand.” Forget about your feelings… when you get back home. Forget about your feelings. Because if all you do is go back home and you go into spiritual auto pilot, or you just try and focus on your feelings, and try and somehow try to hold what you feel right now in. And that’s your focus, you’re going to find it’s just going to breeds worms. It’s all that is going to happen to it.