"I Don't Care How You Feel!"

It's time that we started telling everyone in the Body of Christ, and around the world:

"I don't care how you feel!"

We need to impress on our youth, and everyone we minister to:

"It does not matter how you feel. What matters is what God says about you."

We have raised feelings in our society to the most ungodly of levels.

I was one of them. I was convinced that how I felt was the full determinate whether I was accepted before God or not.

What does the Bible say?

"To the praise of the glory of his grace, wherein he hath made us accepted in the beloved." (Ephesians 1: 6)

Either you believe it or you don't. It does not matter how you feel.

Paul warned the Corinthians about being carnal (in their flesh, in their selves, in their feelings):

"1And I, brethren, could not speak unto you as unto spiritual, but as unto carnal, even as unto babes in Christ. 2I have fed you with milk, and not with meat: for hitherto ye were not able to bear it, neither yet now are ye able. 3For ye are yet carnal: for whereas there is among you envying, and strife, and divisions, are ye not carnal, and walk as men? 4For while one saith, I am of Paul; and another, I am of Apollos; are ye not carnal?" (1 Corinthians 3: 1-4)

James explains why his readers' prayers were not answered, either:

"1From whence come wars and fightings among you? come they not hence, even of your lusts that war in your members? 2Ye lust, and have not: ye kill, and desire to have, and cannot obtain: ye fight and war, yet ye have not, because ye ask not. 3Ye ask, and receive not, because ye ask amiss, that ye may consume it upon your lusts. 4Ye adulterers and adulteresses, know ye not that the friendship of the world is enmity with God? whosoever therefore will be a friend of the world is the enemy of God. 5Do ye think that the scripture saith in vain, The spirit that dwelleth in us lusteth to envy? 6But he giveth more grace. Wherefore he saith, God resisteth the proud, but giveth grace unto the humble." (James 4: 1-6)

It is all about the grace of God, and we receive this grace in our growing recognition of how forgiven we are of all our sins. All of them. We still have so much to learn about how forgiven we are, that we are forgiven persons.

Of course, we cannot learn this if we still think that we have to keep the law, obey rules, and try to make ourselves accepted before God.

This lie is exactly what Satan pushes at the children of God.

"Fight the good fight of faith, lay hold on eternal life, whereunto thou art also called, and hast professed a good profession before many witnesses." (1 Timothy 6: 16)

For too long, I was using feelings as an indicator of my salvation. Wrong!

For the longest time, men and women in churches were ministering to what I was feeling.

What we feel is a direct response to what we are thinking.

Are we allowing the word of God to renew our minds to the truth of the Gospel, or are we mired what we are thinking and feelings, as though these sentiments serve as the final arbiter of our standing before God?

It has nothing at all to do with what we feel. Period.

There is no peace on the inside, but rather outside:

"1Therefore being justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ: 2By whom also we have access by faith into this grace wherein we stand, and rejoice in hope of the glory of God." (Romans 5: 1)

I admit it again and again. I was convinced that forgiveness was all about how one felt, or what one was thinking.

Forgiveness of sins, justification by faith, is all about taking God at His Word.

Not our feelings, but His Son, and the Word of His Testimony makes the difference.

and

"I don't care how you feel!"