There are times when I wonder about things; times when I wonder if God is mad at me, or if he will listen to me or answer my pleas…
There are times when it seems like He won’t; that He has just simply run out of patience with me because I’m just hopeless…
In those times I must force myself to remember the truth: God loves me anyway. Our heavenly Father does not just give up on His children any more than my earthly father would; our heavenly Father is in it with us for the long haul, even when we mess things up.
Out of the depths I cry to you, O Lord;
O Lord, hear my voice.
Let your ears be attentive
to my cry for mercy.
If you, O Lord, kept a record of sins,
O Lord, who could stand?
But with you there is forgiveness;
therefore you are feared.
I wait for the Lord, my soul waits,
and in his word I put my hope.
My soul waits for the Lord
more than watchmen wait for the morning,
more than watchmen wait for the morning.
Psalm 130:1-6
I’ve always taught my students that in matters of spiritual truth, there is nothing more irrelevant than our feelings. I will note here for the record that this statement never made me popular, but it does have the benefit of being true: The truth is the truth even if we don’t feel like it.
On those occasions that we feel like God is too far away, that He has turned away from us, that He has had it with us, we must not listen to our feelings, for they are not telling us the truth. The truth is that God hasn’t moved at all… we have. He is still there waiting for us to come home to His care.
Life Project Blog 
This is fabulous, Don. You know how deeply I agree. I’m currently working on a post that says exactly the same, that our feelings are quite irrelevant to the Truth as God deals with us… and that “unreliability” is the basis of the “deceitful heart”. Not that the heart is an “evil” thing, so much as the heart is just able to mislead us so readily through it’s faulty perceptions.
In fact, I’ll not say I DISagree with you, as much as I’ll say I agree with you more than you do, lol. This statement…
“The truth is that God hasn’t moved at all… we have. ”
To be frank, I’ve come to the conclusion that NEITHER of us “move”. Not God… nor even us. How CAN we? He holds us in His hand, against His heart. Squirm though we might, wrong attitudes though we entertain, even in full blown tantrum… we have no more chance of squirming out of His grasp than an infant does their father.
No, when we are out of order we just clamp down our eyes crying and scream. We can’t see, we can’t hear, we can’t even feel His tenderness. It’s not that it isn’t there… it’s just that we’re so momentarily self-centered we cannot perceive or experience any of it.
But, eventually, we calm down or tire out… and there we are again… right where we always were… He our loving Father… we his frail children, and we start again in a new day of grace.
Isn’t it all amazing…. LM
LOL, I’ve missed you lately, LM!
Reblogged this on kdramaostersheet and commented:
Thank you so much, Don. Thank God for you. I really needed this 🙂
Hello Don! I truly can relate to this post. Your first two paragraph speak to the inner man. I have found myself at that dangerous crossroads many times, and each time I have learned something different. It is important that we not forget that God cannot break His promise to us. He is always there to catch us when we fall, but He also wants us to utilize the helper He has given us. Sometimes we forget that we can calm the storm too.
Thanks so much for sharing. God blesses.
Great point Noel, thank you!
Amen Don!
As I read this, I thought about my previous comment I made to one of your posts. Immediately, however, it occurred to me that we should remember that God loves our enemies, too. I wonder how many of our feelings of being unloved come as we stand committed to anger or envy- implacable before the truth that God loves the one towards which we hold malice.
Next, I thought of the Isaiah 25:7:
And he will destroy in this mountain the face of the covering cast over all people, and the vail that is spread over all nations.
What if the love of God we wish to feel is the light shining from just beyond the shroud of accusation cast over all people and nations? What if the “He” who destroys that shroud is the Word of God that dwells in our hearts by faith? What if destroying that shroud is the job of us who are taught by Christ to love?
Indeed that would seem to be the case!
Reblogged this on janjoy52 and commented:
Today I am sick. I stayed home from work. I used my time catching up on by blog reader and came across this sage perspective: “…in matters of spiritual truth, there is nothing more irrelevant than our feelings…The truth is the truth even it we don’t feel like it.” Today I don’t feel like it.’-\ Thanks for sharing!
Thank you and get better!
Thanks for this post. I often turn to the Psalms myself – they are full of so much raw truth, expressed by people going through much the same kind of things that we do today and speaking with complete freedom and honesty – but they always come back to God in the end.
If I’m being pedantic (and I often am), however, I’m not sure I completely agree that our feelings are always totally irrelevant and/or always lie. I think they’re actually worth taking note of at times – albeit with caution. God can speak through our emotions. But I agree we should never completely trust them. God and his promises are all we can really trust, and if our feelings are telling us something different then we must beware of them. Similar to our conscience I guess – another part of us created by God but distorted in this world so that we often feel guilty when we shouldn’t or fail to when we should.
I agree with you that our feelings can give us warning, and can remind us of an offense to conscience. But, our feelings are irrelevant in determinig spiritual truth. This is a narrow statement. For example, that God loves me and loves you is a fact. It is true even if I don’t feel like it at the moment. That’s what I mean, and I think it’s an important point.
Maybe we’re both a tad pedantic! 🙂