The Long Fight

On the phone with my brother, Mark, the other day, I talked about how hard it was to adjust to home. He pointed out to me that I wasn't home. I was in la la land- a transition period from being in Kenya to being back in Newport News for school. I am only here at my Manassas "home" with my family just a few weeks.

I felt what he said was true, on a much larger scale than he meant. This life in itself is la la land. It's just a transition period between birth and eternal life with Jesus up in heaven. Then, I will be home.

I suffer a long road in discontentment until then. I shuffle around my house, wandering around, looking for the things I feel like doing. When I feel like it, I go to Jesus. When I feel like it, I listen to music. It's a whatever thing.

I'm positive that this is dangerous. Feelings are not legit.

We live in a time where we're controlled by our inclinations (could this be indulging our sinful nature?). We are an emotionally-driven people. That's what gets us into so much trouble. That's why we grow quickly infatuated with people, get married, and after years of our "feelings" not being satisfied, we get divorced. Because we lost that loving feeling.

We are all about feelings. Feelings of love and of hate. Could these feelings be deceptive?

Absolutely.

This past year, I've had trouble engaging in corporate worship. I'd go to InterVarsity large group, and because I didn't feel like worshipping, I felt that my actions toward the Lord wouldn't be sincere and I'd be a hypocrite just for being there, singing.

But Eugene Peterson disagrees and in his book, A Long Obedience In the Same Direction, he addresses this:

God made us, redeems us, provides for us. The natural, honest, healthy, logical response to that is to praise God. When we praise we are functioning at the center, we are in touch with the basic, core reality of our being.
But very often we don't feel like it, and so we say, "It would be dishonest for me to go to a place of worship and praise God when I don't feel like it. I would be a hypocrite." The psalm (Psalm 122) says, "I don't care if you feel like it: as was decreed, "give thanks to the name of God."
I have put great emphasis on the fact that Christians worship because they want to, not because they are forced to. But I have never said that we worship because we feel like it. Feelings are great liars. If Christians worshiped only when they felt like it, there would be precious little worship. Feelings are important in many areas but completely unreliable in matters of faith. Paul Scherer is laconic: "The Bible wastes very little time on the way we feel."

When I read this, I wanted to throw my book across the room, not because I was offended, but because it hit a nerve. Everything that I had thought about having sincere feelings for the Lord was suddenly challenged. Worship is not a feeling, as Peterson remarks, it is first an act that develops feelings for God.

In the shell of my house, as I'm lazily toiling through my day (oxymoron?), I need to act on my faith. God's grace is sufficient to save. But we are saved by grace through faith. I often don't feel like doing anything. So, I need to fight for it. I hate the things I do, but it Christ who does work within us. Bwana Asifiwe!

We may easily lose control and let our feelings take us captive. My anger siezes me, and keeps me in a place where the devil can have a foothold. But the Lord is our portion and he is mighty to save. He is so much bigger than our feelings of anger- asante sana Yesu!

When my heart was grieved
and my spirit embittered,
I was senseless and ignorant.
I was a brute beast before you.
Yet I am always with you.
You hold me with your right hand.
You guide me with your counsel
and afterward, you will take me
into your glory.
Whom have I in heaven but you?
And earth has nothing I desire beside you.
My flesh and heart may fail,
but God is the strength of my heart,
and my portion, forever.
(Psalm 73)