Clever Lies We Should Avoid 3/3

“How I feel tells me what is true.”

I once heard a seminary student, who happened to be a woman, ask a well-known pastor, “Why would God give me a passion to preach if He didn’t want me to do so?” The pastor answered something to the effect of, “Have you found your passions, desires, and feelings to be accurate messengers of what God wants?”

Leaving aside the whole debate on women preaching, the pastor’s answer is an important reminder that we have bought into a lie. Most likely don’t phrase it as blatant as I have quoted it above, but it is the essence of what we have come to believe. We think that the way we feel about things is how God feels. That our thoughts are God’s thoughts.

The truth is that our passions, desires, and feelings are just as likely to be motivated by sin as by holiness. Perhaps more so. So, we should definitely trust things like God’s word more than our guts when it comes to knowing God’s will, and truth.

And when we look to God’s word, what we find might surprise us. People’s passions and emotions often don’t line up with God’s plans for them. Not at first. God’s plans can feel scary and impossible. They are things we can’t do in our own strength.

And the things that we desire can often be exactly the things that we should avoid.