Faithful Paradox

I am leading a breakout session at a church conference next week and am talking about the topic of feelings; how do we encourage someone who believes that something must feel true in order to be true? In all honesty, it’s a session that was created to encourage my own heart and spur me on in faithfulness because it is the dark side of my own story.

Over the next 3 days, I will give 9 quick points that I plan to share at the conference of things that have been helpful for me as I battle to believe what is true over what feels true.

It’s important to start with understanding that feelings are not the enemy of faith. My experience has often been that when someone (me) is battling feelings, it’s easy to jump to verses like Jeremiah 17:9, “the heart is deceitful and desperately sick” and discount what someone may be feeling. “What you believe is wrong so just change and believe rightly.” Oh, if only I could!

I would argue that, according to Hebrews 11:1, faith is being convinced of what we do not see, and at times, faith is being convinced of what we do not feel. When done rightly, feelings are a beautiful companion to faith that can help true faith grow and flourish.

First, Recognize that emotions are a God-given gift, which we know is true, because we see such a variety of emotions shown in Christ who, according to Colossians 1:15 is, “the image of the invisible God”

1. Emotions are not bad – they are God given
2. Jesus is described as a, “man of sorrows, acquainted with grief” (Isaiah 53:3).
3. He felt joy in obedience (Hebrews 2:2). 
4. He felt anger with the religious elite (Matthew 23:33). 
5. He felt deep sorrow and “Jesus wept” when faced with the pain of sin and death (John 11:4-33). 
6. He felt compassion for those who were suffering (Matthew 9:20, John 8:1). 
7. He felt weary and worn from the demands of ministry (Matthew 14:13, Luke 5:16). 
8. He felt anger about the misuse of his Father’s house and the greed of the religious (Matthew 23:33). 
9. He was overwhelmed with sorrow (Matthew 26:38)
10. We see Jesus showing compassion, empathy, grief, anger, passion, frustration, agony, amongst many other emotions.

Secondly, we must truly learn the language of lament. 

We hear a lot about lament these days in Christian circles. I think some of us know the word lament, but do not actually understand what it is. This world is not as it should be. We must learn what it is to lament before the Lord. I would define lament as coming before the Lord in our anguish, in our pain, in our sorrow, in our confusion and crying out to him.

As a people, we are not very good at lament. As Americans, we don’t like to be sad or feel uncomfortable emotions for more than a few minutes. We also want instant comfort and so lament often feels pointless because we can lament all day long and still feel deep pain and confusion. We also often don’t receive the answer we are hoping to receive from God so it feels frustrating or discouraging.

I love the Psalms of David because we learn what it is to lament from him. We see David praying prayers of lament throughout the Psalms “Turn, O LORD, deliver my life; save me for the sake of your steadfast love.” (Psalm 6:4) When he felt like God was not listening, he tells God in Psalm 5, “listen to me!” He insists that God to answer him in Psalm 4. No matter the things David was feeling – good and bad, joy or sorrow, celebration or lament – he wrote out his feelings toward God. There are times in which David seems to border on disrespect towards God – and yet we also see that God is patient and kind with him. We can learn a lot from David.

We also see Job lamenting before the Lord, expressing anger, confusion, frustration and pain. At one point in chapter 3 he yells at God. What we learn from someone like Job is that when we are confused, in pain and feeling things deeply, the things we believe, the words that come in our pain are often not honoring to God. We will likely say a lot of really stupid things to and about God. Yet we see that God is gracious and quick to forgive. 

I would not advocate someone being disrespectful toward God and it’s important to understand that the goal of lament is not simply to have a gripe session with God. Rather, the goal of lament is helping someone learn to cry out to God – even if it’s messy, bordering on disrespectful, and full of anger and emotion. I would argue that crying out to God in a messy way is better than shutting down feelings altogether. God already knows what is in the heart and teaching them to cry out to God – even when it’s messy – will begin to train them to process their emotion with God.

When someone is feeling something deeply, often feeling confused by or angry with God, the deepest temptation is to run away. Learning to lament trains us to run towards God in times of pain and sorrow. It’s talking to God about our pain, about our confusion, about our disappointment. 

Third, we must learn to grieve the “no’s” of God’s

In our faith, we are taught from very early on that what is right and godly and good is surrender – not my will, but yours be done. And this is a beautiful truth and right heart posture to pursue. However, it is rarely explained that getting to this point is almost always a process. A piece of the process that is helpful for those who feel things deeply is, in some sense, giving them permission to take time to grieve the fact that God’s answer was no. 

I have met very few people who have faced true loss that have instantly been at the place of saying “not my will but yours be done” and truly meant it. It has been a discipline and an act of obedience, trusting that the heart surrender will follow. I think we even see this in Jesus. He asked God three times to take the cup. He sweat blood. He was terrified. There is no evidence that his spirit was at rest and peaceful. In fact, he willed himself to be obedient for the joy set before him. Philippians 2 tells us that he was obedient to death – his submission to God was an act of obedience.

Our submission to God – our submission to “not my will but yours be done” is an act of obedience that takes time and is a process. We may not feel ready to submit. We may not feel joyful about the submission. It may take a while to grieve how God has answered. We must learn to grieve when we feel disappointed with God’s answer and continue to work on obedience until our hearts are ready to submit. It is a process that takes time and often feels difficult in the process.

Come back tomorrow for my next 3 points….