Hi ~

Yesterday I was telling a little story about a hot person in a cold house. If you haven’t read that one yet, I recommend doing it so this one will make sense.

I ended it with quoting Paul in Ephesians 3:16-19.

He prayed that the people he was writing to would know the love of Christ

. . . that surpasses knowledge.

The second “know” is the knowing of intellect, like book learning. Paul is saying here that the love of Christ is beyond intellectual grasping.

The first “know” is the knowing of the senses, the perception, the experience. The feelings.

In fact, Paul knew that experiential knowing was far more powerful than intellectual knowing.

When we have known something experientially, when it “feels true,” it will be a far more solid belief than something we hang on to intellectually.

Paul knew that feelings weren’t simply to be dismissed, but were a thermostat of the deepest level of belief. He wasn’t afraid to pray that our feelings would be affected by the deepest kind of knowing. He wasn’t afraid to pray that our knowing would be experiential.

We must not be afraid to pray that either.

Go back to yourself, burning up in that cold house, in the story I told yesterday.

When you find that the heat you were experiencing came not from the room but from a raging fever, then you can see that your feelings served an important purpose as that internal thermostat.

Something is wrong, something needs to be taken care of.

There’s more than just lack of belief to try to overcome—there’s also healing to be done.

When that’s accomplished, there won’t be any need to continually remind yourself that the room is cold.

You’ll believe it because you’ll experientially know it to be true.

So, how can you know when you should listen to your feelings?

I would argue that you should always listen to them. Without becoming so introspective that you can’t function, don’t ignore them; seek to understand them.

I would argue that emotions don’t lie.

You just need to find out what it is they’re telling the truth about.

God has told you truth about Himself.

What is standing in the way of believing Him?

Your emotions are signal lights, flares, pointing to whatever is in the way.

Bring your emotions to Him, understanding that the emotions themselves are not sinful.

As you do, you can find that your deepest experiential beliefs can align with the truth God has told you about Himself and about you.

Depending on the depth of trauma and moral injury, this can be a long process. But as you seek to truly know the true Lord Jesus Christ, through His Word, through the Holy Spirit, through His creation, and through the input of wise (and trauma-informed) Jesus followers, your own feelings can more and more agree with what Paul prayed, so that you yourself can truly say, from the depth of your experiential knowing,

According to the riches of His glory

God has granted ME to be strengthened with power

Through His Spirit in my inner being

So that Christ is dwelling in MY heart through faith.

I am rooted and grounded in love.

I have strength to comprehend, with all the saints,

What is the breadth and length and height and depth—

And I KNOW the love of Christ, that surpasses knowledge.

Indeed, I am filled with all the fullness of God.

This I pray for you, that you will know this.

With you in longing for our emotions to express the truth we know in the innermost parts of our hearts,

Rebecca

Untwisting Scriptures at heresthejoy.com

See my Untwisting Scriptures series

P.S. I’ve written much more about our emotions in the second half of Untwisting Scriptures #3. I hope it will be helpful to you.

P.P.S. I’d love to hear your own story of how the Lord has helped you with your emotions as you have come to understand what they were telling the truth about.

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