Feelings Can Fool You

Have you ever stepped into a tub of warm water without realizing your feet were cold?  If so, you know that your feet feel as though they’ve been dunked in a pot of boiling oil!  Likewise, if you’ve been to the dentist and gotten a shot of Novocain, you know how big your lips, nose, chin feel.  What a shock to stand before a mirror and realize your face looks exactly as it should.

My point is: feelings can fool us.

Take the individual who, for whatever reason, idolizes work.  He or she will feel guilty spending even half a day doing nothing.  There are few subjects that are clearer than this one in scripture: it is right, godly, and holy to rest one day a week.  We have to conclude that this person’s feelings are fooling them.

Meanwhile, I’ve met a few men in their late teens and twenties who consider themselves hard put-upon to work forty hours a week.  True, nearly all of us have more work to do than the work we do to earn our wages.  Nonetheless, if we feel shorted of the good life because we have to work five or six days a week, our feelings are fooling us.

I know women who either secretly or not­so­secretly resent their husband because he is not “the spiritual leader in the home.”  Uhm, who says he should be?  What I read in the Bible is that in Christ (i.e., in spiritual things) there is no male or female, and elsewhere I read that all will know the Lord, from the greatest to the least.  A woman who expects her husband to be her spiritual leader is expecting the wrong thing, and when she feels resentment for his “lack,” her feelings are fooling her.

What brought this to mind was a little bout of anger I experienced yesterday.  When I took it to the Lord, He seemed to be telling me that I was angry because I was being shafted, and I was being shafted because I was afraid to require more of the person at whom I was angry.  I felt guilty even thinking about requiring more of this person, though.  After all, I should always be the one to make the sacrifices, and I should never demand or expect anything from a relationship… 

My feelings were fooling me.

The truth is that in every relationship, both parties should be doing some giving and some receiving.  Both parties should be making some effort.  Even in our relationship with God, we have to give all our anxieties to Him.  We have to make the effort to enter into His rest.  True, everything He gives us is infinitely better than what we give to Him, but we are required to give it, nonetheless.  We can’t keep what we have and still receive what He wants to give us.

Keep your thermometer (the Bible) nearby for when your feet feel like they’re burning—because your feelings can fool you

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