DIRECTION FOR THE NEW YEAR
From: Thomas J Hacker
“The heart is deceitful above all things and beyond cure. Who can understand it? I the Lord searches the heart and examines the mind, to reward a man according to his conduct, according to what his deeds deserve…Jeremiah 17:9-10.”
The New Year is soon upon us, and we’ll all hear things like, “Time for a new start! Learn to trust your feelings – follow your heart and all will be well. Go for it! Just do it!” This is a very popular message in US culture, reinforced through the media and “preached” by positive-thinking gurus everywhere. There’s only one problem – God’s Word doesn’t agree! The heart is always associated with our feelings and our emotions. But God says, through Jeremiah, that we cannot trust our emotions because they will always deceive us. Please don’t misunderstand – I am not condemning emotions. God loves us, hates sin, and has righteous anger – He is emotional! God created us in His image, and emotions are part of that. But He gave them to us for a purpose. We are to use our emotions when we worship and pray (see the Psalms), we are commanded to be emotional (see the 1st Commandment), and we can be emotional without sinning (see Eph. 4:26 as one example). But when we let those emotions control us and supersede the truth of God we fall into great error.
Proverbs 3:5-6 (NIV) tells us what God wants us to do. “Trust in the Lord with all your heart and lean not on your own understanding; in all your ways acknowledge Him, and He will make your paths straight.” Another version says “and He will direct your paths.” How often our “path” is misdirected by our feelings! We are often controlled by our emotions instead of trusting in God’s control. And that’s what Satan wants!! The master deceiver wants us to live by our feelings and not by faith because he knows we WILL be led astray. Not that we might be, but that we WILL be! You can turn on any situation comedy or drama, listen to any secular and even some “Christian” music, read almost any popular novel, and this truth is in all of them! Our society is like the nation of Israel during the time of the Judges, where “everyone did whatever he thought was right.” (TLB) But when we do this we are really rejecting God!
Let me give an example of this. I used to work in the entertainment business. As I talked with many of my fellow entertainers about God, their feeling was that God had rejected them because the Bible spoke against their chosen lifestyle. I often heard, “How can what I do be so wrong when it feels so right?” Their feeling and experience and even clergy told them they were right, so God’s Word had to be wrong. But don’t be quick to judge, because this opinion is not limited to those outside of God’s family.
God’s Word commands us to forgive (see Colossians 3), but say, “Well, you just don’t know what they did to me! I can never forgive them!” We’re told to subject ourselves to authorities but say “I just don’t feel what that pastor is doing is right, so I won’t support him.” We get “in touch with our feelings” when what we really need is to get in touch with God! This Hebrew word for “acknowledge” implies a very intimate, personal knowledge – a relationship. But because it’s easier to trust our feelings, and get the instant gratification that brings, we seek the world’s opinion to justify our weakness. But the child of God must know Him and His Word so well that they can overcome their emotions, stand strong in those truths and the “Truth – Jesus -, and wait for Him to reward them! This is soooo hard, but the rewards are soooo great, during this life and for eternity!
These words may seem strong, but what I’m encouraging you to do is not easy. My prayer is that as this New Year dawns you and I will determine by the Lord’s power not to be deceived anymore by our feelings! That we would give those strongholds in our lives, Satan’s great deceptions that are ingrained in our habits and amplified by our emotions, over to God, and defeat them through the power of His truth and the knowledge of Him and His Word! Only the Lord understands our hearts and minds, and only He has the wisdom, knowledge, and power to help us have victory over ourselves and the world! And only then will our paths be straight. May God direct your every path as you trust Him during the coming year!