We live in a time when the emotional outweighs the rational. Instead of emphasizing reason in our discourse and rhetoric, we like emotion: the very ideo of using those facts is seen as cruel, insensitive. As if we can do anything about it. This robs us of effectiveness, and dilutes our duty.
The emphasis has gone from whether something is factually true or right, or produces the proper results, or is spiritually effectual, to whether the practice feels right or wrong. This is the predominant reason why most preachers do not effectually preach Scripture. The emphasis is not on getting out the message of God present in Scripture, but on using Scripture for a veneer of spirituality in a message that is fully calculated on sending people away feeling good about themselves (or as the Churchians would say, “meeting their felt needs”). This produces a different message, which only pushes people into their own personal Jesuses and gives them cover to deny their sin before an objective and absolute God.
To put it simply, we all have a mission. We do not have to like it, but the mission is ours. The mission may be simple but hard (raising children, keeping a home), hidden (there is a man who gets up at 5 am to sweep the hall before kirk. Every week), or one of leadership. We have to do our mission. We do not have to feel good about it.
Because responding to feelings ain’t of Christ. It is the mindset of our enemy: the pagans.
17Brothers and sisters, join in imitating me, and observe those who live according to the example you have in us. 18For many live as enemies of the cross of Christ; I have often told you of them, and now I tell you even with tears. 19Their end is destruction; their god is the belly; and their glory is in their shame; their minds are set on earthly things. 20But our citizenship is in heaven, and it is from there that we are expecting a Savior, the Lord Jesus Christ. 21He will transform the body of our humiliation that it may be conformed to the body of his glory, by the power that also enables him to make all things subject to himself.
1Therefore, my brothers and sisters, whom I love and long for, my joy and crown, stand firm in the Lord in this way, my beloved.
3:31Then his mother and his brothers came; and standing outside, they sent to him and called him. 32A crowd was sitting around him; and they said to him, “Your mother and your brothers and sisters are outside, asking for you.” 33And he replied, “Who are my mother and my brothers?” 34And looking at those who sat around him, he said, “Here are my mother and my brothers! 35Whoever does the will of God is my brother and sister and mother.”
4:1Again he began to teach beside the lake. Such a very large crowd gathered around him that he got into a boat on the lake and sat there, while the whole crowd was beside the lake on the land. 2He began to teach them many things in parables, and in his teaching he said to them: 3“Listen! A sower went out to sow. 4And as he sowed, some seed fell on the path, and the birds came and ate it up. 5Other seed fell on rocky ground, where it did not have much soil, and it sprang up quickly, since it had no depth of soil. 6And when the sun rose, it was scorched; and since it had no root, it withered away. 7Other seed fell among thorns, and the thorns grew up and choked it, and it yielded no grain. 8Other seed fell into good soil and brought forth grain, growing up and increasing and yielding thirty and sixty and a hundredfold.” 9And he said, “Let anyone with ears to hear listen!”
We do not want to worship our desires, nor do we want to move into the sentimentality of being with those who love us — even when they are distressed — if our mission takes us elsewhere. Jesus has a double message here. The first is to his family, that what he is doing is more important than being with them.
Even though being with them is not a sin, but one of the comforts we have in this life. But the mission comes first.
And to do that, you have to sacrifice how you are feeling.
Consider this example, of an army wife whose husband is injured
For ten months I have done whatever has been in my power to give RLB rest. I do not allow thoughts of disrespect to enter my heart. I pray endlessly for my husband and his healing. I do what I can to stop my children from expressing unhappiness. No, we can’t go on a vacation. No, we can’t drive fifteen hours to visit extended family. No, we can’t go to the amusement park. No, we don’t know if we’ll be moving back home. No, we don’t know what the future holds. Get over it. And do not disrupt the harmony and peace of our home that your father needs to recover.
I remember clearly the wife I was the last time my husband was in need and I absolutely refuse to be her again. My eyes are wide open to the plans of the enemy. I guard my heart, my association… everything. This time I will win. There is no complaining or fret or worry. I make no time for useless relationships. I certainly have no time for poisonous individuals who would consider a negative word about my husband.
There are three other posts by Morticia, SSM and Songtwoeleven which talk about the same thing. The illnesses and difficulties that their husbands had forced them into a binary decision set. They either had to obey Christ, or follow their feelings. Their man had collapsed. He was not the attractive, vibrant man she married — but each one of these women has chosen to stay with him. To control her feelings. And the discipline of obedience has deepened their love to their spouse.
We are told all to often to take the easy way. To avoid pain: to not measure but estimate: to avoid our mission. We are promised that we will not be asked to more than we can cope with — (but we can cope with quite a lot).
Finally, if we are obedient, we will be seen as dangerous, radical, fanatical — even though our obedience is frail compared with those who went before. As an example, it takes me 30 — 50 minutes to do this a day. Luther studied and prayed four hours. Many people prayed two or three hours a day.
It is sign of how far we have fallen since the Hippies subverted the narrative of the West that the ordinary disciplines and practices of most Christians, in most times, are now seen as irrationally pious. Ignore that. Ignore your feelings. Do your mission, which is to obey the word af God in the role you are, right now.
Hear, hear.