Chapter One
The Divine
OrderOh, the havoc that is wrought, and the tragedy, the misery,
and the wretchedness that are to be found in the world, simply
because people do not know how to handle their own feelings!
D. Martyn Lloyd-Jones
I grew up playing sports, and basketball in particular has
always been a favorite. Though I turned fifty last year, I
often remind my younger friends and playing partners that
"I still have game." I keep insisting that my quickness and
three-point shot are as prime as ever-though I see in their
eyes they don't entirely buy my self-assessment.
There's one thing, however, that I have to admit is particularly
different from my younger days: I'm much more
conscious of the importance of warming up before a game.
I know from long experience that my muscles work best
when they're prepared-stretched and warm instead of cold
and tight.
We often need a warm-up just as much for our spiritual
and mental muscles, and I think that's especially true
in this book. Before we push forward in the demanding
spiritual exercise of more deeply experiencing Gethsemane
and Calvary, we need to limber up our spiritual and mental
faculties by exploring the whole matter of our feelings,
and how they affect our view of reality and the way we live
in response to reality. This is a critical conversation I need
to have with you . and it can make all the difference in how
much this book means to you.
If we want our hearts to be moved by the cross, if we
want our emotions engaged, if we want to be truly
amazed . we have to start by putting our feelings in their
proper place. So we need to slow down for a moment and
contemplate God's order for truth-based living and thinking,
an order which we have a sinful tendency to disregard.
How Do You Feel?
Have you ever considered how thoroughly most of us live
by our feelings today-how feelings-focused we are? In a
typical day, how often do you make decisions and evaluate
reality based primarily on your emotions at the moment?
Take the process of reading this book, for example. My
guess is that you've already encountered statements here
and there that made you think, "How do I feel about this?"
Perhaps without even being consciously aware of this reaction,
you were judging the merit of my words according to
the subjective feelings you experienced while reflecting on
them.
If so, you're not alone.
Our common tendency is to
habitually begin with the internal,
the subjective, the experiential, then
use those feelings and impressions to
determine what we'll accept as being
objective fact. We let our feelings tell
us what's true, instead of letting the
truth transform our feelings.
For most of us, this isn't something
we practice only while reading
a book or hearing a sermon. It's the
fundamental mindset with which we approach practically
everything. It's how we live, and we even explain our daily
choices by saying, "I feel good about this," or, "I had a bad
feeling about it."
We're conditioned to this approach not only by our sin
but also by our culture, which incessantly entices us to follow
our "heart" and do whatever makes us feel good-along
with the flattering assurance that nonstop feeling
good is something we absolutely deserve!
It would be fine to follow our feelings if we could
always be sure they're faithful to reality. But they aren't; their
perspective on reality typically has huge blind spots. As a
result, our emotions are flighty, fickle, and far too easily
dominated by any number of influences-spilled coffee at
breakfast, a traffic stall when you're running late, a cutting
comment from a coworker. Our feelings simply cannot be
trusted.
Seldom Amazed
Even when it comes to our spiritual life, at any given
moment we direct and locate our faith in our emotional
state rather than in clearly objective truth. We tend to ask
God for more "experience," then assure Him that if He'll
give it, we'll acknowledge and believe His truth. And one of
the tragic results is that we're seldom amazed by the reality
of the cross and of the gracious disposition of God toward
sinners that the cross reveals.
It happens frequently, for example, in our corporate
worship. As people around us sing words expressing profound
gratitude to Jesus for His death on our behalf, we
may disqualify ourselves from truly entering into this adoration
of our Savior because our "passion" this morning is
absent.
It can happen also when we open our Bibles. Before us
is a passage with words like redemption, Savior, gospel, justified.
But for now those words evoke little response in us,
and unthinkingly we pass them over to find something else
that might light our fire. And if the enthusiasm doesn't
come quickly . well, we may just forget the whole thing.
After all, who wants to spend the mental energy it takes to
think carefully and intensely about
the Scriptures? Who has time to
study? Who has time to meditate?
And this is how serious it gets: In
our arrogance, we invest our feelings
(or lack thereof ) with final authority
rather than recognize that our emotions
are unstable and unreliable,
often hopelessly controlled by selfish
pride, and riddled with lies-lies that
"feel" like the truth.
I've watched people yield to such
lies repeatedly. It's a frightening experience to sit with individuals
who actually insist that what they feel is ultimately
more authoritative to them than what's written clearly in
Scripture. They even somehow assume God is sympathetic
to this attitude. But He is not. He would, in fact, identify
it as the height of prideful arrogance-and God is unalterably
opposed to the proud.
Our First Question
That's the bad news. The good news: He gives grace to the
humble. Who are the humble? The humble are those
whose first response to objective truth from God's Word is
not to ask, "How do I feel?" but to say, "I'm not going to
let my faith be determined and directed by the subjective
and the experiential. Instead I confess openly before God
that I will believe the objective truth of His Word, regardless
of how I feel."
Bible teacher D. Martyn Lloyd-Jones
once issued this warning:
"Avoid the mistake of concentrating
overmuch upon your feelings. Above
all, avoid the terrible error of making
them central." Anyone making this
mistake, he adds, is "doomed to be
unhappy," because of the failure to
follow "the order that God himself
has ordained."
And what is that order? Lloyd-Jones
reminds us that "what we have in the Bible is Truth;
it is not an emotional stimulus . and it is as we apprehend
and submit ourselves to the truth that the feelings follow."
When we focus first on truth, lo and behold, feelings follow!
And they'll be reliable feelings, because they're anchored in
truth. That's the divine order.
Lloyd-Jones then proceeds to this profound application:
"I must never ask myself in the first instance: What do
I feel about this? The first question is, Do I believe it?"
Getting Things in Order
He's exactly right. It doesn't mean we never evaluate how we
feel; that's just not where we're to start when we encounter
truth. The starting place is determining what we truly believe.
Otherwise, we end up actually shortchanging ourselves emotionally
and experientially, since deep and profound feelings
are the inevitable effect of Scripture rightly understood and
believed, and of worship entered into properly.
As you read and meditate and think seriously about
what's in your Bible, and believe and accept it, then ultimately
you will indeed experience it, and you will feel the effect
of it. There's heart-transforming truth in the Scriptures, but
you won't encounter it by first trying to feel it.
Knowing and wholeheartedly believing the truth will
always bring you eventually to a trustworthy experience of
the truth. But if you trust your feelings first and foremost,
if you exalt your feelings, if you invest your feelings with
final authority-they'll deposit you on the emotional roller
coaster which so often characterizes our lives.
Please don't misunderstand. I'm not advocating a complete
ignoring of our feelings. Nor am I criticizing genuine
spiritual experience, the kind of vibrant passion for God
that Jonathan Edwards referred to as "religious affections."
Quite the opposite! I am in fact a passionate advocate of
genuine spiritual experience and religious affections-it's
just not where we're meant to begin. Our feelings are an essential
part of our right response to reality, but they should
never in themselves be the determiner of reality.
Let me ask you: Where do you consistently direct your
faith? What does it rest on? Is it your emotional state . or
the objective realities that the Word of God and the Spirit
of God have revealed? When you read or hear biblical truth
proclaimed, what internal conversation takes place in your
soul? Is your first reaction, What do I feel about this?
If so, do you plan to continue submitting everything
ultimately to your feelings? Or will you instead trust in
God's testimony, so that whenever you encounter biblical
truth, your initial question will always be, Do I believe it?
That's the only reliable way to transform your emotions .
and to take them into a realm of love and adoration
for the Lord that you've never before experienced.
Where It Matters Most
The divine order begins not with ourselves, but with God.
And in this book we'll see how putting God and His objective
truth first, and our feelings second, is never more applicable
or valuable than when we draw near the cross, which
is the hinge and center of human history. It presents an
unfathomably stunning reality that we do well to return to
again.
One Sunday morning, Charles Spurgeon was the guest
preacher at a church in a country town in eastern England.
Seated behind him was his grandfather, who was also a
preacher. Spurgeon was speaking that day on Ephesians
2:8-"For by grace you have been saved through faith. And
this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God."
As Spurgeon carefully explained this glorious gospel of
grace, now and again he would hear the encouraging voice
of his grandfather behind him, saying gently, "Good!Good!" At one point, he even heard this gentle prod from
the old man's voice: "Tell them that again, Charles."
And of course, Spurgeon did indeed "tell them that
again."
Most likely you're not a stranger to the gospel of grace
and the basic truths of the cross of Christ. This book, however,
is an opportunity for us to follow the wise exhortation
of Spurgeon's grandfather and to see and hear these wonderful
things again, more clearly than ever, so God's grace
astounds us as never before.
Thank You, Father, for directing my attention
upward and outward to objective truth,
and away from self-centeredness
and enslavement to subjectivity.
I turn away from self-focused arrogance and toward You-
to receive forgiveness for that arrogance.
I direct my faith toward You and Your Word,
for You alone are worthy.
As my faith is built up and strengthened,
transform my emotions so that I more truly love You
with all my heart and all my mind and
all my soul and all my strength.
(Continues.)
