Love? Not what most people think it is!

FEELINGS OF THE SPIRITUALLY TRANSFORMED PERSON - What feelings will dominate a life that has been inwardly transformed to be like Christ’s? They are feelings associated with love, joy, peace, and their underlying conditions. Also, faith (confidence) and hope are important in properly structuring the feeling dimension of the mind and self. Hope is anticipation of “unseen” good not yet here.

Sometimes the good is deliverance from present evil, so we “rejoice in hope” (Romans 12:12, PAR). Closely related to hope, faith is confidence grounded in reality—not a wild, desperate “leap.” Faith sees the reality of the unseen, and it includes a readiness to act as if the anticipated good were already in hand because of the reality of God (compare 2 Corinthians 4:17-18). Faith and hope in Christ lead us to stand in the grace (the action) of God, which leads to a life full of love. Love is will-to-good. We love others when we promote their good. We wish them well. Love’s contrary is malice, and its simple absence is indifference.

Love is not the same as desire, for I may desire something without even wishing it well. I might desire chocolate ice cream, but I do not wish it well. I wish to eat it. This is the difference between lust (mere desire) and love.

Desire and love are compatible when desire is ruled by love, but many people today do not know the difference between them. Hence, love constantly falls prey to lust. That is a major part of the deep sickness of contemporary life. Pride and fear no longer rule our lives when love is primary. Pride is defined by desire. It presumes that my desires should be fulfilled and that it is a crying shame if they are not. Lust and pride inevitably result in fear, for they bring us into a world of little dictators where people use and abuse others instead of helping and caring for them. The opposite of love is pride. Love eliminates pride because it nullifies our arrogant presumption that we should get our way. With love, pride and fear fade.

 

How do I jettison ugliest feelings?

If it feels as though our feelings are bigger than we are (like a giant boogeyman hunching over us), it’s because they’re being fed by the ideas and images we cultivate, especially those we play over in our mind. Because my first freedom is where I put my mind, I can ask, What ideas and images am I giving airtime to? 

For example, I grew up as a lazy child, and now I sometimes struggle to get myself seated at my desk. Although I faithfully show up for work, I despair over these feelings of laziness. What ideas and images might contribute to this? One of several is that I live in a culture that does not value work but instead tries to get out of it. Most people I know would love to win the lottery and retire immediately. But when work is valued, it’s as a means to productivity, achievement, and good reputation. I have somehow bought into the idea that work is bad and I should be able to get out of it. 

On the other hand, I love my work. Once I get going, I never want to quit. How confusing! A replacement image that helps me is that of several older friends who genuinely love to work hard and be useful. They work fruitfully and cheerfully and often produce things of great beauty—a new barn door or an enchanting dessert. 

TODAY’S EXPERIMENT - Consider a feeling that plagues you—one you wish you didn’t have. Set aside a time to ponder this before God, perhaps writing about it in a journal. Ask God to reveal to you the ideas and images you have (perhaps unknowingly) chosen to maintain. Sit quietly and ask God what feelings might replace these (perhaps love, joy, peace, confidence, or hope). Finally, consider what ideas and images would foster that replacement feeling.

 

Moods: If you read nothing else, please read this!!!

THE POWER OF THE “MOOD” - In modern times, feelings exercise almost total mastery over the individual. When people must decide what they want to do, feelings are all they have to go on. This is why contemporary Western life is peculiarly prone to gross immoralities and addictions. 

People are overwhelmed with decisions and can make those decisions only on the basis of feelings. As a result, people cannot distinguish between their feelings and their will, and they confuse feelings with reasons. They lack self-control, which is the steady capacity to direct yourself to accomplish what you have chosen or decided to do and be, even though you “don’t feel like it.” 

Without self-control, people drift through the days and years using addictive behavior to endure. Ideas and images foster and sustain feelings. Hopelessness and rejection live on images—often of a specific scene of unkindness, brutality, or abuse—that have become permanent fixtures within our mind, radiating negativity and leaving a background of deadly ideas that take over how we think. 

Such images cultivate moods, which pervade our selves and everything around us. Denial and repression of destructive feelings are not the answer. But feelings can be transformed by discipleship to Christ and the power of the gospel and the Spirit, through which the corresponding ideas and images are changed to positive ones. The proper course of action is to replace destructive feelings with others that are good or to subordinate them—anger and sexual desire, for example—in a way that makes them constructive. 

We do not try first to root out these destructive feelings, but they are eliminated as we make the first move: going toward love, joy, and peace, based on faith and hope in God. Then we experience feelings and moods associated with confidence, being acceptable, belonging, purposefulness, love, hope, joy, and peace. Being “accepted in the beloved” (Ephesians 1:6, KJV) is the humanly indispensable foundation for the reconstruction of all these positive feelings, moods, and their underlying conditions.

 

Can we keep from shooting our mouth off in contempt?

 

We may congratulate ourselves for sailing through a disturbing experience without “shooting our mouth off” but overlook the fact that we were primed to do so because of our underlying condition of contempt for certain people or certain situations. In our mind, we concluded that this person didn’t really know what he was talking about—compared to us! 

We may have kept our arrogance and know-it-all attitude quiet, but anything could have happened. (And our attitude may have “leaked out” anyway in our body language.) These settled conditions that underlie our feelings don’t seem wrong because we’ve developed culturally acceptable, euphemistic ways to disguise them: I’m not exacting, just careful! 

Because having a settled attitude (underlying condition) of contempt is common today, it’s important to listen carefully to our thought patterns regarding certain people and observe how we speak to and about them. We need to pay special attention not only to the background noise in our head but also to our tone of voice (so revealing), to the hunch of our shoulders, and to the set of our lips. These can be telling symptoms of our underlying attitudes. 

TODAY’S EXPERIMENT - Reflect on what might be a common underlying condition for you, such as hurry or discouragement or contempt. Try to put some distance between yourself and the condition in order to examine it. When did it start? Why are you now convinced you must hurry (or live in discouragement or look down on others)? What underlying condition is God inviting you to adopt instead? Consider how it would make your life lighter and easier (see Matthew 11:30).

Feelings & reason

HIDDEN DYNAMICS OF FEELINGS - Many of the feelings that animate us are destructive to others and ourselves. James pointedly asked, “What is the source of quarrels and conflicts among you? Is not the source your pleasures that wage war in your members? You lust and do not have; so you commit murder. You are envious and cannot obtain; so you fight and quarrel. . . . Where jealousy and selfish ambition exist, there is disorder and every evil thing” (4:1-2; 3:16). 

This explains what happens in many homes and churches. The need is not just to remove the conflict but also to address underlying feelings. The underlying feelings are settled conditions that lie beneath feelings. For example, one can live in the underlying condition of hatred, contempt, hurry, or discouragement but not always have the accompanying feelings. 

We’ve managed the feelings, but we still live in that condition. (Or on the positive side, one can live with the underlying condition of peace but may or may not always have feelings of peacefulness.) Those negative underlying conditions of our character must be addressed. 

Feelings can creep into other areas of our lives, changing the overall tone. They may take over our entire being and so determine the outcome of our lives as a whole. This explains why it is hard to reason with some people. Their mind has been taken over by certain feelings and serves those feelings at all costs. Some people never escape this fearful condition. 

Feelings can be successfully “reasoned with” and corrected by reality only in those who have the habit and are given the grace of listening to reason even when they are expressing violent feelings or are in the grip of them. Otherwise, strong feelings may blot out all else for those who have not been trained to identify, be critical of, and have some distance from their own feelings. A wise person will carefully keep the pathway open to the house of reason and go there regularly to listen.

 

You CAN partner with God to change to be more Christlike

                                             
How would you finish this sentence: Who would I be if I weren’t____________? Perhaps you might say moody, passionate (often a euphemism for opinionated), particular (as in a perfectionist), or funny (which may take the form of a merciless tease or a sarcastic wit). 

We’ve known ourselves to be a certain way for so long. We’ve heard people say, “She’s just that way,” and it has become part of our identity. One man I knew didn’t feel really alive unless he was in a rage. 

TODAY’S EXPERIMENT - Picture an imaginary conversation with someone who knows you well. Ask this person what he or she would change about you if it were possible. Then put yourself in the presence of God and read these verses to God: Put to death, therefore, whatever belongs to your earthly nature: sexual immorality, impurity, lust, evil desires and greed, which is idolatry. Because of these, the wrath of God is coming. You used to walk in these ways, in the life you once lived. But now you must also rid yourselves of all such things as these: anger, rage, malice, slander, and filthy language from your lips. Do not lie to each other. Since you have taken off your old self with its practices and have put on the new self, which is being renewed in knowledge in the image of its creator. Colossians 3:5–10. 

Pray, asking God one of these questions: is it really possible to...
Put to death whatever belongs to my earthly nature?
Take off my old self with his practices?
Put on a new self which is being renewed in knowledge in the image of my Creator?

If you wish, continue going over that last phrase, asking God to give you a glimpse of what it would be like to be renewed in knowledge in the image of your Creator. This is part of what God wants for you.

Replacing unruly feelings

 

MASTERED BY FEELINGS - Feelings live in the front row of our lives like unruly children clamoring for attention. No one can succeed in mastering feelings who tries to take them head-on and resist or redirect them by willpower in the moment of choice. 

Those who continue to be mastered by their feelings—such as anger, fear, sexual attraction, desire for food, need for looking good, or the residues of woundedness—are typically persons who in their heart of hearts believe that their feelings must be satisfied. They have long chosen the strategy of resisting their feelings instead of changing or replacing them. This creates a ruined person who makes himself “god” in his world. 

By contrast, the person who happily lets God be God accepts that feelings do not have to be fulfilled. Achieving this new vision of oneself requires openness to radical change, careful instruction, and abundant supplies of divine grace. 

For most people this comes only after they hit bottom and discover the hopelessness of their path. They cannot envision who they would be without the fears, angers, lusts, power ploys, and woundedness they learned in the home, school, and playground. 

But with this new vision, they now see themselves as ones being transformed to characterize the inner being of Jesus Christ. Now they can stop being persons who spend hours fantasizing sensual indulgence or revenge or who try to dominate or injure others in attitude, word, or deed. Now they will not repay evil for evil—push for push, blow for blow, taunt for taunt, contempt for contempt. They will not be always on the hunt to satisfy their lust of the flesh, lust of the eyes, and pride of life (see 1 John 2:16). 

At first such persons have no idea who they will be if they “put off the old person” (involving the wrong feeling) and “put on the new person” (involving the good feeling). To long for the identity of a mere “apprentice of Jesus” is the starting point from which a new identity emerges.