Happy New Year!
At our house, today is the “Christmas” gathering for the children and grandchildren of my mother and father. This is the first time we’ve not been able to gather at my dad’s house. It will be different, for sure; but I know, just like in the church, it’s the people who make up the “house.” So, we still have the house and, one day soon, the entire house will assemble again in a locale that will be permanent and never unavailable for any reason. I love the hope that’s in the Word!
The new year is a perfect time to get into the Word. I want to personally invite you to jump into our Digging Deep study on “Authority.” We begin a brand new month today called “But Isn’t My Heart the Most Important Thing?”. It begins like this:
But Isn’t my Heart the Most Important Thing?
As I write this study, I am taking time out, every few minutes, to try to work with a young friend who has lost her way. She has gotten into some trouble because of her sin. She is facing some consequences that she didn’t really think through at the time of the commission of her sin. We all do this, at times. Statements like these keep coming in texts from her:
“But I never stopped loving God and this just doesn’t feel fair.”
“But I feel so broken and alone.”
“But does God really want me to be so miserable?”
“I can’t do this. I just don’t feel this is what God wants for my life.”
“I know this worship may not be what is right, but I just felt so alone when I worshipped over there.”
We live in a world that’s all about feeling. Back in the days of early television, there were the cops and then there were the robbers. There were the Snow Whites/Cinderellas and then there were the wicked queens/stepmothers. There were the brave sailors and then there were the greedy pirates. Now the lines are a little more blurry. The good guys are not really always so good and the bad guys are often just victims of a bad society. Additionally, there are lots of shades of grey in between the blackness of sin and the purity of righteousness. It’s really not even so much about the goodness or evil of the actions, themselves. It’s more about the heart of the perpetrator of evil. What was he feeling and how much of that feeling can be blamed on how many other people?
The big cultural shift to emotionalism is all around us. Philosophers call it ethical subjectivism. That’s the belief that we base our decisions on what we feel is right, rather than having a standard that instructs those decisions. This philosophy emanates from many places today, but it has gained a mighty momentum in Hollywood. Oprah’s advice to young girls recently on Good Morning America is an apt sampling of this new dose of the same old “better-felt-than-told” subjective philosophy.
“Every one of us has an internal guidance, a GPS…if you follow that you will be led to the highest good for you, always. That’s why all the voices of the world mean nothing if your voice is in alignment with all the voices of the world.”
I am not sure what that even means. There’s a glitch in the wording that makes it nonsensical. But, in any case, the inner voice is what is felt, not what is instructed.
Marilyn Monroe said “A woman knows by feelings, by intuition, what is best for herself.
Then there’s this one that might be on your refrigerator already. It’s simply attributed to “the Universe”: “Choose feelings over logic, adventure over perfection, here over there, now over then, and always LOVE, LOVE, LOVE.”
Now this all sounds sweet, but it is so very opposed to the teachings of the Creator of said universe, that we as Christian women must activate our debunking radars each morning before we leave the house or turn on the computer. The world is full of sweet sounding meaningless bunkum and balderdash that is in direct conflict with the instructions of the One who has already navigated our path safely through this life to the other side.
There is a way that seems right to a man, but the ends thereof are the ways of death. Proverbs 16:25.
Let’s examine, this month, the impact that the homage to “feelings” is having on the church and on our individual responses to the authority of the Word of God, particularly as it relates to our worship of Him.
If you are one of those women, like I am, who benefits from a plan and a sisterhood of sweet accountability, don’t wait. You can download the study free at https://thecolleyhouse.org/store#!/Digging-Deep/c/20688312/offset=0&sort=normal or purchase the notebook, if that works best. Happy New Year: 365 days, if He wills, to give Him glory!
