What to do with our feeling

Before I begin, I want to make it clear that I am only speaking of the stronghold/behavioral aspect of fear, guilt, etc. There ARE spirits of guilt, fear, worthlessness, etc. that can also be a factor and must be addressed (and driven out). However, if all we do is address the spirits but leave the strongholds in place, they are liable to return. This teaching deals strictly with the behavioral piece of the puzzle.

Feelings do not necessarily speak truth. If you feel guilty, it does not mean that you are guilty. Many times, feelings merely tell us what is going on in our thought life (or what we are really believing). If we think we are guilty, there will be feelings of guilt as the fruit of those thoughts or beliefs. It’s sort of like feeling a hot stove; feelings are meant to help alert us of something that is wrong. Feelings should not be ignored, but properly interpreted. For example, if you feel guilty, don’t start thinking “Oh, it must be true. I need to go confess my sins again and go try to dot every i and cross every t.” That is letting feelings tell us what to do, and feelings can be (and often are) wrong.

When we begin to feel guilty, we need to instead get to the root of the problem and address it with God’s Word. What does God’s Word say about our guilt? It tells us that if we confess our sin and forsake it, we are forgiven and cleansed of whatever kind of unrighteousness that we’ve committed. When we choose to believe that over how we feel, then our feelings will begin to change because they are merely the fruit of our thoughts and beliefs. In this case, our feelings were wrong because our belief was wrong. Remember, feelings are just the fruit of our thoughts and beliefs. If we feel wrong, then it wouldn’t hurt to stop and ask ourselves what we believe. Do we believe that when a man confesses his sin and believes upon Christ, that he is forgiven? Or do we, in the back of our minds, wonder if we’ve sinned too badly, or if we need to do something before we can be forgiven? Our feelings can be a great revealer of what we are really believing under the surface.

It is important to be balanced when dealing with our feelings. I don’t think it’s healthy to completely ignore our feelings, but I can assure you that it is not healthy to go by our feelings either. The key is to learn how to discern what our feelings are really telling us, and then get to the root of the problem. Feelings of guilt, for example, do not necessarily mean that we are indeed guilty, but rather that our beliefs are not rooted and grounded on God’s Word like they ought to be.

A dirty conscience should not be ignored, but rather investigated. False guilt is an indication of a faulty belief. Is a clean conscience important according to God’s Word? Yes!

How much more shall the blood of Christ, who through the eternal Spirit offered himself without spot to God, purge your conscience from dead works to serve the living God?

Hebrews 9:14

So with that said, I believe it is important to have a clean conscience. But we can only have that clean conscience when we stand firm on God’s Word and believe what it really says about the forgiveness of our sins. When we truly believe that the Blood of Christ has paid the full price for our failures, only then can we have a truly clean conscience. As long as we think that we’ve messed up too badly, or need to do something before we can be forgiven, we will live with a dirty conscience. That is because we don’t truly believe we are forgiven, and when we don’t believe that we’re forgiven, how on earth can we expect to feel like it? We can’t!

Fear is another feeling which is completely unnecessary in the life of a believer. How do we know this? God’s Word tells us that perfect love casts out all fear. For those who think that fear is a natural and unavoidable feeling, God’s Word tells us that “He who fears has not been made perfect in love.”

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