Some time ago I was confronted by a relative who blamed me for making her sad. I began to observe and learn from that and many other experiences that most people don’t take responsibility for their feelings, but rather automatically blame someone else for making them feel bad. This means that these people live their whole life based on how someone else makes them feel and they live for happy feelings. If your mummy made you feel good when you were moody, then as an adult you’ll expect everyone to make you feel good and you’ll have a mood to get it, unless you grow up in Christ.
Good feelings
Everyone likes good feelings like happy, valued, sexy, being heard, frugal, looking good and having no fear.
People run on what makes them feel good, so we chase fun, dares and happiness; anything to get good feelings … bungy jump, fast cars, drugs, music, TV, surfing, football, movies, sex, careers, family, food and holidays to mention some.
This is the opposite to the instructions from the Word of God in Luke 9:23. If you want life you have to die to your wants in preference to chasing good feelings.
Bad feelings are what we try and avoid
Most people I talk to are into ‘no hassles’. They do everything in their power to avoid whatever will make them feel bad. Everyone hates feeling sad, rejected, left-out, used, misunderstood, guilty, fearful, intimidated, confused, put-down, stupid, lost, vulnerable and fragile, to name a few. Notice how much easier it is to come up with bad feelings than good ones!
1 Corinthians 13 teaches that love suffers long, but feelings protect themselves from suffering anything. In fact, our feelings will automatically blame others for making me suffer.
Using your feelings to make your deductions
Just about everyone makes up their mind from their emotions. The Soul = mind, will, and emotions. When we make our deductions based on our feelings we are only using 1/3rd of our soul to analyse what’s really going on. The soul is designed to think about what we feel and to decide with our will which voice we will surrender to; the voice of the evil tempter, or the voice of God’s Spirit. Relying on feelings makes you completely susceptible to all types of demonic voices.
A feelings-based person defines GOOD as … you understanding my perspective, and you showing me understanding and you being sensitive to my hurts and needs and anything that makes me feel ok; and defines BAD as … you don’t agree with my perspective and you make me feel inferior, or anything that hurts my feelings.
Feelings-controlled people always end up deducing that if you’re not nice to me then I don’t have to be nice to you. This is the opposite instruction to the Word of God (Matthew 7:12). Thus, a feelings–controlled person is not a faith-based Christian.
You can tell when feelings are not faith … they oppose the instructions of God, and they object to being contradicted.
Once you submit to your feelings as your evaluation then you will expose yourself to the sin of fear, blame, lying and telling
When we submit to the emotion of FEAR we will end up blaming others for our problems. Fear feels bad so we automatically look for someone else to blame. The fear of what people think of you and the fear of getting into trouble are the prime motivators for false good behaviour. Obedience out of fear is usually for one’s own selfish value, and once we’re afraid of getting into trouble or being thought bad of we will LIE to protect our position.
Fear is a spiritual force (2Timothy 1:7 & 2Timothy 2:24-26)) and once you submit to it you put yourself under its power and at its bidding.
BLAME deduces the person that hurt my feelings is the problem … you made me feel bad / you don’t understand how I feel. Blame feels the hurt and then points the finger at the one that hurt them.
Protecting bad feelings will result in TELLING people what’s right and wrong. You’ll deduce what’s right and wrong based on how people make you feel. False right and wrong is based on my feelings.
Tell statements sound like this
…If I show you understanding, then you’re supposed to show me understanding
… If you’re a friend then you’re supposed to understand how I feel
… If you don’t speak to me nicely, then you’re wrong
… If you’re the pastor then your job is to confirm I’m right, and your job is to encourage me
… If I think my idea is reasonable, then so should you
… I said sorry now it’s your responsibility to forgive me and reconcile with me and if you don’t then you’re the one with the problem. [But what if the sorry isn’t genuine; what if it’s just a technique to get out of trouble and to escape the bad feelings?]
All these statements are telling the other person what’s right and wrong just because they made you feel bad. This is sin. It’s not of faith, it’s diagnosis by feelings and it’s contrary to the instructions of God.
Selfishness doesn’t want to be told but it wants you to give a solution so it doesn’t have a hassle. Selfishness wants you to fix it but doesn’t want to be told what to do. Selfishness wants you to encourage it; it doesn’t want to be told that it’s selfish, at least not all the time.
Fake Christians love telling people what to do and what’s right and wrong, but when it comes to the crunch they soften the instructions of God from His Word, yet they think they are doing what God says. This is hypocritical blindness in the supreme. God says honour His Sabbath, but they won’t. God says He hates divorce but they ignore it. God says homosexuality is a sin yet they accept it and call it love. God says don’t covet, but they have constant moods over others’ success. God says don’t align yourself with Egypt but that’s poo-hooed when it comes to borrowing for a mortgage to get the house I want. God says that women are to fully respect their husbands, but most think they know better.
Telling people how to behave towards you sets you as the judge of right and wrong and sets you up to be incorrectible. It blocks you from being told the truth because the truth about you offends your feelings.
Once you choose your feelings as the truth, you can only see your own point of view, that is you will be “wise in your own eyes”, but blind to the real facts because you can only see through your hurt feelings. Thus feelings become the basis for your faith. You’ll be blind to your sin if you let feelings dictate your thoughts. You’ll be blind to your sin if you let your feelings get hurt because someone else has the better deal or won’t listen to your point of view.
Feelings-based people manipulate the feelings of others to get what they want for themselves. They’ll employ any tactic they can to achieve their own good feelings. Popular tactics include moodiness, intimidation, obligation, guilt, friendliness, listening, courtesy, obedience, and popularity via making people feel good. Like Adam in Genesis 3:17, a man who listens to the voice of his wife without checking with God will be easily manipulated in his feelings to do what his wife wants. Listening to the voice of your wife is letting your wife manipulate your feelings. Women use sex or withhold sex as a tool of manipulation to control the man’s feelings.
The alternative is Stop your feelings and turn to the Lord for His perspective on the matter.
LOVE does not obligate the other party to act in a certain way for my personal benefit. Love doesn’t blame someone for making me feel bad. Love trusts God’s plan and leaves the outcome to Him. People try to get rid of their bad emotions but faith trusts God through them.
The deception
The world gives you permission to secretly think bad about people as long as they don’t find out and as long as you don’t hurt them physically or verbally. But, the Spirit of God judges you as having done the deed as soon as you choose to think on it. People think bad but act nice so you can’t tell them they’re not nice. It’s all a façade for selfishness, and until it’s owned up to, your spiritual salvation is under threat.
The different types of Christians
1. A faithless Christian will turn to his feelings when he’s offended and argue in his head why it’s unfair. Like the seed sown amongst the thorns, and like the ten foolish virgins, this Christian hasn’t found salvation. This person addresses everyone else around them so their personal world is harmonious. These Christians live in their zone of niceness with one foot in the world and one foot in Christ, pretending they’re into Christ but always longing to be popular and valued. Worldly Christians give themselves permission to think bad about someone as long as you don’t physically or verbally abuse them. Thus fake Christians resist correction because they haven’t done anything physically wrong. In fact, most people deliberately block their conscience so no one can tell them they had a bad thought; you can’t prove they’re wrong.
A faithless Christian will always intimidate others to not say anything bad about them. This Christian gets fearful of perceptions they feel in God’s Word, but the feelings won’t lead to conviction and true repentance. They try to repent because they got found out, but one can’t repent because you’re afraid of what people think, you have to repent because you were proud and they can’t see that. They can change their outward behaviour but there’s no change in their heart.
A faithless Christian thinks he is basically good with only a little bad. God’s love is for the purpose of covering your sin so you can be saved and live with Him eternally. If you think you’re only 10% bad then you only get 10% of His covering Luke 7:47; the other 80% is uncovered.
Faithless Christians have a mood if you tell them they haven’t improved.
When it comes to the crunch, a fake Christian will manoeuvre himself into a position of popular thinking so he doesn’t look bad in the eyes of the majority, and still demand that he is honouring God’s principles. Like Ahab vs. Elijah, they will tell the genuine Christian that he is the one that’s wrong and blame the genuine Christian for being legalistic, and if you don’t accept their opinion then they’ll blame you for holding a grudge. They are so fearful of losing face or of getting into trouble, they lie with a face of total innocent pretence.
2. A faithful Christian will turn to the Lord and trust His plan in the pain. When it comes to the crunch, he will honour and stand by the principles of God’s Word instead of compromising to look good in the eyes of others. A faithful Christian addresses himself when he’s feeling like having a mood. A faithful Christian makes up his mind from his spirit not from his emotions. He feels an emotion and talks to God about what he’s sensing before he reacts from his emotions. The purpose of pain is to alarm you that something’s wrong, so hurtful feelings are used by this Christian, not avoided. A faithful Christian does good for the kingdom of heaven, not for his own value. A faithful Christian sacrifices the fear of what you think of them for the love of God. This Christian repents because he knows he sinned.
3. A Pentecostal Christian will tell the Lord how to fix the offence. They’ll use the superstition of cursing, binding and loosing, or the claiming of the blood for their protection against Satan, not for the kingdom of heaven but for themselves, and they’ll call it faith words, and if their wishes don’t come to pass, figure out who’s to blame.
Communication
Feelings-controlled people want you to talk to them to make them feel better. If you’re talking to me I’m ok, is the feeling deduction. Somehow words of encouragement make people feel good and words of correction make people feel bad. That’s fair enough, but to demand it from someone or to intimidate someone to only say nice things to you is evil. It’s the demand that exposes the spirit of the person.
Modern psychology teaches that love is listening to the hurt feelings of someone and giving them feedback as to what they’re really saying. Once someone feels listened to they feel better because you heard their feelings. There’s a time to listen and there’s a time to not listen, but selfish moodiness demands to be listened to. You’re not listening to me is more often than not the bottom line irritation between couples and stirs up marriage breakdowns.
But when you look at the modern psychology technique, it’s all selfishness and moodiness and demanding what you must do to make me feel better again. There’s no God in this picture.
It’s not the feelings that are wrong, it’s the selfishness of obligating people to make me feel good; it’s the selfishness of blaming people for making me feel bad; it’s the selfishness of having a mood because someone hurt your feelings. Why don’t people take responsibility for their moodiness instead of always blaming someone for making them feel bad?
People who base their deductions on feelings ultimately only trust their feelings. That is, they only trust themselves; they can’t trust anyone else in case they hurt their feelings. Thus they can’t find true faith. Fake faith comes from basing my deductions on how I feel.
Analysing through your feelings diverts you from the real issue.
When you choose to defend your feelings you will automatically talk yourself into being right because your feelings will tell you so. Thus when a Spirit-controlled Christian suggests you may be thinking wrong, his contradiction will offend your feelings. Feeling-based people hate being contradicted. It makes them feel put-down, and instead of being able to deal with the real issue of elevated pride (any mood is just pride) they can’t see the pride because they’re caught up in the defence of their feelings.
Defence of your feelings will mean that you can’t be told what’s right. You will never find repentance whilst ever you challenge an authority’s perspective. Your feelings will just support the unfairness of the contradiction against your thinking.
The real underlying issue to having a mood and blaming others for it is “I don’t want to be told what to do”. The real issue is “I’m the boss of me and you can’t make me”.
Why is respecting authority so important?
What’s the sin unto death? 1John 5:16b
Here’s a serious thought. If you tell the Spirit in a faith-controlled Christian how to behave then you better be careful about whom you’re telling what to do e.g. Jesus addressed Peter.
If you call the Spirit in such a Christian an idiot because you can’t see what the Spirit is correcting in you, then you’re mocking the Holy Spirit, and blaspheming the name of God (1Timothy 6:1).
If such a Christian is speaking the Truth and you mock it or reject it, then you’re not worshipping the true Jesus, but a false Jesus (2 Corinthians 11:4).
If you tell the Spirit in that Christian that it’s evil and because that Spirit is the Holy Spirit, then you’re blaspheming that Spirit and that’s the unpardonable sin (Mark 3:28-30).
If you think you’re better than your husband, or tell your husband to get his act together so you don’t look bad to others, or look down on your husband in any way, then you’re blaspheming the Word of God (Titus 2:5). You’re practicing evil because you are directly opposing the instructions of God.
Why do people live in feelings?
Yes, it’s because we all like feeling good and hate feeling bad, but below that, the real issue is we use our feelings to not be told what to do; don’t want to be told you’re wrong; want to be told I’m right, and the feelings prove I’m right and you’re wrong. I feel this, so you won’t tell me. It all comes down to the issue of respect of authority and the feelings are where I live and you won’t tell me otherwise.
It’s really a fight between you telling me and me telling you. It’s an authority issue.
Love doesn’t defend its feelings. Love owns up when it’s wrong. Love is willing to submit to the authority’s point of view.
Selective respect is not a sign of respect
If someone respects the pastor’s opinion and disrespects their husband’s opinion then that’s selective respect and it really shows the heart has no respect of authority.
If you can’t respect authority on earth, then you don’t respect the authority of God in heaven.
A submitted heart to the will of God will respect all authority (Romans 13:1,2: 1Peter 2:18), and from this commitment, they will be free to either listen to the instruction or ignore the instruction, but always from a position of respectfulness.
Did Jesus or God hurt anyone’s feelings?
Peter was rebuked in public. Peter was contradicted in public.
Mary was contradicted and challenged by a twelve year old
Pharisees were criticised publically
Rich young ruler left sad
The Syrophenecian woman was referred to as a dog
Ananias and Sapphira were killed simply because they lied
King Saul was rejected simply because he didn’t quite do it right
Satan cast out of heaven
Hell was not created for your good feelings
The Flood was for correction, not feelings
Eat me and drink my blood in John 6 was shared to deliberately offend their feelings
How do I strengthen my faith to not live by my feelings?
I don’t defend myself with my good
I recognise that man’s life is as a vapour
I recognise that man thinks he knows when he’s actually ignorant of what he doesn’t know
I recognise that there is a Creator and not a coincidence of a big bang
I recognise that if there is a Creator He knows what’s best for me, both the good and the bad
I recognise that my God is the only god who has exposed himself to mankind, and confirmed by the date system
I recognise that only my God is the only God that has died for my sin
I choose to trust Him fully without reservation
I choose to keep walking the walk, cop the flack and to wait for His plan
I repent when I’ve responded on the basis of my feelings instead of faith
A feeling-controlled Christian is like King Saul chasing the elevation of position to look good in the eyes of the people. A faith-based Christian is like David, living in the wilderness and suffering the hassle of being harassed by King Saul.
In its prosperity the Western church has become complacent about the principles of the Word of God. Under the guise of grace it has given itself permission to make judgments of right and wrong based on its feelings. Consequently, Sabbath has been devalued, divorce has become acceptable, women bishops are the norm, homosexuality is to be loved and understood and not challenged as sin, and women put their husbands in their place. Whilst ever the church puts its thinking above the Word of God it’s just exposing that it’s fearful of what the world thinks of it and living for its own elevated pride.
Genuine right and wrong is based on love through faith not defence of my feelings.
Pastor Rick Boyne
