Confession: there are many, many times when I don’t feel like worshipping. Or feel like going to church. Or feel like reading the Bible or praying. If you’re a believer, I’m sure you’ve felt it too. The apathy and disappointment and fatigue, those things that work like tiny marionette strings operated by a nefarious puppeteer, pulling you slowly away from the very thing you need.
It amazes me when I see so much of my generation operating solely from their feelings, because I kid you not, if I did that, I would only do the things I need to do like 10% of the time. My emotions can be stormy and tumultuous, slamming me all over the place, or they can be dry and hard as a rock, leaving me still as a statue. There are those very few times where my emotions coincide with my spirit, but many times, the emotions and my spirit butt heads.
This is why choices are so beautiful to me and why I advocate for all the individual liberty I can in my own life and others, because to exercise the human will is power. Even if I feel like utter garbage, I get to choose to live a life of worship anyway, to speak things aloud, to get in the car and go to church. I get to choose.
So much of the spiritual health I’ve found in the past year has been from choices that went against everything I craved and toward everything I didn’t necessarily want but really needed. I feel like our society doesn’t emphasize that enough, the importance of doing things you don’t want to do to be healthy. You can’t just take a magic pill to kill the addiction or restore relationship or heal your soul. In much the same way that it is to gain physical health, you have to make a lot of daily good decisions over and over until the results come.
But on the other hand, you can’t purely will yourself to health. Because while the human will is a beautiful thing, it is also fallible. It bends under the strain of emotions or physical limitations. Even if you want to do what is right, you won’t always do it. Even Paul in the Bible talks about this, how he constantly does the things he doesn’t want to do. This is where grace comes in and is the glue that holds everything together. Even though I play a major role in the direction my life goes, it isn’t all up to me. One mistake doesn’t send the whole thing toppling over. Jesus is the mastermind, the provider, the way-maker, the one holding me in his hand. All I am required to do is surrender, unball my fists, and lay my stuff at his feet over and over and over.
Yet, even as I practice this, there are still lots of hard moments. Moments where the darkness feels so heavy that I can barely move. Moments where I feel like a stretched rubber band that is bound to snap at any moment. I do not always feel happy. I do not always feel love.
But what a beautiful thing truth is, a rock that is, no matter how I feel. What a beautiful thing it is to be free from the slavery of feelings, because they are an empty and meaningless master. They appear great because they are sometimes fuzzy and sometimes exciting. But to live your life based off them will lead you nowhere.
Truth isn’t so sexy. It sometimes seems bland or not fun. But how beautiful it really is. Because truth is the only thing that can set you free. And the truth is, that God is good even when you don’t feel it. And he is a provider even when your bank account is empty. And he is a healer even when sickness is in your body. And the moment you can step past your feelings and tap into those truths is the moment you win the battle.
