STUDY IT OR FEEL IT!

And as He passed by, He saw a man blind from his birth.  And His disciples asked Him, saying, “Rabbi, who sinned, this man or his parents, that he should be born bind?”   

    Engaging my heart rather than my head is always the more difficult choice.  To discuss something analytically feels much safer than to subject myself to the world of feelings.  Emotions are often unpredictable and hard to manage.  Thoughts, I can control, for the most part.

    The disciples saw a blind man, known in that town as one who had been blind from birth.  All a congenital blind person could do in that time in history was become a beggar.  Instead of feeling his plight, the disciples question Jesus about the theology of his suffering.  It was much easier to discuss his situation rather than invest themselves enough to enter into his life.

    The balance between living in my head and my heart is always a challenge.  To live in one and exclude the other is dangerous.  To live out of my feelings and rarely engage thought and study is to invite instability.  To live in my head, be well versed on subjects like love, suffering, sin, or grief but fail to feel what each is like is to know virtually nothing about them.  I know a woman who lost a daughter to a seemingly freak accident just weeks before her daughter was to be married.  She has since read hundreds of books on grief yet is frozen in the grief process.  She chose to study rather than feel.

    Each of us is most likely dealing with a situation that appears to be without a solution unless God intervenes.  It may be to the point of heartbreaking.  Yet if a good friend were to stop in today and ask how we are, we might sit and calmly recite the progression of events without ever revealing how our heart is faring.  Or, we may break apart and express hopelessness; a despair without hope because we have nursed our world of feelings without the light of instruction from God’s Word.  Both are dangerous.

    Dr. Martin Lloyd Jones (now with the Lord), in his book called Spiritual Depression – Its Causes and Its Cure, gives the most comprehensive picture of how such an imbalanced approach to life can carry us into spiritual disease.  He admits to falling prey to his feelings, becoming sick in the midst of grief.  The cure?  Acknowledging what’s there, feeling it, but then preaching to Himself as David did in Psalm 42.  “Why are you so cast down, oh my soul?  Hope thou in God!”  David made his life about treasuring the law of God, meditating on it, and consuming it as daily food.  But David was also well acquainted with his own heart.  He married the two so well which is why it is so therapeutic to pray the Psalms when in trouble.  John Piper taught a series in the Psalms called, Thinking and Feeling With the Psalms. 

    Ah, that is perfect summary for me today.  I think.  I feel.   But while doing both, I rise up to align myself with the theology and promises of God so that my unstable heart and head full of deception does not lead me astray.

My heart needs to feel and it needs You.  My head needs to be informed and it needs Your instruction.  Balance me, Jesus, as you were always in balance and alignment with Your Father.  Amen