Facts and Feelings in the Christian Life

April 4, 2025 Pastor Chris Oswald

Thesis Because both intellect and emotions are disabled by sin, Christians must anchor themselves in the inerrant Word of God as their only reliable guide, while patiently training their feelings through obedience, gratitude, and the Psalms.

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What's in this sermon

The shape of the argument

28 units across exposition, application, illustration, theological claim, and conclusion. The pastor's argument is built from these moving parts.

Pastoral correction · unit #19

"The pastor applies the teaching to daily Bible reading and prayer. He instructs listeners not to rely on feelings as immediate affirmation—feelings are slow and will catch up over time. He counsels patience with one's own emotional lag while continuing obedience."

Doctrinal loci· 11 surfaced

Sanctification · 11 Hamartiology · 7 Bibliology · 6 Ethics / Moral Theology · 5 Anthropology · 3 Eschatology · 3 Ecclesiology · 1 Pastoral Theology · 1 Pneumatology · 1 Soteriology · 1 Spiritual Warfare · 1

Bible citations· 2

Romans 8 | Proverbs (trust in the Lord with all your heart, lean not on your understanding)

Illustrations· 7

hypothetical · unit #3 — The pastor illustrates the eschatological hope that in the new creation, feelings will be perfectly aligned with truth. This contrasts with present reality where sin disables both mind and emotions, reinforcing that believers must live with a gap between facts and feelings until glorification.
analogy · unit #7 — The pastor uses a gyroscope as an analogy for the Bible—it provides orientation even in a disorienting environment (like space or a sin-corrupted world). The Word remains the stable reference point when all other faculties fail.
historical example · unit #12 — The pastor illustrates sins of commission with an anecdote of a Christian couple who conceived a child before marriage without any sense of wrongdoing because their consciences were not properly calibrated to biblical sexual ethics.
personal story · unit #13 — The pastor shares a personal story of dating a Mormon girl at 16 while being otherwise spiritually vibrant. His conscience was miscalibrated—he felt peace about a relationship that violated biblical standards. A Christian coworker corrected him, and his conscience was recalibrated, leading him to end the relationship.
personal story · unit #16 — The pastor illustrates sins of omission with a personal example of failing to share the gospel due to a false teaching ('earning the right'). His miscalibrated conscience prevented him from acting on clear evangelistic opportunities.
hypothetical · unit #17 — The pastor provides a second illustration of sins of omission—parents who fail to discipline their children due to miscalibrated consciences. Their feelings and uninformed beliefs prevent them from fulfilling biblical duties.
personal story · unit #25 — The pastor illustrates the gratitude principle with a personal example—his gratitude for godly relationships. By articulating and reflecting on this blessing, his feelings rise to match the truth. This serves as a model for how gratitude functions as emotional training.

Theological claims· 14

Facts should lead our lives while feelings follow—obedience over time brings feelings into alignment with truth, though the process is not instantaneous. unit #2
Both the intellect and the emotions are disabled by sin and cannot be fully trusted—only the Word remains uncompromised. unit #4
Triumphalism falsely promises that salvation immediately fixes all problems, which is an over-realized eschatology placing heavenly realities in this life. unit #5
The Bible is the only perfect and untainted guide humanity possesses, making its faithful teaching a fearful responsibility. unit #6
Only the Bible remains unpolluted by sin—both the mind and emotions are compromised but can be improved through practice. unit #8
Claims that the Bible is corrupted are pernicious lies because they destroy confidence in the only perfect guide humanity has. unit #9
An improperly trained conscience can lead Christians to commit sins they do not recognize as sins. unit #11
Miscalibrated consciences lead to sins of commission, proving that only the Word can properly inform the conscience. unit #14
Miscalibrated consciences produce not only sins of commission but also sins of omission—failures to do what God requires. unit #15
Broken consciences lead to both sins of commission and omission because sin has disabled human perception. unit #18
Excessive focus on feelings provides a handle for demonic discouragement; reducing that focus diminishes the devil's leverage and allows feelings to align more naturally with truth. unit #20
Both the mind and emotions are responsible to obey Christ and can be commanded, confessed, and brought under Christ's lordship through the Spirit's power. unit #21
Maturity involves learning to be both patient with emotional weakness and insistent on obedience, discerning the difference between slowness and stubbornness. unit #22
Gratitude is the training ground for learning to lead emotions because it allows feelings to catch up more quickly to rehearsed facts about God's goodness. unit #26

Quotations· 2

"Some of us have more natural anxiety where it would be just inappropriate." — Calvin (unit #4)

"Some people are born with a sweeter disposition." — CS Lewis (unit #4)

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0 · The pastor opens the podcast with pastoral announcements about church life, upcoming summer plans, and logistical details including the sanctuary remodel, summer sermon series, and fellowship opportunities

Sam, Welcome, welcome, welcome to the Providence Podcast. My name is Chris Oswald, senior pastor at Providence Community Church. Today is a general Q and A type podcast. I've got a number of questions that have made it to me in various ways that I thought I would address and also just talk a little bit about church life headed into the summer. Let's start there. In fact, couple things to think about as we move into the summer. Number one, both of our schools that we host, Southland and Knox Classical School, will both be dismissing at some point in May. So they will be gone at some point in mid May. Southland is earlier than Knox and at that time, you know, it'll be good for us to do some deep cleaning of the basement and do whatever little bit of repairs that we need or so on and so forth so that we continue to be good hosts to those wonderful organizations. I will say that, you know, I'm obviously much closer to the ground on the Knox situation and enrollment has been really healthy already this early in for next year. And we're excited about all that God is doing, just really blessing us beyond what we could ask or imagine. And that blessing has also, of course come through quite a bit of work. And that's maybe something we'll talk about here in a moment because one of the questions that I was asked is kind of pastoral question was kind of about that. Um, let's see what else. Oh, okay. Moving into the summer, we have the sanctuary remodel that is scheduled to take place. Just generally, we don't have firm dates yet. We'll, we'll get those dates pretty quickly. We've got a couple more phone calls to make and a couple more meetings to have. But just generally that sanctuary remodel will take place from May through the end of August. Our expectation is to get back into the building early September or late August. And we're so excited to see how that's all going to turn out. And just as a reminder, if you've not considered decided to make a contribution, a one time special contribution to help us get that sanctuary done and paid for, that is something we really ask for you to go ahead and take action on sooner rather than later. The numbers are moving in the right direction, but as to be expected, especially with as little discussion as we've had about this issue, we still have some ground to make up and we'd really appreciate you prayerfully considering supporting this important effort. One of the things that's going to wind up happening as a consequence of this sanctuary remodel is we'll finally kind of have the size of the seating capacity that makes sense for the building itself and for the parking and so on and so forth. And I think that, as you've noticed, on Sundays, we really are getting to the point where we're setting up extra chairs fairly routinely. And we want to make sure that we are ahead of all that God's doing there in sense of, you know, just, just in faith believing that the Lord is blessing our church and making space for more and more people on that side. I mean, this is a bit of a complicated thing and it might not interest all of you, but, you know, there are a lot of dynamics that change as a church starts kind of sitting above the 200 number regularly in attendance. And that's where we're at. And so one of the things that we're doing as a leadership team is just trying to grow in our policies and get a sense of kind of, we want to ensure that our church isn't dependent on any one leader as much as possible and that we've got really good systems put into place that can care for the church over the long haul. And we also realize that as we continue to grow, our more informal approaches to getting people plugged in and so on and so forth just aren't going to cut it. So we're working on that as well. And so there's a lot of conversations happening in the background to just try to accommodate, you know, what the Lord is doing. Dov has been just absolutely, you know, irreplaceable in his help in this particular area. And it's been just an ideal timing to have this leadership team composed. Is. That's really, you know, that's really going to be important in the next, in the next few years. So if you haven't given yet and you, you would like to, we would really appreciate that you could do that within the next month. That would be ideal. Generally speaking, we'll give you a lot more details soon, but generally speaking, you know, we'll be meeting in the gym for worship throughout the summer. And one of the advantages to the gym is that it has a kitchen. So we plan on emphasizing after service and even pre service fellowship much more intensely than we normally can. We want to take advantage of the opportunity that this temporary location affords us. So that's something to keep your eye on. We are right now organizing some team leaders to manage sort of, you know, making sure that our hospitality and just our kind of like ability to receive everyone and care for everyone is in line with that temporary location. Thinking about bathrooms and signage and things like that. So that's all kind of on the horizon. And then of course, prior to that, we have our Good Friday service coming up soon and then Easter coming up soon. And we're really looking forward to celebrating the Lord's triumphant victory over sin and death in a special way during that time. What else is there, kind of broadly? Well, I think that's probably about it. That's about what I can think of. We're starting to get our church calendar schedule scheduled out for the next year. The church's fiscal budget starts in September. So right around now is the time that we begin to look at that. We're doing that. We are going to do the good old fashioned summer psalm series, which is kind of a mainstay within Sovereign grace churches. Many of those churches will spend their summer examining the psalms on a regular basis. And so that's the preaching plan. It looks like. I just had this pulled up. It looks like our, it looks like our John series ends. See, what is that? Looks like May 11th is the last Sunday in John. That would be John 21. Is that right? Yeah, May 11th. And then so beginning on May 18th, we will begin a summer psalm series that should just continue as long as we're in the gym space. Speaking of just that kind of fellowship emphasis while we're in the gym, if any of you know someone who owns a food truck or has a way of getting us in touch with some food trucks, that would be kind of cool to do for that particular season. We'd love to just create an extended time for people to hang out longer during that summer, those summer months. And so if you have any hookups there, that'd be cool. What else? I guess that's probably about it. Angela and I are going to be celebrating our 30th wedding anniversary on, well, in early May. And so we're, I don't know if we're going to go away then, but we're going to do a trip at some point. We're, we're going to do some kind of a big, a big, well, big for us kind of getaway. Looking forward to that.

1 · The pastor transitions from church announcements to the pastoral question at hand

Okay, well, let's go ahead and jump into some of the pastoral questions that I've received that I thought, when I, when I saw them, I thought, well, this would just be better to do as a podcast because this is a very common question. One young man sent me a message on Base camp about emotions and feelings in relation to faith. You know, we tell people not to let their feelings lead them and to even sometimes just ignore their feelings. And so there's some confusion here from this young man, and it's understandable. And when he wrote it, I thought, well, this is something that a lot of people are concerned about or questioning about. And so he said, you know, how do I have a meaningful relationship with God if I shouldn't listen to my feelings? How can I separate all of that?

2 · The pastor clarifies that the common teaching 'facts over feelings' is about priority, not exclusion—feelings matter, but they should not lead

Well, I think that one of the ways to think about this is that when we are talking in the church about feelings, we're always at least partially responding to a culture that is overly focused on feelings. And so sometimes, I suppose, now I don't know if I've done this, but I imagine it's highly possible. Sometimes, I suppose that when talking about feelings, I'm maybe reacting to that great error in which feelings lead and speaking about that in a way that makes it sound like feelings don't matter at all. And I wouldn't want to do that on purpose, But I can imagine this is just kind of how it goes when you're trying to correct cultural errors. It's pretty easy to overstate your case because you're trying to dislodge people from one stuck position. So I don't know if I've done that or not, and if I have, I'm sorry. But generally, I do know that, you know, a lot of us spiritual leaders will try to get people off of a focus on their feelings. And in doing that, we can, I think, probably communicate a little bit too strongly that feelings don't matter. Or that can be the takeaway. The truth is, is that what we're really asking is just what's driving, right? What's driving the car? Not who's in the car. We're really asking what? What. The leading principle is not the only principle. So the leading principle is, you know, as is well known nowadays, facts over feelings, that's the leading principle. We want to identify through God's objective word what the truth is, and then we want to do it. Regardless of how we feel about it, we want to do it. But the expectation in the Bible all along is that when we obey over the long haul, our feelings will catch up to and be informed by the facts. And this can take a little bit of time. There's not a one for one kind of thing. It'd be great if. If suddenly I could read a fact in the Bible and feel immediately what I was supposed to feel about it. But unfortunately, that's not true.

3 · The pastor illustrates the eschatological hope that in the new creation, feelings will be perfectly aligned with truth

That's probably a good place to Start thinking about this. You've got to remember that all of us are sin. All of us, all of the component parts that make up us, have been affected by sin. And a way that is so encouraging for me when I think about this is I think about what I will be like in the new heavens and the new earth when God makes everything new and I'm united with Christ. I've been given a new body. I've been given a whole new kind of biological and spiritual platform from which to enjoy God or through which to enjoy God. And one of the things that'll be really cool is that my feelings will be right. They'll just be right. There'll never be a gap between facts and the facts and my feelings, they'll be completely perfect. I won't get that until I get to heaven. That's going to be one heck of an upgrade. But I'm not going to get that until Jesus makes all things new.

4 · The pastor asserts that sin has disabled both the mind and the emotions, making them unreliable guides

So my feelings are as well as is my mind, affected by sin. And affected, meaning like disabled to some degree. They're just not working like they ought to work. So mentally, this can cause me to misunderstand things. This can cause confusion where when I encounter the truth, I don't understand it, I don't see it. I can be deceived. You know, I. I can hear one case and it sounds right, but it wasn't, and so forth. So my brain is, you know, affected. My mind is affected by sin, and so are my feelings. And so, like, for instance, you know, you can think of someone who is having an emotional affair. Like their feelings are very often kind of sweet toward this person that they shouldn't have these feelings toward. And their feelings toward their own spouse are kind of bitter. Well, this is part of what goes on in sinful life. It's just that they don't. All our stuff doesn't work like it's supposed to do like it's supposed to work. And it seems like everybody has this. But you might make the argument that some people have more trouble than others. CS Lewis talks a little bit about this. Some people he talks about are born with a sweeter disposition. I know that Calvin talked about this, as did others. Just this sense that some of us have more natural anxiety where would. Where it would be just inappropriate. Some of us have less. Some of us are more inclined to happiness than others. Some of us deal with seasonal depression, others of us don't. Some of us are more up and down. Others of us are level. And so we are. The truth is we are just all desperate, like Romans 8 tells us. We're all desperate for the final revealing of the sons of glory and when Jesus makes all things new. Because all of this stuff does matter. It would. Like the fact that my brain doesn't work as well as it should, affects my relationship with God. It affects my happiness, it affects like the goodness of my life, the fact that my feelings don't always ring true or work right. It affects my relationship with God.

5 · The pastor warns against triumphalism—an over-realized eschatology that promises immediate perfection at conversion

And so some of this needs to just be understood in terms of what you might think of as like triumphalism. Triumphalism is a false theology that sort of presents salvation as the immediate cure all to everybody's problems. And you know, like that when you get saved, like everything's just perfect at that point. And that's just, that's, that's not the case. That's an over realized eschatology. It's essentially trying to place things that are true of heaven, you know, in, in this life.

6 · The pastor declares that because both mind and emotions are disabled by sin, the Bible is the only untainted authority believers possess

So the reality is, is that we're all going to walk with a limp in both our mental facilities and our emotional facilities. And pertinent to this guy's question, that just means that we can't actually trust our intellect or our emotions as ultimate ends. The thing that hasn't been touched by sin is the holy word of God. It's the one thing we have that hasn't been polluted. And man, I'll tell you, you know, it's. That's why it's such a fearful thing to preach the word of God, to teach the word of God. It's why it's such a fearful thing even just to give counsel. Because the one perfect thing that the human race has is the Bible. And the only way it can get messed up is if you teach it wrong or if you present your opinion as the Word and so on and so forth.

7 · The pastor uses a gyroscope as an analogy for the Bible—it provides orientation even in a disorienting environment (like space or a sin-corrupted world)

And doing so is equivalent to, oh, can we talk about gyroscopes again for a second? Sorry, that was such a nerdy sermon, but I found it interesting. Gyroscopes, they would even work in space where there is really almost no up and down. Space has this lack of orientation. But gyroscope would actually even work there because it would, it would orient you and you could, you could in theory travel in something that with really out without a clear heads and tails, without a clear north and south and up and down, that gyroscope would still keep you on track. And so that's the word of God ultimately.

8 · The pastor reinforces that the Word is the only perfect guide and that both intellect and emotion are compromised

And that's why, like I said, It's a fearful thing to teach the word of God because you can't mess with the only. Literally, the only rope that's holding us onto reality is the Word. The only thing that hasn't been hurt by sin is God's perfect revealed word. And so that's why when we talk about facts or feelings, you know, we may rhetorically emphasize one or the other. The truth is, is that both our minds and our feelings are compromised, disabled to some degree by sin. And what ideally we should always say is, you know, the Word, the word, the word that should always be what's lifted up first and foremost. It shouldn't necessarily always be that we're talking negatively about feelings. The truth is, is we should probably talk a little bit more negatively sometimes about the intellect as well, because those are two instruments of understanding. When Proverbs says, trust in the Lord with all your heart, lean not on your understanding. We do understand things to some degree with emotion, and we typically think of understanding as an intellectual thing, which I think is probably mostly true. But there is a sense in which our emotions help us understand things. The big message that we want to impart to people is you have everything about you is to some degree disabled by sin. Can it be tuned up? Can it be made better in this life? Yes, it can. Through practice, through constant discernment between good and evil, you can. You can grow in these things. But the big point, the big takeaway is you only have one thing that hasn't been messed up by sin, and it's the Bible.

9 · The pastor warns that claims of biblical corruption are pernicious lies because they undermine confidence in the only perfect authority believers possess

And of course, now you understand also how pernicious a lie it is and how just absolutely baseless it is when people talk about the Bible being corrupted and so on and so forth, that's such a pernicious lie because you're causing people to lose confidence in the one thing that they really have reason to have confidence in.

10 · The pastor applies the teaching by instructing the young man (and listeners) to read and obey the Word, recognizing that both mind and feelings are unreliable

So to answer this young man's question, it's not as if feelings don't matter. They do. It's not as if the mind is somehow the trustworthy of the two, the intellect more so than the emotions. That's maybe somewhat true. But the big emphasis is you just read the Word and you do the Word, and then you understand that when you don't feel what you should feel, say your mind is telling you, hey, you're not feeling what you should feel here. Well, one thing, your mind could be wrong. So maybe it's not. Just remember you're a broken being and you're not going to fully be made whole until the new heavens and the new earth. And so that just means we have to be suspicious of everything inside of us and really, really, really lean on the word of God.

11 · The pastor introduces the concept of the conscience as an internal faculty that also requires calibration by the Word

There will be times when. Oh, can I. Okay, let me talk about this, too. I've been thinking a lot about the conscience. I'm working on some booklets for the church called the Conscience Coach, where I just help people kind of sort through various issues of conscience. And as I was working on that, one of the things I was thinking about is how I've known Christians throughout the years who. They had a conscience that wasn't properly trained, and it led them to commit sins that they didn't know were sins, and they felt fine about it.

12 · The pastor illustrates sins of commission with an anecdote of a Christian couple who conceived a child before marriage without any sense of wrongdoing because their consciences were not properly calibrated to biblical sexual ethics

So let me give you a couple examples of that. One would be, I know a couple that were saved in the 70s, and they were so overjoyed with their. They were dating at the time, and they were so overjoyed. They both got saved kind of right around the same time that they're like, you know, we should just make a baby together. This would be wonderful to celebrate, you know, this new love that we've discovered in Jesus. We should. We should celebrate this by making a baby. And so they did make a baby many months before they ever got married. And there wasn't a fleck in their minds about, like, that being wrong. They. They literally just thought, well, you know, this is an act of love. We. We love each other, and so on and so forth. And so they had this big piece missing because their conscience, which is kind of informed both by their mind and their feelings, was pretty off, was miscalibrated in that area.

13 · The pastor shares a personal story of dating a Mormon girl at 16 while being otherwise spiritually vibrant

I have one from my own personal life back when I was, I guess, 16, 16 years old or 17 years old. See, the thing about me is, like, I've wanted to get married and have kids since I was like, you know, three. You know, it's just family man from day one kind of guy. And so when I would date a girl, it would, you know, I would take it very seriously, typically, and try to be. And I just always was thinking long term. And I was dating a girl, I think, when I was 16, who was a Mormon. Now at that time, every morning I would get up and I would go read my Bible and I would just, like, that was in my Bible devouring phase, you know, it was just like the whole Bible was coming alive to me. And I would pray such sincere prayers and just, you know, devour God's word. And I was learning how to share my faith. And I was starting to even like sometimes like lead little Bible studies at my church in the youth group and so on and so forth. It was very spiritually productive time. But I was dating this girl who's a Mormon and I literally did not know. I liked her and she liked me and I thought, well, maybe we'll get married one day. I literally didn't know anything about God's standards for. I didn't know what a Mormon was. I didn't know that a Mormon wasn't a Christian. I didn't, I didn't know a lot of things. And so I had all this kind of joy and peace when I was really doing one thing that was like pretty wrong and definitely wrong headed, like it was going to lead to the wrong thing. But I felt really good about it. And so this is funny, there was another girl that I worked with who was a Christian. Her shout out to some of you Oru people in the, in the audience. Her dad worked for Oru and she liked me. And I didn't know that at the time, but anyway, she came up to me one day at work and said, you're dating so? And so I was like, yes. And she's like, you can't, like, you're not supposed to do that. I was like, why not? And she's like, well, that person isn't actually a Christ follower. Do you know anything about Mormonism? Like, no. Her family seems nice and so on and so forth. And now her reasons for informing my conscience were probably not the best. But she told me it and it clicked. I understood what she was saying. Maybe I did a little bit of research, I don't know. You got to remember, this is all before the Internet. So I don't know what research I would have done, but it made sense to me. And so I realized that I had to break it off with this girl who I really liked. And she was really surprised because things were going fine and she didn't understand it because her family had always told her she was a Christian. And so that's another example where because my conscience was not properly informed, I was doing something I shouldn't have been doing. But I literally had no idea.

14 · The pastor synthesizes the anecdotes, showing that miscalibrated consciences lead to sins of commission

So now you can kind of see how these disconnects happen with our minds and our feelings and how really ultimately the word of God has to be the only thing that we can really rely on. So those are some examples of things that people have done wrongly because their consciences weren't like properly calibrated to the word of God.

15 · The pastor introduces the theological category of sins of omission—failure to do what is required

And let me give you a Couple examples that run in another direction. So there's another way of sinning. So the way I've been talking about sin is referred to theologically as sins of commission. Things you do that you're not supposed to do. But there's another category of sin called sins of omission. And sins of omission are when you don't do what you're supposed to do. And there have been times when my conscience was miscalibrated and my feelings were miscalibrated and so forth. And so it didn't lead me to do things I wasn't supposed to do. It led me to not do things I was supposed to do.

16 · The pastor illustrates sins of omission with a personal example of failing to share the gospel due to a false teaching ('earning the right')

One of the early examples I can remember is I had bought into all that language as a 20. Something about earning the right to share the gospel. And so I was kind of taught through. I don't know, I just picked this up through listening to other Christians talk that, you know, you don't just share the gospel, like, right away with someone. You build a relationship and you earn the right to share the gospel. And so that was what my conscience had been informed by. Well, that led me to the sin of omission, where sometimes I'd be in situations that were looking back, like clear gospel opportunities. But I didn't do what I was supposed to do because my emotions and my mind, like, were miscalibrated. And I thought there was a rule that there wasn't, and it kept me from doing something I was supposed to do.

17 · The pastor provides a second illustration of sins of omission—parents who fail to discipline their children due to miscalibrated consciences

Another common sin of omission in this area is, like, has to do with parental discipline. A lot of parents, their consciences aren't properly calibrated, and so they really view discipline more wrongly than they should. And it actually keeps them from engaging in discipline with their children. And they're really sinning against their kids by not disciplining them consistently and appropriately. But you see, their feelings are kind of stuck and they're not well informed. And so they're. They're leading to sins of omission.

18 · The pastor summarizes that broken consciences lead to both commission and omission—doing wrong and failing to do right

So you're, you know, if your feelings, your conscience, the way you perceive things is broken, which it is, that's just the way. That's just the way we are. That's just a consequence of sin. Then, you know, you're gonna. Not only are gonna do some things you shouldn't do, but you're also not gonna do certain things that you should do.

19 · The pastor applies the teaching to daily Bible reading and prayer

And one of the most consistent areas where this hits most Christians is in their Bible study and prayer. Over time, people expect their feelings to kind of immediately affirm their actions and say, yeah, you're on the right track. You're doing the right thing. But as I've just illustrated, that's not a reliable indicator. And so people will engage in, like, reading their Bibles for a while, and they don't feel anything different. And what they need to remember is that's because your feelings are disabled. They're kind of slow. You gotta be patient with them. They'll catch on immediately, eventually. But your feelings are a little, you know, a little disabled. And so when you're reading the Bible or you're praying and you're not feeling anything, I would just tell you you need to, like, think of them as, like, that friend you had in school who was a good kid, but he was just a little slow on the uptake. Maybe he rode a different kind of bus than you did, if you know what I mean. And that's really the appropriate way to see ourselves. And we hold the word up as the wise and the perfect and the true and the reliable. And we don't think of ourselves that way most of the time. People will. When they grow discouraged in their spiritual duties and so on and so forth, it's because they're not feeling what they think they should feel. And it's like, well, you know, you're just giving yourself too much credit. You're assuming your feelings aren't slow, but they are. And so you just got to bear with them and they'll catch up eventually.

20 · The pastor argues that excessive attention to feelings gives the devil a handle for discouragement

You know, when people get like that, it's real easy for them to get discouraged. And so what I think is happening, this is kind of Chris theory here, is, you know, the devil is always just looking for handles to grab you by. And in. In some respects, life is all about just learning to get rid of those stupid handles. Like, one of the real obvious ones is time alone. Like, it's, you know, in a ton of privacy isn't really good for anybody. And the devil can use that. Well, a person who is paying too much attention to their feelings in general, it's just giving the devil a handle. And so feelings are at least somewhat biological, maybe, maybe significantly biological. I don't quite know. But the point is that whenever you give the devil a thing that successfully works at deterring you from following God and walking in his word, well, that thing will get used on you. And so one of the things that's really weird and counterintuitive is that if you will stop really paying that much attention to your feelings, you will find that they cease to become a Handle that the forces of darkness can steer you by, and your feelings will actually start being less troublesome and more sort of consistently in line with the truth, and so on and so forth. So that's another thing to think about.

21 · The pastor asserts that both mind and emotions are responsible to obey Christ, not just actions

But yeah, the big thing with this question is it really is an area of maturity to just to understand that you're not really what you're supposed to be. And that's not going to change fully until the new heavens and the new earth. You're not going to have perfect feelings, you're not going to have perfect insight. Both your intellect and your emotions will always be, to some degree or another, disabled by sin until Jesus makes all things new. And then everything will just be like, perfect. And your mind will be able to see truth in a way it's never been able to see it before. And your feelings will be able to jump in right away to join, you know, they'll be fully and perfectly obedient to Christ. That's another piece of this I thought I'd mention, because your feelings are part of you. They are responsible ultimately for obeying Christ, just like your mind is. You've gone through periods of time where you've got your brain in the gutter, and hopefully at some point you feel conviction about that and you realize, man, for the last few hours, my brain has just been utterly not obedient to Jesus. Your actions are, you know, maybe they're okay and so forth, but you're just like, your brain is just absolutely not in obedience to Jesus. And so what you do then is you. You repent, you confess like God. My, my brain is not serving you. It's. It's sinning against you. It's doing bad stuff. And so I want my brain to be yours, and I want you to renew my mind in Christ Jesus. Well, the same thing goes with emotions. You will find that they're not obedient. And maybe they're not just being slow, they're being stubborn. Well, that's when you go to the Psalms and you realize that this was kind of a pretty significant part of David's life with the Lord. He was constantly saying to his emotions, you need to obey Jesus, you need to rejoice, you need to be glad, and so on and so forth. So that's another thing to bear in mind. You do have some authority, just because of what Christ has given you through the Holy Spirit, to say to yourself, hey, self, whatever part of the self isn't obeying Jesus, let's get with the program, let's obey.

22 · The pastor counsels a balanced posture—patience with slow feelings alongside insistence on obedience

While Also just being patient with yourself like you would be with your friend who's a sinner, and understanding the difference between kind of just wandering in weakness and outright defiance. And your relationship with yourself. As time develops, you will start to have that sense of am I being slow or am I being stubborn? So on and so forth. And you'll learn how to kind of have some eye to how you feel about things without making it the main thing. And you'll learn to have some patience with the gap between what you feel and what the truth is. But you'll also learn to kind of say, well, we could do a little better than this. We're not going to fix this entirely, but we can do a little bit better. And you'll start to learn how to do that.

23 · The pastor prescribes the Psalms as the primary tool for emotional formation

And I learned how to do that primarily through the psalms. I went through about a five year period of time where all I read for my Bible reading daily was the Psalms. I've told people this before, read five psalms a day, every day for five years. And what was really happening in that time? Well, there are a bunch of things, but one of the things that was happening during that time was I was learning how a godly man is supposed to feel about things and I was learning how to like navigate emotions and figure out what feelings are appropriate and inappropriate, so on and so forth. So psalms are your friend when it comes to like handling this big question of emotions.

24 · The pastor prescribes gratitude as the training ground for emotional formation

The other thing I learned about feelings was that gratitude is kind of the. Gratitude's probably like the training ground for feelings. Here's what I mean. There's all sorts of areas where your feelings need to match the facts and the truth of God's word, so on and so forth. And the way you do that typically is, you know, you expose yourself to the truth of God's word and then you wait for your feelings to catch up. Well, the area that seems to be the, the easiest way to get started in that basic practice across all life is to count your blessings is to take serious time, to thank God for His faithfulness in detailed ways to where you actually are. Dedicating time to like rehearsing his benefits, counting his benefits, remembering all the things he's done for you. Typically, what you'll find when you keep doing that is that your feelings catch up maybe more quickly in that area than in other areas. I don't know. For me, this has seemed to be not only true for me, but as I've helped other people learn how to kind of have a proper relationship with their feelings, this seems to be a thing. This seems to work. And that is the way to learn how to steer your feelings is to start with this gratitude thing where you actually take some time and you just think about all that God has done for you. Maybe you look for evidences of grace in your life, for ways that he's blessed you, for little indicators that you are making progress in the faith, and so on and so forth.

25 · The pastor illustrates the gratitude principle with a personal example—his gratitude for godly relationships

Sometimes it's just simple things like just realizing, wow, God has actually put some people in my life that are really good for me. And that's not true of a lot of people. You know, a lot of people that I grew up around, you know, in the kind of redneck world, they're just surrounded by people that were terrible for them. Nobody was calling them up. No one was, like, helping them grow. No one was encouraging them. You know, no one was calling them out on their little issues and so forth. And so I live in a life, I live a life now where probably the one thing I'm the most grateful for are just all the excellent people who are around me. And so that's one area that I'm pretty consistently grateful for. And then when I start articulating that and thinking about it and maybe even writing it down or something, my feelings rise. They start to match in that area.

26 · The pastor synthesizes the gratitude principle, calling it the 'training wheels' for emotional leadership

So I think maybe gratitude might be the kind of training wheels of handling your emotions and learning to lead your emotions rather than being led by them. Because what you're doing there is you're putting a fact before yourself. The fact is, God has been good to me in this way. God has been good to me in that way. And then your feelings, for whatever reason in that particular area seem to follow faster than perhaps in other areas.

27 · The pastor closes by summarizing his main points: feelings matter but must not lead, the Word is the only perfect guide, and the Psalms and gratitude are the tools for emotional formation

So there's some thoughts. I'm going to stop this podcast. It's already gone on too long. But I'll get back to some of these other questions. But, yep, this young man that asked me about the relationship between facts and feelings, one thing don't, even if I've said it poorly, don't misconstrue the idea. I'm not saying feelings don't matter. I'm saying that both your intellect and your emotions have been really affected by sin and will always be affected by sin to some degree. The one thing you have that hasn't been polluted in the whole world, not your friends, not your family, not the church, you know, not your facts, not your feelings, not your intellect. The only thing you have that hasn't been polluted is the word of God. And So that's where we start, and that's kind of our anchor. And then from there we just learn to have sort of reasonable expectations for our feelings, understanding that they're kind of slow and they don't always cooperate. Some of us have kind of defiant feelings. Some, you know, they're just, like, not going to go get on board very easily. Some of us just, you know, like, most of us probably just need time. Keep doing what the word says to do, and let your feelings catch up over time while being patient but insistent with them. And, you know, there are ways that you can feel good about things that are wrong, and there are ways that you can feel bad about things that are right. Ultimately, your feelings aren't ultimately that trustworthy. Only the word of God is to kind of remedy this and to begin to get your feelings in line. Understand that, you know, the Psalms are very helpful. This approach to gratitude that I've discussed is helpful. So hopefully some of what I've said is, is an answer, at least that's somewhat satisfying to this young man. And again, if you have questions you'd like me to answer, please send them to me via text or, you know, you can ping me on basecamp or whatever. But that's enough, I think, for today. You know, it's kind of a rainy day, and I think I'm going to give you a little treat from the deep cuts of the Christian Angela 1990s Christian music albums. We used to listen to a lot of really strange. There was a moment back in the 90s when all these really strange Christian bands came out, and it's just not that interesting out there anymore, as best I can see. Of course, you know, I don't. I. I don't really listen to most of that stuff anymore. It's just all. It all sounds the same to me. But back in the day, man, there were all sorts of weird genres and all sorts of cool bands, and we would go to these music festivals where they'd be three or four days long of just band after band after band.

Where this fits

Recent preaching context

The three sermons immediately preceding this one in the preaching schedule.

Mar 21, 2025

He Goes to Prepare the Earth for Us. A Biblical Theological Exploration of John 14

Jesus's preparation of a place for us in John 14 is not merely about remodeling heaven but about reigning at the Father's right hand to prepare the earth for eternal habitation by converting his enemies and ultimately renewing creation itself.

Mar 23, 2025

Gyroscopic Hearts

Jesus offers believers a gyroscopic heart—an internal peace that remains steady in turbulent circumstances—which is cultivated through constant meditation on God's promises and is essential for the sacrificial love to which we are called.

Mar 28, 2025

A COVID Post-Mortem: Why Did So Many Godly People Get It Wrong?

Many godly people got COVID wrong because decades of "gospel-centered" teaching actually centered on justification alone, leaving believers unprepared to recognize mass deception, and because wooden biblicism prevented them from reasoning out biblical principles about government untrustworthiness and human greed when no explicit "COVID verse" existed.

April 4 · This sermon

Facts and Feelings in the Christian Life

Because both intellect and emotions are disabled by sin, Christians must anchor themselves in the inerrant Word of God as their only reliable guide, while patiently training their feelings through obedience, gratitude, and the Psalms.

Take it further

Discuss · apply · pray

Small groups

6 discussion questions

Chris spoke about facts leading our lives while feelings follow behind. What's the difference between waiting for your emotions to change be…

Daily readings

5-day reading plan

This week we walk through the gospel's reshaping of how we live: from the Spirit's power to obey despite our disabled emotions, through the Bible's singular reliability, to the grateful rehearsal of God's facts that trains our feelings into alignment with truth.

Prayer

Prayer for Hearts Aligned with Truth

Father, we come before you in awe of your character—that you are perfectly good, utterly trustworthy, and the only source of unchanging trut…

Family table

When Your Feelings Lag Behind What You Know

This prompt invites kids to recognize that sometimes we know something is true (a fact) but don't feel like it yet—and that's normal. The go…

Couples

Facts, Feelings, and Our Marriage

What specific area of your Christian life did the sermon challenge you to trust God's Word over your current feelings about it?…

Memorize

Romans 8:5-6

This verse captures the sermon's central claim that facts—rooted in God's truth and the Spirit's work—must lead our obedience, and that our feelings naturally align with reality as we train our minds toward truth. It establishes that the mind is the battleground where we choose to orient ourselves toward God's Word rather than our compromised emotions.

Small-group discussion

6 questions for your group this week

Chris spoke about facts leading our lives while feelings follow behind. What's the difference between waiting for your emotions to change before you obey versus obeying first and allowing your emotions to catch up over time?

→ Can you think of a specific area in your own life where you've experienced this lag between what you knew was true and what you actually felt?
The sermon emphasized that both our minds and emotions have been compromised by sin and cannot be fully trusted. If that's true, what makes the Bible different, and why does that matter for how we navigate our Christian lives?

Bibliology emphasis
Chris described what happens when our consciences become miscalibrated—they can lead us to commit sins we don't even recognize as sins, or to omit things God actually calls us to do. What would it look like for someone's conscience to be out of alignment with God's Word in a way they haven't noticed?

→ How does the Word of God correct a conscience that has drifted without our realizing it?
The sermon warned against triumphalism—the belief that salvation should immediately fix all our problems and make us feel constantly joyful and free. What does the gospel actually promise about our feelings and struggles in this life, and how does that realistic hope shape the way we live?

Romans 8; Eschatology
Chris talked about gratitude as a training ground for learning to lead our emotions—that rehearsing facts about God's goodness allows our feelings to catch up more quickly to the truth. What's the connection between deliberately cultivating gratitude and experiencing emotional alignment with what we believe?

→ What would it look like to practice gratitude this week in a way that might actually shift how you feel?
The sermon distinguished between emotional slowness (which we should be patient with) and emotional stubbornness (which we need to confront). When you're struggling to feel something you know is true, how do you discern whether you're being too hard on yourself or not hard enough?

Sanctification emphasis

Draft · pending review

Daily readings · Monday–Friday

5-day reading plan

Monday Romans 8

Paul reminds us that 'the mind governed by the flesh is death, but the mind governed by the Spirit is life and peace' (Romans 8:6). We cannot trust our natural human perception—corrupted by sin—to lead us safely. Yet the Spirit's work through God's Word renews our minds and awakens us to truth that transcends our compromised judgment, giving us the one reliable guide in a world of broken perception.

Tuesday Romans 8

When Paul writes that 'if by the Spirit you put to death the deeds of the body, you will live' (Romans 8:13), he is calling us to active obedience—to command our wayward thoughts and desires toward Christ's lordship. The Spirit's power is not passive comfort; it is active enablement to discipline the mind and emotions as an act of worship, confessing our weakness while standing firm in Christ's authority over every part of our lives.

Wednesday Proverbs 3:5–6

When we are told to 'trust in the Lord with all your heart and lean not on your own understanding' (Proverbs 3:5), we are commanded to act on God's truth even when our emotions resist or our minds doubt. Over time, as we consistently choose obedience to God's Word rather than chasing the validation of our feelings, the Spirit gradually calibrates our hearts to match the facts we have embraced—not through magical transformation, but through patient, grace-enabled practice.

Thursday Romans 8

Scripture teaches us that 'those who are led by the Spirit of God are the children of God' (Romans 8:14), yet our conscience—like our mind and emotions—has been warped by sin and cultural conditioning. We desperately need the Spirit's illumination of God's Word to recalibrate our moral perception, because a conscience untrained by Scripture will confidently lead us into sin while we mistake it for righteousness.

Friday Romans 8

As Paul moves toward Romans 8's crescendo of God's love that cannot be separated from us, he invites us into grateful rehearsal of what is true: that 'we are more than conquerors through him who loved us' (Romans 8:37). When we regularly practice gratitude by recounting God's faithfulness and the gospel's security, we give our sluggish emotions a pathway to align with the objective truth our minds have embraced, and the Spirit uses this grateful discipline to reshape our entire spiritual affection.

Draft · pending review

Pray together this week

Prayer for Hearts Aligned with Truth

Father, we come before you in awe of your character—that you are perfectly good, utterly trustworthy, and the only source of unchanging truth in a broken world. We confess that we often live as though our feelings are the measure of reality, allowing our emotions to set the course of our obedience rather than your Word. We acknowledge that sin has disabled both our minds and our hearts, leaving us prone to doubt the very truths that should anchor our lives. Our consciences have been miscalibrated by the patterns of this age, and we find ourselves either committing sins we do not recognize or failing to do what you clearly require of us.

Yet the gospel liberates us from this bondage. In Christ, we have access to the Spirit's power to bring both our thoughts and our feelings under his lordship, not through self-loathing but through the grace of obedience practiced over time (Romans 8). Your Word alone remains unpolluted by sin, and it is the only perfect guide we possess. We thank you that the gospel does not promise the removal of struggle in this life, but rather the power to follow you faithfully even when our feelings lag behind.

We ask you to give us courage to lead with the facts of Scripture rather than the fluctuations of our emotions, trusting that as we obey, our hearts will gradually align with your truth. Grant us the wisdom to distinguish between genuine weakness that requires patience and willful stubbornness that requires repentance. Teach us to practice gratitude as the training ground for our affections, rehearsing your goodness until our feelings catch up to what we know to be true. May we grow in patient insistence upon obedience, knowing that the Spirit makes all things possible.

We commit ourselves together to this path of maturity—building our lives upon your Word, not our wavering hearts, and trusting that you will complete the good work you have begun in us.

Draft · pending review

Sunday-evening family table

When Your Feelings Lag Behind What You Know

For the parent

This prompt invites kids to recognize that sometimes we know something is true (a fact) but don't feel like it yet—and that's normal. The goal is to help them see that obedience and practice can help feelings eventually catch up to the truth.

Pastor Chris talked about how our feelings don't always match up with what we know is true. Can you think of a time when you knew something was good or right, but you didn't feel happy about it yet? What happened when you obeyed anyway?

works for ages 7+

Draft · pending review

Couples · three questions over coffee

Facts, Feelings, and Our Marriage

What specific area of your Christian life did the sermon challenge you to trust God's Word over your current feelings about it?
Where have we as a couple allowed our emotions to override what Scripture calls us to do, and how might leading with obedience together change our marriage?
How can we pray for each other this week as you both work to align your feelings with the truth of God's Word in one particular area?

Draft · pending review

Memory verse this week

Romans 8:5-6

For those who live according to the flesh set their minds on the things of the flesh, but those who live according to the Spirit set their minds on the things of the Spirit. For to set the mind on the flesh is death, but to set the mind on the Spirit is life and peace.

Why this verse: This verse captures the sermon's central claim that facts—rooted in God's truth and the Spirit's work—must lead our obedience, and that our feelings naturally align with reality as we train our minds toward truth. It establishes that the mind is the battleground where we choose to orient ourselves toward God's Word rather than our compromised emotions.

Draft · pending review

Where this was preached

About the church

Providence Community Church

Lenexa, KS
Sundays · 10:00 AM
About us · What we believe

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# Providence Community Church

A church preaching expository sermons through the books of the Bible.

## Sermons
- [He Goes to Prepare the Earth for Us. A Biblical Theological Exploration of John 14 (2025-03-21)](/ProvidenceLenexa/sermons/2025/03/he-goes-to-prepare-the-earth-for-us-a-biblical-theological-exploration-of-john-14)
- [Gyroscopic Hearts (2025-03-23)](/ProvidenceLenexa/sermons/2025/03/gyroscopic-hearts)
- [A COVID Post-Mortem: Why Did So Many Godly People Get It Wrong? (2025-03-28)](/ProvidenceLenexa/sermons/2025/03/a-covid-post-mortem-why-did-so-many-godly-people-get-it-wrong)
- [Facts and Feelings in the Christian Life (2025-04-04)](/ProvidenceLenexa/sermons/2025/04/facts-and-feelings-in-the-christian-life)

## About
- [About the church](/about)
- [Plan a visit](/visit)

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