Tell me, quickly, on a scale of 1 to 10, how important are your feelings?
Do you feel that your actions have any merit if you don’t feel like doing the thing that duty insists you should do? “…Uh-oh, here we go again!” Hey, I heard that!
What do you say to your child when he doesn’t feel like eating veggies, turns up his nose at the green beans, preferring mac n cheese and chicken nuggets? If he gets force-fed vitamins, isn’t he still healthier than if he lives on artificial food? Suppose he doesn’t want to wear socks in sub-zero weather, but you are firm, and he wears them anyway. Are his feet warm or cold because he was unwillingly obedient?
What if you are in bed under the down comfort on a frigid Saturday morning and your children come stand beside the bed at seven o’clock and plead that they are starving and breathe jungle breath in your face? Do you suppose that God is displeased with you because you groan in your spirit when you slowly crawl out of bed to make pancakes and gravy?
Or maybe your husband asked if you could take the family vehicle to get an oil change and you really don’t feel like taking all the children in for twenty-minutes in the greasy waiting area at the Quik Lube but you do it anyway. Is it love if you didn’t really feel like it?
What if you are asked to teach a Sunday school class but you would much rather just listen to someone else teach instead of applying yourself to a job that is going to require some hard study? You say you will do it, even though you feel a bit unwilling. Can anybody be blessed by your reluctant obedience?
Help me out here. I can’t seem to find any verses in the Bible mentioning that how I feel is really important. Am I missing something?
wocket in my pocket 
“Thou shalt lube thy husband’s car without fussing and thou shalt also bake him pie!” Hezekiah 4:20
Yeah, you wish.
Stop!! Hold on!! Surely surely we can find something, anything!! Surely my feelings are much more important then all those noble reasons you listed. Why it simply must! Maybe we could find a verse that alludes vaguely towards the general direction (or not) that we could interpret from the original Greek so it could say what we need to hear! Otherwise we will be stuck being noble.
Hmmm…. I wanna hear more on this! 🙂
Ouch Dorcas! That Sunday school teaching comment hit the mark here!! Thanks for showing me that simple obedience is more important than feeling like it! 🙂
“Do you feel that your actions have any merit if you don’t feel like doing the thing that duty insists you should do?” ….. Good line to ponder!