A pandemic gives you a lot of time to think. A lot of time to feel. And a lot of time to think about what you feel.

I am a big “feeler” if you will. I constantly want to be feeling good or at peace. I don’t necessarily think that is wrong. Peace is good. Nothing wrong with feeling good. However, when that becomes my sole focus, I think that’s when I run into problems.

Why is this a problem?

You can’t control your feelings. You can’t flex your feeling muscles to react to things in a different way. Therefore, to center your life on something that is frequently shifting is a dangerous game to play.

Think about it this way. It’s Monday morning and you have to go to work. Now stop. How are you feeling? For me I feel anxious. I don’t want to work for the next 5 days. So, I try to do something that will make me less anxious. For me that is prayer. I pray. I don’t feel anything.

Uh oh. Now what?

I mean doesn’t the Bible say, “Be anxious for nothing, but in everything through prayer and petition with thanksgiving, present your requests to God? And the peace of God will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus?” Where is that?

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I think God has brought to light that I am a “feelings junkie.” When I pray, I want Him to always make me feel better. And I am so focused on manipulating my experience with God that I don’t slow down enough to simply “be still.”

God loves a broken heart. He says so through David in Psalm 51. Part of a broken heart is not simply that my heart hurts, but that my heart is open to receive whatever He wants to offer.

This thought really helped me…

If God wants to give me a feeling of His presence He will give it. If not, though it hurts, I must be content with His wisdom. I will trust Him regardless.

The Psalmist in Psalm 42 was experiencing an absence of feeling with God. God was not objectively absent. Rather subjectively there was a lack of experience of His presence.

God was teaching the Psalmist to not depend solely upon his subjective experience with Him. He loved him enough to not let him be dictated by his feelings. Look at the Psalmist’s response.

Why are you cast down oh my soul? Why so depressed within me? Hope now in God. Yet will I praise Him. My Savior, and my God.

He doesn’t try to control his feelings. His concern was not to manipulate his experience. His concern was trusting God through his absence of feeling. Praising Him for what he already knew to be objectively true.

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God’s peace comes from filtering my experiences through His sovereign hands. If I am enduring a lack of feeling, God allowed it. It’s often not from changing my circumstances that God gives me peace. His peace is deeper than that. He draws us to a deeper relationship, a fuller trust in Him. Often, that is when the feelings eventually follow.

Bottom line. If you don’t feel close to God, do not freak out. That is normal. Read Psalm 6 on your own. Read how the Psalmist pours out His broken heart to God, then confidently awaits His provision. He doesn’t freak out that he feels bad. He doesn’t scramble to find a good feeling to replace the bad one. He turns vertically. And he waits in confident trust.

Whatever you are feeling, good, bad, nothing, don’t try to control it. Place it in the hands of the One with whom “even the darkness is not dark.”