Some days feel heavy.
Everything feels bad—or just flat and pointless.
Even small things feel pointless or too much to bear.
And in those moments, it doesn’t just feel bad—it feels true.
It isn’t.
One in five adults in Manchester struggle with their mental health. That matters, because people and their experiences matter. But it also tells you something important: if feelings defined reality, then one fifth of the city really are worthless at any given moment. Praise God your feelings don’t define reality.
Churches don’t exist to provide a magic cure for feelings like this. And we should be upfront about that. The Bible tells us that suffering is a regular part of daily life.
God doesn’t deny your suffering. But he does deny that its ability to tell you what’s real:
The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately sick; who can understand it? (Jeremiah 17:9)
Your feelings are a real experience, but not a description of what is really true outside you.
We may feel worthless, but God says he has loved us.
We may feel guilty, but God says he has forgiven us.
We may feel we’re going nowhere, but God says he has given us a future.
We may feel lonely, but God says he is with us as our Father every moment.
This is objective reality. That’s what God gives you.
Ironically, many of my atheist and church friends make the same mistake about God’s promises. They think the primary or only value of God’s promises are how they help me psychologically.
But you can recognise from your own experience—at least sometimes—that Jeremiah 17:9 is accurate: Our hearts and feelings “deceive” us.
The reality of life is that our internal feelings frequently don’t match the external reality.
God’s Gospel promise to you is not conditional:
“God will love you if…”
“God will forgive you if…”
And God’s Gospel promise to you is not subjective and immediate:
“You will feel better.”
“Your mind and feelings will be fixed now.”
God’s Gospel promise to you is better than that. It is both unconditional and objectively true. He has forgiven you already. He will keep telling and giving you this truth from outside yourself, whether you feel it or not.
Even when every fibre of your being is screaming “I’m worthless, empty and have no purpose!” God is saying back to you: “That isn’t reality. Look at my Son, hanging on the cross. He did that for you. Everything wrong about you has been dealt with. Everything right about him has been given to you. That’s what defines you.”
But, while this is a reality right now for everyone in Manchester, the vast majority of people don’t benefit from it at all. Because they still live as though what they feel, think, experience and see defines reality, not the promises God has made to them.
That is why God gave you the Church—a place where you know you will receive his promises. His promises are not inside you. He gives to you through his promises that come from outside you: preaching, Baptism, the Lord’s Supper, songs, spoken words, and the encouragement of others.
As God’s promises come to you through these means, God’s Spirit supernaturally gives you assurance that the objective reality that God loves and has forgiven you is true.
Your feelings may not change overnight. And we live with all sorts of sufferings throughout our whole lives. But even as you struggle with feelings of heaviness, God assures you they don’t describe reality. And he is with you, even as you experience them.
To hear more about how God gives you this assurance of his objective love for you, listen to this: Why Would Jesus Not Feel Assured By Calvin?
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