Don’t Trust Your Feelings - The Warrior's Journey®
Devotionals

Don’t Trust Your Feelings

Author: Chaplain, COL Scott McChrystal, USA (Ret.)

Virginia Guard chaplain support teams support military personnel in Louisiana. Photo by Coast Guard is licensed under CC By 2.0

We are hard pressed on every side, but not crushed; perplexed, but not in despair; persecuted, but not abandoned; struck down, but not destroyed. (2 Corinthians 4:8,9)

Nationally known pastor and author, Erwin Lutzer, has nailed it: “a Christian life based on feeling is headed for a gigantic collapse.” Do we ignore our feelings? Absolutely not. But neither are we to base our decisions upon how we feel. We’d never accomplish anything worthwhile if we let that happen.

A year ago I was visiting Fort Benning, Georgia. I had been asked to visit a young soldier in Basic Combat Training who was having a rough time. He was only a few days from graduation but had contracted a dose of the flu and simply felt rotten. He asked me what he should do. He was hoping I would tell him to quit. I didn’t. Instead I encouraged him to “lean forward in the foxhole” and not let his feelings drive his decision. Weeks later I received a wonderful email from his uncle along with a picture of the young trooper in his Class A uniform. He had made it. The Apostle Paul’s advice in this verse is right. Drive on!


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