You cannot feel your way into obedience
I waited years to feel ready, feel called, feel peace. Turns out obedience usually arrives before the feeling does.
“Simon answered, ‘Master, we've worked hard all night and haven't caught anything. But because you say so, I will let down the nets.’”
Luke 5:5
For a long stretch of my twenties I had a rule I never wrote down: I would obey God once I felt like it. I called it waiting on peace. It was procrastination with a worship soundtrack.
Peter did not feel it. Read the line again. He had fished all night, caught nothing, and was cleaning his nets — the physical act of being done. Then a carpenter tells him to go back out. Everything in his body and expertise said no. His answer was not 'I feel led.' It was 'because you say so.'
That phrase has done more for my walk than any conference I have ever attended. Because you say so. It relocates the authority from my nervous system to His word.
Feelings are followers, not leaders. They are wonderful passengers and terrible drivers. Most of the time, the feeling shows up after the obedience — sometimes hours after, sometimes years, sometimes not at all on this side of things. And it is still worth it.
So the question is not 'do I feel called to forgive her?' It is 'has He said to?' Not 'do I feel like serving that week?' but 'is it mine to do?' The chase asks how you feel. Abiding asks what He said.
Let down the nets. You do not have to feel it first.
Randal Lee — The Abide Movement