“So take care how you listen; for whoever has, to him more shall be given; and whoever does not have, even what he thinks he has shall be taken away from him.” Luke 8:18
On the surface, these words of Jesus can sound unfair and even cruel. To understand what Jesus was saying, we must understand that He was continuing His thoughts from the parables above. Luke 8:11 following. Jesus is speaking about truth, and He cautions people to be careful and only listen to the truth.
Lori and I have two groups of people that we meet with regularly for fellowship, discipleship, and training. I have told both groups, “I don’t care about your opinions regarding what is good or evil, true or false, unless they agree with the Word of God.”
I was thoroughly indoctrinated into humanism during my education in psychology and counseling. Through the years, as I have increasingly relied upon the Word of God and the Holy Spirit, the Spirit of truth, to guide me in my inner healing work with people, I have become aware of many humanistic, psychological concepts that sound good, but contradict biblical instruction and example. Unfortunately, I see many Christians accept and even teach these widely accepted, humanistic concepts that sound good and feel good to our flesh but have no biblical foundation.
One of these popular concepts is that our feelings are neutral, that is, they are neither good nor bad, and it is always good to affirm another person’s feelings. In reality, our feelings can come from our flesh or our spirit. We must discern the difference between feelings that come from our flesh and want to satisfy the desires of our flesh, versus feelings that come from our spirit, often inspired by the Holy Spirit. Galatians 5:16-17
Recently, during one of our Love After Marriage workshops, I was asked to come into a small group to help a couple who became stuck while doing a forgiveness exercise. One spouse was attempting to forgive the other for “not validating my feelings and not understanding me.” I commented that although the Bible instructs us to be quick to listen, kind, patient, and tender-hearted with each other, “validating feelings” is not a biblical concept, and there is no record of Jesus ever modeling it.
In this case, the spouse who wanted to have their feelings validated acknowledged that they had a pattern of not honestly sharing what was going on inside, but instead would flippantly say, “Oh, I’m okay.” Consequently, I led that same spouse to reconcile and ask for forgiveness instead of forgiving, because they expected the impossible from their spouse. They were asking their spouse to validate feelings that they were not even willing to communicate. Afterwards, the other spouse acknowledged that they needed to listen better.
Culturally, there is strong social pressure to indiscriminately validate people’s feelings. What if the feelings are fear, jealousy, anger, hatred, discouragement, anxiety, or hopelessness? If I simply validate those feelings and treat them as neutral and innocuous, I will be validating and reinforcing the work of the Enemy in that person’s life.
To respond to people in a way that lets them know I care and understand them is good and Godly, but if I am going to help another person with troubling feelings and thoughts that come from their flesh, I must go beyond validating the feelings and show the person how to take their thoughts captive to the obedience of Christ.
This means that we take control of our thoughts and make sure that they agree with what the Holy Spirit, the Spirit of Truth, would say. Fear, jealousy, the anger of man, hatred, discouragement, anxiety, hopelessness, and things like this are not from God, and so if I only validate them, I will reinforce the flesh and lead people away from God. Yet, that is what I was taught in my professional training. Most of the time, stopping at validating feelings draws a person to us instead of God.
Many people love having themselves as the focus, even if it is not the best for them spiritually.
As my counseling focused on inner healing, where my clients listened to the Holy Spirit, my clients shifted from looking to me for their help and looked to God. I became the vehicle to help them see the Enemy’s lies and direct them to the Spirit of Truth rather than being the person with the answers.
The only way to understand what Jesus was communicating when He said, “So take care how you listen; for whoever has, to him more shall be given; and whoever does not have, even what he thinks he has shall be taken away from him” is to understand that He was speaking of being careful to be sure we have God’s truth. We must be careful how we listen because the Enemy’s deception is subtle and insidious.
If we carefully discern and retain God’s truth, more will be given to us. However, if we are listening to and believing things that are not God’s truth, those false things we believe will ultimately be shown to be deception, and “what we think we have” will be taken away because they have no value in God’s eyes. He is light, and there is no darkness or deception in Him. 1 John 1:5
Lord, please give me the grace to slow down and carefully examine the “truths” I hear daily. I want to discern and follow only what I know is Your truth. John 17:17
Written by: Barry Byrne