The Difference Between Knowing and Feeling

There is a big difference between knowing and feeling. In fact, that is the whole reason that I started this blog in the first place. There is a gap between our head and our hearts; between knowing and feeling.
Often times, there are periods in our lives when we know things, but although they may be real in our heads, we struggle to feel these truths in our hearts.

There are times when life throws us a curveball, and the life that we thought we knew looks nothing like we see around us.
There are times when everything hits the fan, and it becomes difficult to see how God could be at work in the chaos.
There are times when life's circumstances become so overwhelming that we wonder if God will really get us to the other side of the storm.

These situations are when our knowledge comes into play; when the things that we know matter more than the things that we feel. Previously, I spoke about the valleys in our lives, and how, unfortunately, they are unavoidable. We will go through chaotic, stressful, or even painful times in our lives. During these periods its easy to want to run away from our problems. In these times it becomes easy to run away because the truth that we thought we knew doesn't feel so concrete anymore.

For these reasons, we learn that the most important part of a valley is the mountain peak that we just descended from. It is on the mountain tops that we learn about the providence, knowledge, and trustworthiness of God. We learn these things in hopes of engraining them in our minds.
It is similar to when we were younger and our teachers made us memorize the multiplication tables because they claimed that we would not always be able to use a calculator to get the answer. There would come times where we would be faced with a problem, and we had to rely on what we had learned from the past.

We learn these lessons so that when all hell breaks loose upon our lives and we don't feel the truth of these lessons in our hearts, we can rely upon the knowledge we have gained upon the mountain tops. In the valley, it is easy to not feel God's presence, but we are able to know that He is there in spite of the doubt. In the midst of hardship, it may be difficult to have the confidence to know that God will come through in the end, and even though our hearts may be filled with pain and doubt, we can rest in the knowledge that He will provide.

There is a gap between the head and the heart, and it is never more noticeable than in the valleys of our lives. During these times, we must focus on the lessons that we have learned on the mountain top, because we will very rarely feel these truths in our hearts.