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Are you a Thinker or a Feeler and the problem with being one or the other

March 30, 2014

Psalm 28

To You I’ll cry, O Lord, my rock; turn not Your ear from me;
Lest like those who sink to the pit Your silence makes me be.

O hear my plea for mercy, Lord, when unto You I cry;
When to Your blessed Holy Place, I lift my hands on high.

With wicked don’t drag me away, with those who evil do;
Who speak peace to their friends, while in their hearts they right subdue.

Give them according to their deeds, repay what they have done.
Bring back on them what they deserve; their evil works, each one.

God shall not build, but them destroy, who would not understand,
The Lord’s own works, nor yet regard the doing of His hand.

For ever blessed be the Lord, praise Him forevermore;
For He has heard my cry for help, and for His mercy sure.

The Lord’s my strength and shield; my heart upon Him does rely;
I trust in Him and I am helped; My heart sings in reply.

With joy and thanks to Him in song, The Lord my strength I’ll praise.
A rock for His anointed one; salvation He will raise.

O save Your people and do bless Your own inheritance;
And be their shepherd, carry them – forever their defense.

CONSIDER THIS. . .

I live in my head most of the time. I am far more rational than I am emotional. In fact, I have trained myself to take whatever emotion I might be feeling and quickly move it into the chamber of my thoughts where I can think about it and be more in control. It might be said of me that I live from my head. Many others are just the opposite. They are governed by their emotions. Their capacity to feel often overrides any analytical frameworks.

In the present age we have come to think about people as feelers or thinkers. We speak in terms of the dual realities of the “head” and the “heart” as though they were two separate places. As a result, we tend to wind up with either an overactive intellect or an overwhelming intuition. Both of these scenarios result from becoming trapped and isolated in our inner world. We live “in our head” or “in our heart.”

This taxonomy is foreign to the Psalmist. Why? Because the Psalmist sees these as one integrated reality. There is no head and heart. There is the situation, the person (or the people) and God. The Psalmist has learned to live in the situation, out loud, in the holy mingling of feeling and thought, before God. There is no escaping into thoughts on the one hand or feelings on the other. The interior life integrates itself openly and outwardly in the safety of the sanctuary of the presence of God. Whatever is inside, the Psalmist sings out unto God. The Psalmist trains us to live deeply from our innermost self yet in an open, honest, unveiled and out loud way before God. I want you to take a look at this short passage of scripture and see if this is not exactly what Paul is praying for us to experience.

This is why music and singing and song are so essential to being a human person. Song leads us into a place where “knowing” gets beyond intellect and “feeling” gets beyond emotion. Singing leads to an “outing” of our inner person. We speak often about head and heart connecting at the point of our hands, which does have a nice alliterative ring to it. I am coming to think that is wrong. Head and heart (whatever those actually are) come together in our audible voice, when we sing it all out before God. It’s my working theory at least.

So what do you think? How do you feel about this? ;0)

What’s holding you back? Others hearing you? Could this be why Jesus said to go into a room, close the door and go for it. CLICK HERE.

J.D. Walt writes daily for Seedbed’s Daily Text. He serves as Seedbed’s Sower in Chief. Follow him @jdwalt on Twitter or email him at jd.walt@seedbed.com.

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WHAT IS THIS? Wake-Up Call is a daily encouragement to shake off the slumber of our busy lives and turn our eyes toward Jesus. Each morning our community gathers around a Scripture, a reflection, a prayer, and a few short questions, inviting us to reorient our lives around the love of Jesus that transforms our hearts, homes, churches, and cities.

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