Chasing a Feeling?

Dannah Gresh: Could it be that our quiet times aren’t all about feeling something? Pastor Kevin DeYoung has something to say about that.

Pastor Kevin DeYoung: When Jesus says, “You will know you’re My disciples . . .” He didn’t say, “. . . because you will feel really alive in your quiet time.” No, “You’re My disciples and you love Me if you obey My commandments.”

Dannah: This is the Revive Our Hearts podcast with Nancy DeMoss Wolgemuth, author of A Place of Quiet Rest, for June 2, 2025. I’m Dannah Gresh.

Nancy DeMoss Wolgemuth: Have you ever sat down with your open Bible and felt a twinge of guilt? You’re reading, you’re studying, but you’re just not feeling what you think you should be. If you've had that experience, then I’m excited for you to hear this conversation with Pastor Kevin DeYoung. I think it will be an encouragement to you.

Now if you’re not familiar with Pastor DeYoung, let me take a moment to introduce him. He’s the pastor of Christ Covenant Church in Matthews, North Carolina. He has published more than a dozen books, including titles like Just Do Something, Crazy Busy, and one of my favorites, The Biggest Story . . . of the story of the Bible. He's also an associate professor of systematic theology at Reformed Theological Seminary in Charlotte, North Carolina.

But that’s not all! Kevin and his wife, Trisha, are also the parents of nine children. Don’t you love that?! And what’s more, he is going to be speaking at our upcoming True Woman conference this October. We are so excited that he has agreed to join us! The theme of that conference will be: The Word: Behold the Wonder.

As you might guess, Pastor DeYoung is a busy man! But he took some time to sit down with Dannah and talk about beholding the wonder of God’s Word, and I’m so glad he did. Let’s listen together.

Dannah: Pastor Kevin DeYoung, tell me about a time–take me to the room, the day, the experience– when you felt the wonder of God’s Word.

Kevin: I had the privilege of growing up in Christian home, so I was always sitting under the teaching of the Word. I don't even remember who the preacher was. He was a traveling preacher coming through our town.

Perhaps even looking back, if I knew who it was (and with a little more theological discernment) I might have even been more critical. But the Lord uses the Word. I was just in third grade. It sounds strange to say that, but I remember hearing the Word preached,and it was a very simple gospel message: salvation, faith, repentance. 

I don’t know that that was the time I was saved, but I can remember distinctly hearing it in a different way. I think many people who grew up in the church can point to some of those experiences.

That was one when I was just seven or eight years old, thinking, I need to really be a Christian! So I talked to my parents about it. I said, “I want to join the church.” 

And they said, “Well, let’s see how you’re feeling about this in a year from now.” 

And then in my church context, I met with my church elders and went through catechism and a whole bunch of other things. But I can think of that time, without even knowing exactly in my memory who it was or what it was, but the Word got through to my heart. 

Sometimes I give the analogy, it is like a meal that you eat. You don’t remember too many distinct meals in your life. And maybe some encouragement to mothers out there. You make a lot of meals (and dads, you should make some meals, too). People don’t always say they’re thankful for them; they don’t remember what the seven meals were last week. And yet, they were fed, and they were nourished. That’s what the Word does in our lives. Then there were those times you might not even remember everything that was spread out before you, but you remember how it was a really good meal. 

I can think of that particular time when I was a young man. I can think of a number of times when I was in college . . . I went to Hope College, Holland, Michigan; Ben Patterson was the chaplain there. I remember sitting there in the pew in Dimnent Chapel listening to those messages and sometimes getting up after them and just walking around Holland, Michigan for an hour, just thinking about it.

It is that moment where like Jesus says, “My sheep hear My voice.” You feel like this was not just a man who gave a message, but God was saying something to me through the preaching of His Word.

There are lots of opportunities, and hopefully by God’s grace, people maybe experience that once in a while when I have the privilege to preach.

Dannah: I think they do; I’m sure they do; I know they do! And we’re looking forward to experiencing that with you when you’re with us at True Woman in October! 

Your analogy of that there are these meals that we remember, but all of them nourish us! (Well, let’s talk about Doritos, maybe not all of them nourish us!) But most of them nourish us; they give us strength. I love that. That’s a beautiful picture. That is my experience with the Word of God, where it builds on itself day after day as I’m faithful, and I’m in it. But not every day is super memorable.

Kevin: Yes, that’s right. In your own personal devotional time, you need to eat. Most days we eat three times a day. Sometimes we love it, and hopefully it’s not Doritos and Mountain Dew (though I have been known to swig back a Mountain Dew every once in a while). But, you’re fed, and you’re absolutely right.

Spiritual exercise is like physical exercise in some ways. You keep doing it, and you don’t always see the results that time. Whatever your exercise is . . . you stretch or do Pilates, or you lift something, or you run. 

In fact, there’s an analogy there, too. If you’ve never exercised before, you see the benefits pretty quickly right away, because it’s all new. You wake up the next morning, your muscles are sore, you’re stretched out. If you’re middle aged like me, I’m just always breaking things and getting hurt with things I didn’t know could go wrong. But if you do it over and over again, it’s harder to get that sense of return. 

Here’s the thing spiritually: if you’ve been in the Word for a long time, and you’ve been in it almost every day, and you go to church, it doesn’t feel like what happened when you were in college or when you were a new Christian. 

It’s just like, if you’d never run a mile before and you start running a mile every day, you start seeing improvements like crazy! You can feel it burn in your lungs, and it feels good. Well, if you do that every day for twenty years, you’re not sure you’re improving. But actually, here’s the thing: you’re a lot healthier and you’re stronger than you were when you started. But because you’ve built that up, it doesn’t seem like that all the time. 

And that can be the experience of a whole lot of Christians pressing through like you would with any other kind of regiment and discipline. “I’m not sure I feel this anymore.” I can’t look in the mirror the next day and see that I’ve gained muscle or lost weight. But I’m still doing something! And by God’s grace, it’s helping me grow stronger and healthier! 

Dannah: Yeah, that’s good! You know, there’s the everyday feeding that nourishes us and keeps us strong, and then there are those moments of incredible wonder. But there are also times when we do get into a dry season, when it’s not a healthy season. Maybe it is too much Doritos, and you’re eating the wrong stuff. It could be your media diet is outweighing your Bible diet, or something like that. How do we reacquaint ourselves with the wonder and desire to be in God’s Word when we hit those dry seasons? 

Kevin: You know, you hit on some really good points there, just in the way you asked the question. So, one thing that we always need to be reminded of is: our sense of our spiritual vitality is not the same as our actual spiritual vitality.

 

So if we just gauge each day: “What am I feeling? Is this feeling dry, is this feeling lively?” Of course, we prefer to have some good emotional, positive feedback. But we should understand as Christians, that’s not actually a real healthy barometer of how we’re doing.

When Jesus says, “You will know you’re My disciples . . .” He didn’t say, “. . . because you will feel really alive in your quiet time.” No, “You’re My disciples and you love Me if you obey My commandments.”

In Galatians 5, when it says, “How do you know that you’re bearing fruit?” it doesn’t go to, “Well, you’ll feel a certain enthusiasm in your morning devotions.” No. It’s, “Are you growing in love, joy, peace, patience . . . all the fruit of the Spirit?” So the first thing is: we need to recalibrate, “What does spiritual maturity look like?”

And then second, what you said was really well put. I notice in my own life (I wish I were a model) . . . You can’t see this, because you are probably just listening, but I’m holding up my phone. This infernal magical box here that does amazing things, and it’s such a distraction! That is very true for many of us.

If we are constantly in front of those screens, taking in—even if it’s not bad content per se—it does rewire us. It shapes us to a certain kind of dopamine hit, to a certain kind where you just keep scrolling and thinking, Give me something new. It’s half a second away. Well, the Word of God doesn’t work like that.

I find in my own life sometimes not just, “Why am I having a hard time concentrating?” But if I’ve been just gorging on the Doritos, to stick with that metaphor, feeding myself with that instead of what’s actually healthy for me, sometimes then you lose an appetite for what is really good and what is really healthy!

And then, just the last thing I would say about anybody out there who is struggling with that sense of maybe doldrums or drudgery, I think sometimes it’s because we have stopped really engaging our minds.

And what I mean by that is, I’m reading through the Bible in a year. Many of us do that, our church is in a plan this year, and that’s really good, that’s a good discipline each morning. And honestly, sometimes it feels a little rote. I’ve read through the Bible a whole bunch of times, and it’s kind of familiar. What’s amazing is that sometimes when I get to my sermon prep, I’m slowing down. I’m reading some other people. I’m thinking at a deeper level. That’s not to say that reading three chapters is a bad idea, but it is kind of like other sorts of exercise. You need different modes and different mechanisms. If you only exercise your muscles with the exact same exercise every day, you’re going to stop feeling and noticing any returns. 

So I think sometimes slower and deeper is when I find that I’m learning something. Because that’s what’s so exciting when we’re young Christians. Everything is new and, “I didn’t see this before!” Then you walk with the Lord for a while, and you hopefully hear some good sermons and read some good books, and it’s harder to come up with new things. You don’t want to go off and follow false teachers who are tickling your ears with new things, but there are always new things in the Word.

And so, to kind of reignite that passion, it may mean getting a really good commentary, getting a good secondary book, a good study Bible, reading a systematic theology along with it. All of a sudden you open up new vistas. You didn’t know what you didn’t already know.

Dannah: Yes. I like the idea of what you said about exercising, and you need to have different modes of approaching it. My husband and I are in a discipleship group right now where we are challenged to only read the Gospels for a certain period of time.

So, we read two chapters of the gospels together each day—we pick where—and one psalm, because Jesus is through and all over the psalms. The idea is to just reacquaint our hearts in a new way with the heart of Jesus! 

We are both saying, “Did you know that was in the Bible?” We’ve read the whole Bible cover to cover multiple times, but we’re taking it in a different mode, and we’re seeing it differently.

Kevin: Yes, I sometimes think faster, slower, deeper. Do one of those. Faster may seem counterintuitive. But I know there have been a few different seasons in my life where, “Okay, I’m going to do ten chapters a day!” I don’t normally do that. But for a short season, I’m going to try to get a big picture. So, faster.

Or slower. Instead of the three or four chapters which you normally do if you’re in a read-through-the-Bible-in-a-year plan. Maybe you do one chapter, but you read it out loud, and you read it twice.

And then, deeper. It is true that you could be distracted and you could end up reading a lot of other books and you’re not actually reading the Bible. But here’s where we shouldn’t be too hard on ourselves.

In Ephesians 4 we read that when Jesus ascended into heaven, one of the gifts He gave to the church were teachers. It was God’s design to give us teachers. He didn’t just give us the Bible and the Holy Spirit—those are the greatest gifts. 

But He designed that other human beings would provide insight and help us see things and help us learn. So when we have a good podcast—not to replace the Bible—when we have, hopefully, excellent preaching or when we read a good book, that’s part of God’s means to give us teachers to help us learn things!

Anything that I’m able to teach other people is because somebody else taught me—in a class or a lecture or a book. If we stop reading and stop learning, then the things that are in Scripture become plain and ordinary, even though they’re not, instead of the experience that you’re having right now, which is wonderful! 

We say, “Wow! I didn’t see this!” That’s a great thing! The Bible is infinitely deep and infinitely rich! I’ve been preaching for over twenty years, and I still come to things I’ve done before and think, I didn’t see that before! That’s what God does in His Word if we’ll take time to see it.

Dannah: Yes. You used the word, “wonderful.” That’s a good word. What is wonderful about the Bible? 

Kevin: That’s how the psalmist often talks about the Word. In Psalm 119 over and over again it is about, “I love Your law!” and “It’s wonderful!” So if you just break down that word, there’s a wonder. 

You might use that if a child is born, or you’re watching your grandchild learn to walk, or a sunset or a mountain. There’s a wonder, meaning there’s a sense of joy, awe, expansiveness. I think the Bible is wonderful!

Two quick things come to mind: one, the Bible knows me better than I know myself, and it shows me things. “Wow, I guess God is really smart! He understands what’s going on in my heart!” That’s a privilege I have as a pastor. I get to study these things, and any good sermon needs to start by God preaching it to my own heart first. So that’s a wonder in the Word: God knows the human heart better than we do. 

And then two, the other wonder is: we see more of God. Of course we want application in the Word: “Help me. What does this mean? How do I raise my kids? What do I do with this difficulty in my life?” All of that’s appropriate, and yet we don’t want to lose sight that the greatest application is, we get to know God better!

You know, if you’re talking to your spouse . . . Let’s say my wife is telling me all sorts of things about herself and about her day, and I just say, “Okay, okay, enough! How does this help me live my life better?!”

She would say, “Well, but I’m sharing myself! Don’t you want to know me, what I think, who I am?” 

So, God’s Word is revealing to us more of God. Of course, the best thing, the most important thing in life is that we get to know God better! And the only sure way to do that is through His Word!

Dannah: Yes. Okay, Pastor, coach us up, direct us. We have lost the wonder; I have lost the wonder. Specifically direct me to a passage in the Bible that might be really useful and insightful to spark that flame once again. Where should I start?

Kevin: So a couple of things. One, I mentioned Psalm 119. It’s very repetitive in some ways, but it’s also amazing. One time when I was preaching on Psalm 119. It’s the longest chapter in the Bible, and it’s an acrostic, but you can’t see that in English.

Dannah: Did you say, “One day I preached through Psalm 119?”

Kevin: I did.

Dannah: In one day?

Kevin: I did it. I preached it in one sermon. I did a summary. But one of the elements—and this is to answer your question—Psalm 119 gives us what we should feel about the Word.

We understand what we should do with the Word, but it also has all this emotive, affectional language. So if someone is listening and says, “Well, but that’s the problem. I don’t feel that. I don’t feel like the law of the Lord is my delight.”

Okay, try on that psalm for yourself. Read it out loud. Most of that is already in personalized language. Try what the psalmist feels about the Word of God as your own affections. State it.

Just like as a husband or a wife, do you always feel (now, Honey, if you’re listening to this, of course I always feel amazingly about you!), but do we always feel the same level of intensity? Do we just have a magical sonnet rolling off our tongue for our spouse?

Uh, no, but we still know the practice of saying those things that we know to be true. This is where I think we mistakenly think hypocrisy is saying something that you don’t feel. No. Hypocrisy is pretending to be something that you’re not. Being an adult involves doing things that you don’t always feel. 

Sometimes it’s, “I can’t go to church; I’ll be a hypocrite. I don’t really feel like I’m worshipful!” No, that’s called maturity when you go and you do the right thing. And sometimes when we’re younger, our affections and our feelings and that wonder is all out in front of us. You don’t know that actually we’re ignorant about a lot of things but that feels good. Your intellect and your maturity need to catch up. 

Then as we get older, typically that maturity, that intellect, that knowledge is ahead of our affectional state, and that feels concerning to us. But it’s not any more concerning than when we were young and we had the affections and we didn’t have the knowledge and we didn’t have the wisdom. So, speak those things. Psalm 119 is a great place to go!

The other one I have found may sound counterintuitive. If you’ve lost the wonder, go to a part of the Bible that has always seemed very difficult and mysterious to you. Don’t go just on your own, but maybe with a good teacher, a good help. 

So for example, hopefully the people in my church like any good sermon. But when I preached through Leviticus a few years ago, or preaching through Revelation, that’s a perennially difficult one. If I’m able to show connection . . . Many people who have been in the church a long time feel like, Yes, I didn’t see this connection! I didn’t know how this food law in Leviticus had anything to do with my faith, anything to do with Jesus! That restores the wonder!

Not that you don’t go to Romans and Colossians and Philippians again; there are always new things. But sometimes maybe go to Ezekiel or Numbers. Get a good teacher, get a good commentary, and see some things that you didn’t see before. That can reignite a sense of, “Wow! God has a ton to teach me!”

Dannah: That’s so good! I have a few other things I want to unpack with you. I wonder if you’d come back for one more day to talk about the wonder of God’s Word? I want to talk about two things. One is this, you said earlier we’re not His disciples if we feel;we’re His disciples if we obey. We’re His disciples if we abide in this Word, right? This is a discipline. 

But also, now we’re unpacking the fact that we should feel something. How do we balance that or handle that in a mature way so that we are hungry for those moments of intimacy with the Word, but we understand we’re not dependent on what we feel.

Let’s talk about that tomorrow. Will you come back? I have a couple of other questions, too.

Kevin: Happy to come back. And I warn you, I am a Dutchman, so my feelings are sometimes few and far between, but I’m happy to talk about that.

Dannah: Love it.

Nancy: Well, this conversation with Dannah Gresh and Pastor Kevin DeYoung isn’t over. We’ll soak up more practical wisdom about the Word when we come back tomorrow. 

And if you make your way to the True Woman conference in Indianapolis, you’ll get to take an even deeper dive on this topic. This year’s conference is all about—you guessed it—Beholding the Wonder of the Word!

On October 2–4, you’ll hear from Pastor Kevin DeYoung, along with Mary Kassian, Dannah Gresh, Kelly Needham, Jackie Hill Perry, and I’ll be there as well. We’ll be led in worship by Shane and Shane. 

For more information or to register today, visit TrueWoman25.com. I would love to see you there so we can wonder at the Word together, face to face and in person! What a sweet time that’s going to be. Again, you’ll find the details at TrueWoman25.com. 

Now, our programs and conferences like this are only possible because listeners like you are generous, and give to enable the outreaches of this ministry. This month, when you make a donation of any amount, we’re offering you a beautiful art print featuring a bit of poetry that I wrote about the wonder of God’s Word. 

And along with that, we’ll send you a book by Pastor Colin Smith called Fly through the Bible. This resource is all about taking in the big picture of God’s Word. It’s really practical, and I hope it will be a useful tool to keep on your shelf. 

If you’d like to give, you can visit ReviveOurHearts.com, or call us at 1-800-569-5959. And don’t forget to ask for your art print and book when you donate. These are our gifts to you.

Well, we’ve established that our quiet time isn’t about chasing a feeling. Butshouldn’t emotions have some place in the conversation? Yes, they should. Dannah and Pastor Kevin DeYoung will unpack that tomorrow. Please be back for Revive Our Hearts.

This program is a listener-supported production of Revive Our Hearts in Niles, Michigan, calling women to freedom, fullness, and fruitfulness in Christ.

*Offers available only during the broadcast of the podcast season.