You Cannot Fight What You Cannot Name
Feelings came first. Before a child can speak, he can cry. Before he knows the word hunger, he feels it. We come into this world able to ache, to fear, to delight—and only later do we learn to say so.
But God did not leave us at the level of the animals. The beasts feel. Only man was given words. And the first thing God did with His own words was name. "And God called the light Day, and the darkness he called Night" (Genesis 1:5). He did not merely make the light. He named it. The naming was part of the work.
Then He handed that same dignity to Adam. "Whatsoever Adam called every living creature, that was the name thereof" (Genesis 2:19). The man stood in the garden and put words to what God had made. That is the image of God in a man, working.
A lot of saints live on hunches. They feel that something in the home is off. They sense the church is drifting. They carry an unease about a friendship, a business deal, a habit. And the feeling is real—God gave it to you. But a feeling you cannot name is a feeling you cannot fight.
The world is content to stay at the level of the gut. We are not permitted to. We have a Book, and the Book does the very thing Adam did. It puts names to things. It calls covetousness covetousness. It calls the slow cooling of a heart leaving thy first love (Revelation 2:4). When you learn the word, you can see the thing well enough to take it to God.
The husband who only feels that he is failing cannot repent of anything in particular. But the husband who reads "Husbands, love your wives, even as Christ also loved the church" (Ephesians 5:25) suddenly has a word for the failure—and a word for the cure. The vague becomes specific, and the specific can be confessed, forgiven, and changed.
This is why we preach verse by verse. This is why we stay in the text. A feeling will lie to you. The verse will not. Not because feelings are bad, but because God means to make you a workman who can rightly divide the word of truth (2 Timothy 2:15)—and you cannot divide what you cannot name.
So do not despise the labor of learning the words. Sit under preaching that names sin and names grace. Read until the language of Scripture becomes the language of your own heart. Then when the old unease rises, you will not just feel it. You will name it, take it to the throne, and watch God do something about it.
Adam named the animals. You name the thing that troubles your soul. And the One who named the light will not leave you in the dark.
Pastor Fortunato
Founding Pastor & Preacher of the Word.
Pilgrim Baptist Church — Cookeville, Tennessee
https://pilgrimbaptist.church/ https://www.sermonaudio.com/solo/pilgrimbaptist/