I am known, in certain quarters, for my scornful response to people suggesting that we trust our feelings. I usually object by way of a Star Wars reference: “Trust your feelings” is bad advice unless you’re Luke Skywalker—and even he ended up kissing his sister, so you see what trusting your feelings gets you.
When I’m making that argument, I’m driving home the point that we have no magically prelapsarian place within us that can’t be wrong. There’s a case to be made for distrusting every part of us. You shouldn’t believe everything you think any more than you’d believe everything you feel, nor the other way round. We can and should interrogate and discipline our emotions just like we should interrogate and discipline our bodily urges and our thoughts. At the same time, there’s a ditch on both sides of the road. We can deify our God-given emotions, elevating the gift over the Giver, and that’s bad, but it’s equally bad to denigrate and ignore the gift God gives.
There’s no biblical reason to think emotions are any less trustworthy than thoughts. When Adam fell, he didn’t land catlike on his feet, so that his heart didn’t fall quite as low as his belly, his genitals (of course!) falling lowest and his brain landing uppermost, and therefore most to be trusted. No, it was a faceplant worthy of Wile E. Coyote — all of him fell all the way to rock bottom, and made an Adam-shaped hole when he hit. The project is to sanctify the whole shebang.
God made emotions, and He didn’t do it just so we’ll have something to distrust. There’s a righteous use for them, and when we’ve catechized our loves and loyalties properly and we’re using them rightly, there’s every reason to act based on emotion, just as there’s every reason to act on a properly vetted logical argument.
- Jesus endured the cross for the joy set before Him. Should He have distrusted that emotion?
- Love fulfills the law. Someone will say, “Love is not an emotion.” What a foolish idea! It’s not just an emotion, but it is an emotion, isn’t it?
- Paul also says to let the peace of God rule in your hearts. What is that, if not emotional experience?
Someone will have noticed by now that these are the fruit of the Spirit. Yes, just so; the Spirit works in our emotions as well as our thoughts. Why are we determined to distrust the fruit of the Spirit?
Full Contact Christianity 
Oooh, you’re talking my language. May I extend your observations to suggest that we could also view emotions as something like a “weather vane” that points in the directions of our lives where we may need to spend more time reflecting in increased receptivity to the Spirit’s voice?