FAITHFULNESS WHEN WE DON’T FEEL IT
Why, my soul, are you downcast? Why so disturbed within me? Put your hope in God, for I will yet praise Him, my Savior and my God.
Psalm 42:5 (NIV)
One of the major pitfalls for followers of Jesus is putting too much stock into our feelings. Feelings can serve us, but they can also mislead us. Why do we wake up one morning feeling great, and the next morning, we’re ready to burn the world down? The culprit—our feelings.
One of the keys to spiritual growth, when it comes to feelings is to stop listening to ourselves and start preaching to ourselves. The Psalmist above has some feelings that begin speaking to him. He doesn’t suppress them. He acknowledges them. Suppression will cause us to deal with things sideways, numbing or trying to escape pain, which doesn’t work. We must face our feelings head-on. However, the Psalmist shows us that once our feelings speak, we speak back. Again, we must stop listening to our feelings and start preaching to ourselves.
Notice the Psalmist tells his feelings what to do. He says, I know I’m feeling this, soul, but I’ll put my hope in God. I’ll praise Him even if it doesn’t make sense. I’ve learned that we must preach our best messages to ourselves. We should be honest about how we feel. We should even share our feelings with others, but we need to preach the promises of God to ourselves. This transformative practice helps us in our formational journey of becoming more like Jesus. We need to choose which thoughts we choose to focus on each day.
Listen to what Martin Lloyd Jones says,
Have you realized that most of your unhappiness in life is due to the fact that you are listening to yourself instead of talking to yourself? Take those thoughts that come to you the moment you wake up in the morning. You have not originated them, but they start talking to you, bringing back yesterday’s problems, etc. Somebody is talking. Who is talking to you? Your self is talking to you. The main art in the matter of spiritual living is to know how to handle yourself.
A leader told me, Bryan, in life, the hardest person to lead will be yourself. He was right. We quickly see what others should do. However, our feelings, or attempts to suppress them, cause us to feel overwhelmed in our faith. The good news is, there’s a way to greater peace in the Spirit. It’s to speak the promises over our feelings each day. This allows us to deal with what’s in front of us in a way that builds faith instead of stress.
APPLICATION: Today, don’t listen to yourself. Instead, preach to yourself the promises of God.
PRAYER: Bring all the issues you’re facing to God. Write them out or say them aloud. One by one, bring those to God and let Him speak truth and peace over each area. Wait until you feel like He’s speaking. It may take a while to slow down and hear Him.