We Walk By Faith, Not By Feelings

For almost a year, I wondered in a spiritual desert. A wasteland of my own making and of my own choice. Choosing this desert proved to be one of the biggest mistakes of my life--certainly my spiritual life.  My choice damaged the most important relationship in my life – my relationship with God. In actuality, the choice wasn’t to walk through the desert. The choice I made was to be angry at God – to refuse to let go of my anger and ultimately turn my back against God and severe that relationship.

A few months ago, I “came to my senses” and realized I needed to repent and ask God to forgive me. I repented. I felt nothing. I repen again. I felt nothing--again. And so began a continual confession of sin and plea for forgiveness until I could “feel” something. There’s the catch.

The Bible says we “walk by faith and not by sight.” I would like to submit that we also “walk by faith" and not by feelings. In fact, our feelings will negate our faith in a heartbeat. We allow our feelings to control what we do, how we act, what we think.

We allow the feelings of the people who we are around most often to affect how we feel. If they are "down," we are "down." If they are "happy," we are "happy." We even allow people we don't know to influence--even change--our moods. Let some crazy driver cut us off in traffic and before we can blink, we need to go to confession for the names we just called that driver. (Oh, come on. You now you've called those drivers names before.)

We allow our circumstances to affect how we feel. If our house is clean, we feel good. If our family is well, children behaving and life is grand, we are satisfied. But let one thing go wrong and we go ballistic and throw the world's biggest pity party known to mankind.

I realize that some of these examples are greatly exaggerated. However, you get my point.

So what do we do? How do we stop walking by our feelings and move into walking by faith? Stay tuned for the next blog post! 

 

We allow the feelings of the people who we are around most often to affect our feelings. If they are “down,” we are “down.” If they are “happy,” we are “happy.” We even allow people we don’t know to influence—even change—our moods. Let some crazy driver cut us off in traffic and before we can blink, we need to go to confession for what we just called that driver. (Oh, come on. You know you’ve called those crazy drivers names before.)

We allow our circumstances to affect how we feel. If our house is clean, we feel good. If our family is well, children behaving and life is grand, we are satisfied. But let one thing go wrong and we go ballistic and throw the world’s biggest pity party.

I realize that some of these examples are greatly exaggerated. However, you get my point.

So what do we do? How do we get out of walking by feelings and move into walking by faith? Stay tuned for next blog post!