Truth vs Feelings

"Truth renews the mind. Indeed, the truth which would affect the heart, which moves the heart, which changes the heart, must first enter through the vestibule of the mind if it would enter the sanctuary of the heart. The intention of truth preached is to affect the emotions and the will and the heart and the whole of our humanity…and thus preaching must come first through the mind. It makes its appeal through the mind; it enters through the mind – but it doesn’t simply stop with the mind." -John Armstrong

I hate my flesh! I hate that I am encased in a body that naturally defaults to sin, thats every desire and motivation will always be antithetical to God in and of its own doing. BUT on the flip side I am SO thankful for the grace of God that came, saved me and put His Holy Spirit within me so that I would be able to not live in obedience to my flesh or as Romans 6:6 says, "For we know that our old self was crucified with him so that the body of sin might be done away with,that we should no longer be slaves to sin—" , my old self was crucified with Christ! But, the fact of the matter is that although my sin problem has been dealt with completely and judicially it hasn't been practically done away with; what I mean is that until the day I meet Jesus face to face, I will live in a fallen body that is poisned by sin and therefore it will be a constant struggle, a battle until the day I die.

One thing in particular I hate about my flesh is feelings. Now don't get me wrong, emotions are a good God-given thing, it feels great to experience happiness or excitement, hope and anticipation but what I am talking about is the emotions that derail me from trusting and affirming what is true and right, those feelings that creep in in tough times or circumstances that bring doubt, confusion, worry, anger...and the list goes on; the feelings that come from the sinful flesh and are allied with the enemy. The quote at the beginning of this blog by Armstrong I think hits the hammer on the head of the nail, emotion or feelings are fine when they are IN RESPONSE to Truth, not the other way around.

I guess what I am trying to get at is the fact that we as humans, especially girls for some reason, tend to base our decisions and reactions to circumstances upon the emotions or feelings we have at the moment as opposed to what we know to be True and right. Philippians 4:8 is one of my life verses because it in short reminds me to daily "THINK TRUTH", and as Corinthians reminds us, anything that isn't needs to be taken captive to the obedience of Christ. This goes against everything the world is telling us to do, as all things that are God honoring usually do, it is telling us to live by what we know to be True even when our feelings and emotions tell us to repsond, react or feel otherwise. But how on earth do we do that? How do we as Christians, encased in a body prone to sinful thoughts and feelings THINK TRUTH?? I have found three things that are practically helpful in this battle that will last until we meet our Jesus face to face.

- BE IN THE WORD DAILY
If we are not in the Word daily we are not going to be mediating and fixated on the promises of it throughout the day, lets be honest, the days that we fail to be in the Word are the days that we tend to live by our feelings more than by His Truth. Psalm 119 is a great chapter in Scripture that reminds us that the law must be "mediated on day and night" and is what will "perserve your life". If we are in the Word daily, especially in the morning, we will start our day with FACT and not feelings and it will set the course for our mind and heart to pursue HIS way rather than our emotions.

-MEMORIZE HIS WORD
There are going to be times when we forget, or choose to forget God's promises and what is True and right and the emotions will flood in and we will want to think about things that arent "true": it is in these moments that those scriptures that we have placed in our heart will enable us to think upon what is True and FACT as opposed to feeling, as Psalm 119:11 says, "I have hidden your word in my heart that I might not sin against you. "

-TAKE EVERY THOUGHT CAPTIVE
2 Corinthians 10:5 says, "We demolish arguments and every pretension that sets itself up against the knowledge of God, and we take captive every thought to make it obedient to Christ." Although the context is not specifically about your "feelings" the idea and principle remains the same, that we need to be taking anything that comes into our minds and measuring it up to the Word of Truth to see if it is God-honoring, True and edifying and if not what do we do? DEMOLISH IT!

My encouragement to each of you, and to myself, is that we would seek to live by what is fact, which is the Word of God (the Truth that we live by) and not by what our feelings tell us, which are often stemming from the sinful flesh which we are indwelled by. And what is the result? Well as Psalm 119:1 says, we will be blessed (happy) "Blessed are they whose ways are blameless, who walk according to the law of the LORD"