Feelings - Confusion

Feelings are not wrong in themselves and in fact can make people temporarily happy. Feelings soften us and make us human. However, when they control us and are recurringly fluid and make people climb to the highest levels or dip to the lowest trough within a very short time, they can cause people to be unstable in behaviour.

Have you observed or read of the following:

“This feeling just came over me repeatedly.”
” I am confused. “
“I feel angry,”
” I feel upset, I feel worried, and he always makes me feel this way.
I make bad decisions which I regret.”

Have you read about the berserk gun-man who shot and killed so many people because he was controlled by his feelings of anger, bitterness, unforgiveness, and helplessness which welled up within him beyond control and propelled him to shoot?

Have you read how people abused spouses, children, employees and others just because of feelings of inadequacy and insecurity?
Have you experienced recurring fear of someone or a sickness that wreaks havoc in your mind so that you cringe, suffer much pain and anguish in your mind, and just want to run away and hide at the traumatic memory of it?

Have you been filled with terror and fear that your world turns into a frenzy?

Have you watched someone torn by feelings?

Have you seen people whose lives are struggling, tumultuous and based on feelings and imaginations rather than facts? A person who feels depressed who harps on feeling depressed will land in a pit or mentally breakdown.

The more you feed those feelings, the more they become so.

Feelings are not truth, they do not alert you to the consequences of what you are about to do.

A person who bases his or her life on feelings will live a roller coaster life which is painful not only to the person concerned but all who come in contact with him/her.

God tells us that we have the ability in Him to rule over our feelings.

II Corinthians 10:5 “Casting down imaginations (reasonings, imagination, thought, feelings), and every high thing that exalteth itself against the knowledge of God, and bringing into captivity every thought to the obedience of Christ;”

There is a better way to live than to trust in our feelings.

Do we want to use our own weapons based on feelings when we face the enemy of our souls or do we want to choose the weapons of God which are prayer, faith, hope, love, God’s Word, the Holy Spirit?

God’s Word says we must “cast down those feelings based on self-thoughts”, we must “take them captive.”

Have we allowed our feelings rather than God to control our lives? It is so insidious.

The great Reformer Martin Luther wrote:
“ Feelings come, and feelings go,
And feelings are deceiving,
My warrant is the Word of God,
Naught else is worth believing!”

Psalm 119:165 says, “Great peace have they which love thy law: and nothing shall offend them.”

Do we yearn for lives which are filled with the peace of God despite our changing selves, others changing, circumstances changing and in the face of threats to and in our lives?

Then we must learn to

• say “God said it, that settles it!” We must have faith attached to the Word of God – it will keep us from a life of a double-minded person who is unstable in our thoughts and ways; His Word does not change, it is and ever will remain.
• pray, praise God, speak His Word in the face of conflict, uncertainty and risk – for then we focus on the unchanging God and not on volatile self.
• change from focussing on self and turn our thoughts to the Lord and our attitudes will change, our thoughts will change and so will our actions change in the light of the Lord’s leading. When we submit to His plans, His will and His purpose, He gives us peace in the certainty that He knows the way, He knows what the end is from the beginning and will bring to fruition only what is good for us. He is in control.
• grow spiritually in submission to Him and His Word, and experience the Presence of God – worship Him, speak to Him, listen to Him and He will fill our hearts with peace and joy which is from Him and it will burst forth from within us, a steadying influence not affected by our circumstances and people around us for we know who we are and whose we are.
• find fellowship with the children of God who have and reflect that peace and joy that the world cannot give and can help and support us to live lives that are not yo-yo, volatile, sad and full of tears. Go where they teach and feed the Word founded on the Rock Christ Jesus which will lead us in the paths of righteousness and peace in the face of seeming odds. Go to where they speak of God’s Son-light and are not apologetic of their victories in Jesus. Do not surround yourself with friends who are continuously in fear, despair, doubt, negative in life’s outlook, in rebellion against God and His Word, with endless discourse but never believing, as you will soon fall in with them as inbreeding is insidious.

Do not be cowed or blinded by the enemy and father of lies.
Are you tired of chasing hopelessness in your bubbles of emotions and feelings?
Do these words ring true in your life?

I’m forever blowing bubbles,
Pretty bubbles in the air.
They fly so high,
Nearly reach the sky,
Then like my dreams,
They fade and die.

Our thoughts when subject to the Holy Spirit will think on these “Finally, brethren, whatsoever things are true, whatsoever things are honest, whatsoever things are just, whatsoever things are pure, whatsoever things are lovely, whatsoever things are of good report; if there be any virtue, and if there be any praise, think on these things. Those things, which ye have both learned, and received, and heard, and seen in me, do: and the God of peace shall be with you.” Philippians 4:8-9

Choose and make your life change today.
“ That He would grant you, according to the riches of his glory, to be strengthened with might by his Spirit in the inner man that Christ may dwell in your hearts by faith; that ye, being rooted and grounded in love, may be able to comprehend with all saints what is the breadth and length and depth and height; and to know the love of Christ, which passeth knowledge, that ye might be filled with all the fullness of God. Now unto him that is able to do exceeding abundantly above all that we ask or think, according to the power that worketh in us, Unto Him be glory in the church, by Christ Jesus throughout all ages, world without end. Amen. Ephesians 3:15-21

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