Renew my mind
Sometimes it feels like you just can't help the way you feel.
Am I right or am I right?
Notice I didn't say "sometimes you just can't help the way you feel."
I said: "sometimes it FEELS like you just can't help the way you feel."
Maybe because the feeling is so strong and the opposition so unsatisfying. If I feel annoyed then feeling happy or grateful looks like moldy fruit that I don't want to bite into. (Haha) Or to put it another way: saying I see blue when I see red looks like I'm falling into a vapid lie. It looks wrong. I just want what's right.
So how do we change what's inside of us?
If the Bible says "rejoice always" (Philippians 4:4) meaning ALWAYS or "give thanks in all circumstances" (1 Thess. 5:18) as in ALL circumstances, but we find ourselves in the "exceptions."
The margins of what we think are the exceptions to what God says in His Word, because if it's not an exception in our minds then we're defying God, making Him out to be wrong or incapable. Thinking we are in an exception eases our conscious minds from having to feel as if we are against God. Because we want to stay feeling "Christian" under the safe umbrella of getting heaven.
Does that sound reasonably true?
It does to me.
So, annoying doesn't feel happy, angry doesn't feel grateful, and bored doesn't feel full of wonder. Let me add that hurt doesn't feel loved, rejection doesn't feel accepted, poor doesn't feel rich, etc.
Some days (let's be real, some weeks or even months) I feel so strongly that what's inside could never change to what the Bible tells me I should be. I wake up moody, annoyed, bored or unsatisfied and I try to try "spending time with God" and it's like the last 5 pounds you try to lose that just won't budge. Have I driven the point home about the issue here?
When what we think and consequently feel is contrary to what God says--this is a problem if we are to think reasonably.
I feel like I can't change. I feel like I can't be happy because how could I be happy when I don't get what I want?
Isn't that a good question? Haha
Ask your bad attitude next time:
"How can I be happy when I don't get what I want?"
It'll feel like a very good question.
How can I see red and say I see blue? How can I let go of my desire to be beautiful, healthy, secure, and awesome in life when losing those things feels so much like ruin? I know it's better when I do, I know I don't know what's really good compared to God, but what do I do when what I know and what I feel seem so irreconcilably against each other?
Sometimes it feels like if God's truth is blue and my perception is red the battle goes something like:
I say I see blue (but I really see red.)
I say I see blue! (But I really see red.)
I SEE BLUE! BLUE! BLUE! (Red.)
Sigh.
Sometimes this repetitive focusing method works for a while and I see blue continually by continually focusing on blue (blue being the truth about God), but sooner or later I can't help that I end up seeing some red in a single moment of forgetting to focus on seeing blue. Red is the ugly things I see in my life: things like lack of success, lack of the beauty I want, lack of value, lack of health, lack of getting what I want the way I want it and when I want it, lack! Lack! Lack! Of course in my mind these reds are all justified reasons for feeling red feelings like annoyed, dissatisfied, bored and/or angry.
If I see red then I feel red.
If I see lack then I feel lack.
But the word of God says something different.
The Bible essentially says that when we see red it's not really red, and when we don't see red, it could actually be red. In other words there is more to life than meets the eye.
Nerdy interjection:
Philosophers love to discuss the insanity of "true colors" because you can't feel or touch a color. They ask questions about what makes something "real"? Is it real if we can see it? Touch it? Taste it? Smell it? Hear it? What happens when you cant do any of those things like with the number 2? Is the number real? Of course it's real in the sense that it can be true. There can be two of something, but the reality of there being two has nothing to do with our perceptual abilities to make it real. It's true because other things around it make it true by relation. Two is real when we are talking about two chairs, two hours, two plus two or visualizing the symbol for the numerical value "2." So back to colors, if we see red does that mean it's real? How we define reality is precisely what governs our lives.
I REPEAT:
How we define reality is precisely
what governs our lives.
How do you define reality?
Are you governed by your eyes?
Are you governed by your feelings?
Or are you governed by the Word of God?
Learning to live in the light of truth, to go with my example: living to see blue, means picking up a different set of skills than the ones you were naturally born with.
For starters:
a life in Christ is
a life in faith.
Naturally we live by sight but super-naturally we switch to what is superior to nature: that which is spiritual. Faith is spiritual because it is given to us by the Spirit of God.
So while sight is natural, faithfulness is spiritual.
3 things to know about faith:
- Faith is a kind of steadiness that supports what we know from God--sight does little to support what we know from God, especially if it has to do with what's in our future. (Logically speaking we cannot see our future.) Faith is like the fuel to our need for assurance. Therefore we must learn to get our spiritual fuel from a spiritual source, we can't get our car gas from our kitchen faucet, likewise we can't get our spiritual assurance from our natural senses. You can't get apples from a plastic tree or clean water from a dirty pipe. We know we need fuel, but where we go to get it will make all the difference. Therefore, we must learn and practice fueling our need with faith. When you feel like you've run out of fuel...consider where you get your refill.
- Faithful living is having a new set of expectations.
Faithful living requires us to examine what we expected that resulted in our feeling. Do our expectations match the expectations God told us to have or do they come from expecting something on our own terms and in our timing? Faithfulness is a gradual transforming of our expectations. This means learning to habitually and routinely act according to what God says we should expect IN HIS TIMING. An expectation is an outcome, but if our outcome comes from God then so will the timing of it. But if our outcome comes from us then so will the timing of it. To be faithful in our expectations (which is to live by and in faith) simply means to let go of our control of time. Timing on the expected outcome must be allocated to uncertainty on our part if it is to be certain on God's. In order to get God's outcome we must get His timing too.
- Faithfulness is having a feeling too.
Faithfulness fuels our feeling of certainty about what we don't see in the natural. Living by faith and in faith means holding a degree of invisibility with vigor. WITH VIGOR. It's about getting excited about the unknown. Like a kid who's mom or dad says they have a super good surprise for them. The anticipation and excitement in what they don't see but in what they are told. The words "I have a super awesome surprise for you!" can fill a child with so much joy in what they don't see.
Learning to stoke the feelings of faith require hearing our Father tell us He has a super good surprise for us everyday. This means hearing the word of God and His promises each day.
But we are not of those who shrink back to destruction, but of those who have faith to the preserving of the soul.
Now faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen.
-Hebrews 10:39-11:1
Recap if you already forgot everything above:
When what you feel, think or see doesn't match what you know to be true from God's Word then the problem is just that: you're not matching.
For the flesh desires what is against the Spirit, and the Spirit desires what is against the flesh; these are opposed to each other, so that you don't do what you want. (Gal. 5:17)
To match the pieces resulting in a whole life in Christ, you have to pair faith (what God says) with your life.
Aside from a life paired with faith you cannot expect a whole life in Christ...just as half a circle plus half a triangle makes neither a whole circle nor a whole triangle.
Faith is how we abide in Christ, but faith is not simply saying you believe. It's steadiness in what to expect resulting in feeling more and more certain that it will be as God says. All we do is what we can to hear, remember, and pray for grace in His timing of all things.
It's when we live in the funky half and half that we begin to not bear that good fruit.
"I am the vine, you are the branches; he who abides in Me and I in him, he bears much fruit, for apart from Me you can do nothing."
-John 15:5
Jmegrey.
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