FEELINGS

Feelings.....oh oh oh ......feelings......Ok maybe that is not how the song goes. I won't try that again. But today I wanted to talk about feelings. We all experience different types of feelings throughout our lives. Some are things like, I feel so tired, or I am feeling sad, or this feeling of guilt is eating me up, or my feelings are hurt. Did you notice something that all those particular feelings have in common? They are all negative feelings. Where do these feelings come from? They are attacks from the enemy.

Now don't get me wrong, you may have worked all day and you really are physically tired in your body, that is different. But just saying you are tired when you really haven't physically done anything could be an attack from the enemy.

How do we overcome these negative feelings? We get our joy from the Lord and the joy of the Lord is our strength. We go to Him and feed on His word and when we rejoice in Him, this delights Him and His joy then gives us our strength. AMEN!

Neh. 8 v 10b....Do not sorrow, for the joy of the Lord is your strength.....

Our Pastor said something like this Sunday and it kind of stuck with me and made me think about all types of feelings. He said, "Happy is a feeling based on happenings. But Joy comes from the Lord."

I started thinking, I get that. Something good happens to you and you get happy. Something bad happens to you and you get upset. When that happens we are letting our flesh control us and not our Spirit man. What we have to learn to do, is never let God's joy leave us. That is where our strength is. We have to learn to let the Holy Spirit guide us and not our flesh. If we are guided by our flesh we will give in to anger, sadness, the blues, jealousy, all those negative feelings. Why because that is what our wordly flesh wants to feel. That is what the enemy is telling us, that we are entitled to feel this way.

But God says rejoice in Him always. Not just when something good is happening to you but always. When we learn to trust in Him we can then experience Joy even when things are not so good in our lives. Why? Because we know He has our back. He will bring us through to the other side.

Phil 4 v 4....Rejoice in the Lord always, and again I say rejoice......

Phil 4 v 6-7....Be anxious for nothing, but in everything by prayer and supplication, with thanksgiving, let your requests be made known to God; and the peace of God, which surpasses all understanding will guard your hearts and minds through Christ Jesus......

That verse says it all, with thanksgiving go to God, let Him give you His peace and His understanding. Don't try to rely on your own understanding but let Him guard your heart and your mind from the enemy with His peace that He will freely give to you when you come to Him with thanksgiving, not begging for something to manifest but just come thanking Him for what you do not yet see. AMEN!

This makes me think of someone who is going through a battle with cancer and they are taking treatments. They are standing on the truth believing God that they are healed, but then they may experience hair loss, or nausea, or any other negative FEELING the enemy is using against them to make them doubt. The enemy can and does use every kind of FEELING to get your mind off the TRUTH that is in His WORD and make you start looking at some facts the world is giving you and cause doubt. He can only attack you in your mind so that is how he does it. He uses FEELINGS.

When we received our salvation from the Lord we did that on FAITH in what His word says. We obviously weren't around to see with our own eyes what He did on the cross for us, but we stand on FAITH in His word that Jesus did die on the cross for us so that we might have eternal life with Him and the Father one day. We believe that with all our hearts, and no one is going to talk us out of that.

So why then do we have a hard time believing that we were healed by His stripes like His word says? It is the same Word that tells us we have salvation and we have not yet seen our salvation come to pass, (otherwise we would be in heaven and not here reading this) so why then do we have such a hard time believing?

IS 53 v 5....But He was wounded for our transgressions, He was bruised for our iniquities, the chastisement for our peace was upon Him, and by His stripes we are healed......

It is because of our FEELINGS. We let our FEELINGS guide us and talk us into what we have instead of believing what GOD SAYS WE HAVE. That is the enemy controlling you with your FEELINGS. Recognize him for who he is. He is nothing, he has no power over us except for what we give him through our minds.

Jesus has already defeated him in every area, sickness, disease, poverty. There is no area of your life that Jesus did not die on the cross for. But we all do have free will to choose to believe what we will. So the choice is yours, to let the enemy use FEELINGS to distract you from the truth or to choose to believe what He says in His WORD, that we are healed, we are free from poverty, we are the RIGHTEOUSNESS of Christ. We are joint heirs with Him to the Father. We are the head and not the tail. We do have the POWER of JESUS working in us. We are the VICTORS.

PS 16 v 11....You will show me the path of life; In Your presence is fullness of joy; at Your right hand are pleasures forevermore......

PS 18 v 1-3....I will love You O Lord, my strength, the Lord is my rock and my fortress and my deliverer; My God, my strength, in whom I will trust; My shield and the horn of my salvation, my stronghold. I will call upon the Lord, who is worthy to be praised; so shall I be saved from my enemies.....

How are you FEELING today? Experience His Joy through His Word and you will come out with a peace and joy that abides in you and not just a FEELING that can easily slip away by the next happening in your life.

2 Tim 1 v 7....For God has not given us a spirit of fear, but of power and of love and of a sound mind......

God did not give us feelings, He gave us FAITH through Jesus His Son, and with our FAITH we can overcome our fleshly feelings.

STAY IN THE WORD!