Unshackled Moments ~ February 28

One of the men who trained my father to minister used to say that we don't go by our feelings, but it's nice to feel what you're going on. I love this statement. I've learned that I can't always trust my feelings, and if I wait on feeling God's love for me, on feeling faith and trust in Him, on feeling accepted, more times than not I'd never get out of bed. Today I feel these things almost as much as I don't, and it is indeed nice to feel what I'm going on. But I never, or almost never, felt any of this at the start of my return journey into relationship with my Creator.

The truth is that knowing and feeling God comes from getting to know Him, and getting to know Him comes from saturating myself in His truth and from trusting and obeying before I feel it. The more I leap into His arms from the cliffs of my life, the more I can feel sure that He won't drop me, because my experience proves it out. He's never dropped me before. But if I never leave the ledge I'll never know for sure, I'll never feel, that He can and will catch me every time. 

So how do I let go and let God when I don't feel it? How do I trust enough to jump before I gain the experience of His faithfulness? One way is to exemplify spiritually the ad slogan of "Just Do It." I'm not being flippant or purposefully trying to frustrate by saying that you learn to do by doing. When I can't go on my feelings because I don't feel what I need to feel in order to go with God's way, I can ask myself, "What would I do if I felt the love, faithfulness, might, etc. of God that I came to believe in?" Well, if I believed in His power and love for me, I'd probably join Peter in climbing out of the boat and walking to Jesus right on top of the waves of this storm. So that's what I do. And the more I walk on the water flooding my life, the more I feel I can do whatever I need to do, can go through whatever is going on in my life through Christ Jesus. I learn to feel the truth as I learn to live in and by the power of the truth. 

Lord Jesus, all I feel is the winds of the storm threatening to demolish me, that is when I can feel anything at all, because the cold blasts have numbed me to the point where I sometimes don't feel even that. Help me to run to you, even if that means that I must walk on water to do it. I know that I can, not because of who I am or my power, but because of who You are and Your power. Help me to remember and act on the understanding that truth doesn't rely on what I feel to be true. If I drop something it will fall, because gravity in this atmosphere is true, regardless of what I feel or believe about it, and You are the truth on which I can trust and stand, even more than the gravity that You put in place, regardless of what I feel or believe. Today let me walk by faith in the truth rather than by faith in feeling. Amen.