Feelings

There’s something that God loves to use and that is feelings. Sometimes feelings can get in the way in our relationship with God, they can sometimes choke out the word of God in our lives but they’re not bad.
He created us to feel different emotions for different reasons.
He wants us to always experience His joy, His peace and His comfort, He wants us to walk with a spring in our step.
But there’s also harder feelings that God doesn’t necessarily want us to experience on a day to day basis, like sadness, fear, and anger and also just indifference.
Sometimes those harder feelings get the better of us and like I said, choke out the word of our God in our relationship, and we end up experiencing those feelings more than the feelings that God truly wants us to experience at all times.

Feelings often come from our thoughts. Like when you think of something you love, you’re typically happy. So if you’re thinking about praising the Lord and dancing in the spirit, and walking through the pearly gates, and heavenly thoughts, you’re naturally going to feel joyful and maybe feel the need to jump or run and just get excited, but if you’re thinking about all the things you’re dealing with in life, the stress, drama, how youre going to pay the next bill or put food in your belly, it’s easy to feel sad, depressed all the time, like God isn’t there or paying attention and it’s easy to not want to to praise or pray in those times.
When you have a feeling or a thought running through your mind, it’s easy to latch onto that feeling and trust it more than you trust the word of God.

Many times we feel like God isn’t with us, God isn’t listening, and it can really cause us to think that God isn’t going to answer our prayer. I’ve definitely felt those feelings before and thought those thoughts when I began having panic attacks at night. I would pray over them and rebuke them and I’d rebuke the fear and I would go to sleep feeling better only to be waken by another panic attack. Talk about the feelings I had. My trust in God began to fade because of the feeling I had of God not wanting to help me. Could you imagine the thoughts running thru my head, if God loves me so much, why is He letting this happen to me? Why isn’t He responding and letting me sleep? Those feelings I held on to kept me in the valley for a while, until I stopped depending on my feelings in that situation, I began to depend on the word of God, and depend on the verses that say He will not leave me comfortless and that He will come to me in my time of need. Once I started speaking God’s word into those situations and started to rely on God’s word rather than my feelings, I came up out of that valley. I began to tell my feelings to back off and that my God was in control not my feelings and  my trust in God was greater than it’s ever been and the panic attacks faded away.

I see so many people hold on to their thoughts and feelings rather than latching on to Gods promises and His word and once they do that, those thoughts and feelings start to take over and cause them to think they’re  not ready, they’re too young, too weak, that they cant be used of God,that they can’t get that healing. And it’s easy to sit in a service and go along with the preacher and preach with him, “you gotta trust the word, you have to depend on the word and not your feelings!” But once you leave the service and you’re surrounded by the world, and you’re surrounded by your feelings, it’s easy to hold onto your feelings cuz sometimes it can feel like they’re all you have. but you have to tell yourself that your thoughts and feelings can’t always be trusted and they’re not always true.

II Corinthians 5:7 says for we walk by Faith, not by sight. You walk by faith, you walk by what the word says, you walk by what God says and what you know is true not by what your feelings say or what the doctors say or by the lie that the devil is whispering into your ear.

There will be times when you’re not going to feel God’s presence around you, you will feel like God isn’t even listening or isn’t going to give you an answer anytime soon, there’ll be times when you’re not going to feel like worshipping or praying.

But don’t ever hold back because you’re “not feeling it”. Don’t hold back because you don’t feel God in the situation. God hasn’t left your situation, He never leaves the valley. We hear people say stay on the mountain cuz that’s where you’ll find God, yes that’s true but God is not only just the God of the mountains, God is the God of the universe, that includes the planets, the stars, the oceans, the mountains and most definitely the valleys! Don’t hold back because you’re in the valley, God is there with you, you can still grow in your relationship with God while in the valley! Usually the moments when you’re not feeling it is when God is wanting to do something for you. If you don’t feel like worshipping, that’s when you should start worshipping. Worship is how we get our victory, of course the devil is gonna try to get you to not feel like worshipping. But don’t listen to your feelings, you worship your heart out, that’s what you were originally created to do! When you don’t feel like praying, start praying, just tell God what’s on your mind, how your day was, what you’re dealing with, talk to Him like you would talk to a person and have a conversation with Him.
You don’t always have to feel good, or strong, or ready to just pursue God and give God everything. No matter your situation, no matter how you’re feeling, God is wanting to work in your life, God is wanting you to grow and pursue.