“You don’t always get to choose what happens to you, but you always get to choose how you react about it. That makes all the difference in the world in how you move forward.”

Feelings,,,,,,,, whoa whoa whoa feelings. ……. Yall remember that song. People love to toss their feelings all around. Satan has a hay day with this.  What a lot of us don’t realize is that feelings are never to trump truth. Truth should always proceed feelings. We act so much on our feelings that we often let them dictate what is happening in our happening. We get confused and tossed about. When I am allowing feelings to proceed truth, If I feel bad my face looks sad and I proceed in a sad way. If I let truth proceed feelings, for example the truth that this is a day that the Lord has made, I may feel bad but proceed in a happier way because I am resting in a truth and not how I feel. We can’t negate how we feel entirely but we can negate the negative feelings that come with circumstances. The negative feelings come from negative thinking that could have been engrained in us long ago by our childhood. We have to let the mind of Christ override how we feel often enough that we take on his mind. I used to be ruled by feelings. Even today I could literally wallow far down inside of my feelings and have one huge cry. If I do that all of the productivity I can be for the kingdom goes out the window. What I will have at the end of the day is just a day wasted on pain. The truth is there is much to be thankful for, much to praise God about, there are people to love and lives to impact and beauty of God’s world to see. So in those things I will rejoice and will celebrate. It is really a choice. I choose to believe what God has said over what my mind wants to think. Satan has a playground in us if we allow how we feel to dictate how we move. A  jumbled life of never quite getting there results. The first thing he did with Eve is get her to feel differently about GOD’s truth. Don’t think for one moment he won’t try the same with you. I have seen the master thief rob so many people of blessings and victory because they felt like they could not do something or were not good enough. He whispers to their fickle hearts against reason and possibility. If Satan can’t keep you busy he will keep you confused and conflicted. He will rob you and destroy your blessings any way he can so that you won’t see the glory and plan of God.  Dwell in truth and walk in it’s mercy and grace. Jonah realized in the whale’s belly that he had forsaken his own mercy for lying vanities. Jonah 2:8 He had a clear choice to obey God. Instead he tried to reason with how God wanted to proceed. God put him in a place where he could clearly see that obedience leads to God’s will and life and disobedience leads to possible death. The death of how it could have been verses how we choose it to be. How many times have you gotten through a season with regret because you could have chosen a much easier or better path? I know there were times in my life I missed wonderful things because I believed a lying vanity. I have to choose life, forward movement, leaving the past behind and reaching forth to things out there God has planned for me. I don’t want to miss one minute of God’s plan by hoping for something else I would desire. So today if you are wallowing in your feelings. Hand your life to GOD to run today and be blessed. Let go of things you can’t control and move on. This life is too short to let something stop you and make you feel bad. This makes this Bible verse even more poignant today.

Phil 3:

¹³ Brethren, I count not myself to have apprehended: but this one thing I do, forgetting those things which are behind, and reaching forth unto those things which are before,

¹⁴ I press toward the mark for the prize of the high calling of God in Christ Jesus.

You don’t always get to choose what happens to you, but you always get to choose how you react about it. That makes all the difference in the world in how you move forward. So the feeling that I am going to choose to follow this truth is this. I don’t understand the past but I am going to let it go and reach forth toward the mark I have been aiming at since I was 17. I will choose to go on and let what I can’t change stay behind.