Truer Than I Feel

Truer Than I Feel

The importance of how I feel on any given day about any given subject is highly overrated. I’m a feeling person, yes, but the truest thing about me is not how I feel. There is something truer than my emotions. Years ago (when I suspected my feelings might be lying to me) I began a list. I made two columns on a single sheet of paper and labeled them “How I feel” and “What I know is true.”

In the first column I recorded the half-truths, fears, and insecurities Satan frequently whispers to me. In the second I wrote promises, assurances, and assertions from God’s Word, believing that what God says about me or my circumstances trumps how I feel when a discrepancy exists between the two. I don’t deny my feelings. I air them like dirty laundry. Sometimes lies appear far weaker in my own handwriting than they sound rattling around my heart and head.

So an entry on the left-hand side of my list might say, “Forgotten.” But the corresponding entry on the right would say, “Can a mother forget her nursing child? Can she feel no love for the child she has borne? But even if that were possible, I would not forget you!” (Isaiah 49:15). Or the right column might read, “Fearful of the future” and the left “For I know the plans I have for you,” says the LORD. They are plans for good and not for disaster” (Jeremiah 29:11).

See how it works?

Mike Mason calls love “an earthquake that relocates the center of the universe.”^a Because of the great love with which God has loved me, I am able to relocate the center of my universe from my unreliable emotions to God’s very reliable truth.

Someone asked me once if my list has changed over time. It has certainly grown longer. The way I feel—the left-hand column—changes with the wind. But that right-hand column, well, steady as she goes. Because no matter how I feel, I have chosen the way of truth and set my heart on God’s law (see Psalm 119:30). And Jesus Christ is the same yesterday, today, and forever (see Hebrews 13:8).

Fix your thoughts on what is true, and honorable, and right, and pure, and lovely, and admirable. Think about things that are excellent and worthy of praise.

Philippians 4:8

^a Mike Mason, The Mystery of Marriage: As Iron Sharpens Iron (Portland, OR: Multnomah, 1985), 37.