Dear friend, when you have a feeling you don’t like, walk away from it. Leave it behind where the barrenness of isolation will choke it out. You have that power, you know. The power to choose how you feel and what to accept as reality. The power to take every thought captive and make it obedient to Christ. Resist the devil and he will flee from you.
When the pain is so deep, when the fear is so real, or the pressure is too great, we tend to turn inward, to focus on ourselves…how we feel, overwhelmed by the weight of our feelings. We want to know why we feel this way, understand it, control it so we can overcome it. And instead of abandoning it, it becomes our greatest focus. It consumes not only our emotions but our thoughts. Instead of choking it out, we nourish it and it flourishes with every minute of attention we give it.
Friends, we don’t have to understand our feelings. We don’t have to figure them out to control them. We choose them. We choose to focus and bathe in them, and the feelings we hate become our closest companion, until the lie that it is who we are becomes so pervasive that we accept it as truth. And then it changes everything about us. We walk in it as if it’s our true identity…the one who is never good enough…the one who can’t get past the grief…the one whose anxieties control…and the lie becomes us.
Or we choose to walk away, to refuse to give it another thought. We refuse to analyze it because we know that analyzing is the enemy’s subtle trap to draw us in…because really, we will never completely understand. And so it becomes an addicting, life-sucking pursuit…the analyzing so that we can control.
Just walk away.
The longer we hold onto our poisonous thoughts, no matter what we intend to do with them- to cherish them or to carefully deconstruct them, the harder it becomes to abandon them. If you don’t like it, let it go. No excuses.
Just walk away.
“He who trusts in his own heart is a fool.” – Proverbs 28:26a
“The heart is deceitful above all things.” – Jeremiah 17:9a
“The righteous shall live by faith.” – Romans 1:17
“We demolish arguments and every pretension that sets itself up against the knowledge of God, and we take captive every thought to make it obedient to Christ.” – 2 Corinthians 10:5
“The mind of sinful man is death, but the mind controlled by the Spirit is life and peace.” – Romans 8:6
“…Today I have set before you life and death, blessing and curse. Therefore choose life, that you and your offspring may live, loving the Lord your God, obeying His voice and holding fast to Him, for He is your life and length of days…” – Deuteronomy 30:19-20
“If I fixate on how all of this affects me— my comforts, my desires, my fulfillment, my security, my need— then i have made ‘myself’ and idol. But this life is not about me. It is about denying self and crowning Christ as Lord, seeking His glory and pleasure above all else. Pleasing Christ is truly life’s greatest pleasure.”-Nancy Leigh DeMoss
This is so right and so much the opposite of what we are told on a daily basis. To think that the excuse of trying to get to the bottom of your feelings is actually self indulgent and a trap is very liberating. Thanks for the post. 🙂
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Glad it was freeing to you! That’s my heart…to share what God is teaching me so that it can bring life to others as well. 🙂 He’s a good and patient teacher.
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How exciting! As members of Crossroad’s, we want to follow your walk of fith. Our family will be soon moving to Sebring Fl. A time to “retire” with our adopted granddaughter. May God lead and bless you, The Carlson’s – Russ, Cindy, and Olivia.
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Thank you so much Russ & Cindy! Our Crossroads family means so much to us. How soon are you moving to Sebring? Time to Revive is in Sarasota now for reviveFLORIDA, and we’re hoping the desire will be there for it to spread to other areas of the state. Maybe we’ll get to meet up with you in Florida! 🙂
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