Should You Trust Yourself?

Fresh Manna 2009© by Pastor Tim Burt

Philippians 1:9 (Message Bible) “So this is my prayer: that your love will flourish and that you will not only love much but well. Learn to love appropriately. You need to use your head and test your feelings so that your love is sincere and intelligent, not sentimental gush.

If I asked you to think of person that you absolutely could not trust, could you think name someone? Can you think of some thing that you can’t trust – like your car, or your golf game, or the weather report? Years ago I of someone and something I could not trust. I couldn’t trust me and I couldn’t trust my feelings. I came to realize that every day I wake up feeling a little different. Some days I wake up with great energy and ready to go. Some days I wake up tired and sluggish. Some mornings I feel like whistling or singing to the Lord because I feel -so light hearted. On another I feel mentally clouded with too much to do from the starting line of my day. Some days I feel like my brain is mired in a tar pit – it just won’t get going. Other days, I wake up with great ideas and thoughts and can’t wait to put them down on paper and think further. In all this, I wake up with different feelings from the start of my day.

Before I knew the Lord, feelings actually played into how I let my day be directed. If my feelings were negative – they’d take on that direction. As I look back on that now, that fact seems scary to me. No wonder my life was in chaos before Jesus taught me better.

I can honestly say that I no longer live by my feelings. Each day that I live, I live by the choices and decisions that I weigh and make by what God’s Word has taught me. Because I do not trust my feelings, I have let them have little to no say in how and what I do. My feelings are fickle. They are not trustworthy. If they are behaving and providing upbeat and good motivation, I will let them play into my decision making process. Otherwise, they have no say. For example; last week Renee and I were on vacation. When I am on vacation, I stop my workout routine, just to take a break and do something more vacation oriented. Today is my first day back from vacation – back to work. I needed to do my morning workout. I absolutely did not feel like it. My feelings were screaming Nooooo! I pressed through and did my workout and though it wasn’t fun while I was doing it, I was very happy when it was done. In other words, my feelings by the time I was done had changed. That’s fickle. After that it was time to write Fresh Manna. I wrote on my vacation because we were in a beautiful setting in northern Minnesota and it provided great inspiration – (good feelings.) This morning I was back to my routine and my thoughts felt like they were trapped in cob webs – (not so good feelings.) I pressed through my feelings and was rewarded. The Lord reminded me of a thought I had last night that I had wanted to write about this morning – what I am writing about right now. When I pressed through this mornings feelings of cob webs, my thoughts cleared up and came easily. The Lord helped me. (Now I feel good and no more cob webs.)

King David was a person like you and I, full of feelings. There were many times where they tried to dominate his life. His feelings are transparent in Psalm 64:1 (MB) “Listen and help, O God. I’m reduced to a whine And a whimper, obsessed with feelings of doomsday.” Those were real feelings for David. He talked to the Lord about how He was feeling, but He also let the Lord remind him of His help and strength. This resulted in David overcoming feelings of discouragement and led him to talk and sing of the Lord’s faithfulness and goodness. This would help David make sound decisions.

You probably want to avoid people that you don’t trust at all costs. You can’t avoid yourself or your own feelings. But, you can dominate and take authority over feelings. Today’s Fresh Manna verse says, “So this is my prayer: that your love will flourish and that you will not only love much but well. Learn to love appropriately. You need to use your head and test your feelings so that your love is sincere and intelligent, not sentimental gush.”

I love God. Working out in the morning, praying, spending time in His Word, and writing Fresh Manna are assignments but also desires. My feelings aren’t always jubilant about doing them but they always seem to rejoice after I’ve done them. I “test my feelings.” If they are good, I use them to help motivate me. If not, I press through because they are fickle and not trustworthy. God’s leading is! When I do what is right because it is right, my feelings follow suit and I feel better!

In His Love,
Pastor Tim Burt