Most people carry out their lives based on how they feel. The criteria for decision making goes something like this. What will make me feel good now? How can I feel loved now? What can I choose to do now to minimize my pain? What can I choose to do now to prolong, manage, and maximize pleasure? If my circumstances are difficult or painful then something is out of sorts and must be corrected. Can I choose my way out of this mess? Perhaps my difficulty is the fault of someone else. What can I decide to do now that will extract a difficult or inadequate person from my life? What can I do to feel better? How do I cure the chronic sickness of my heart?

My opinion is that at best a “feeling” I experience now is really just a snap shot of a moment in a very brief life. It really doesn’t matter if I’m feeling good or bad because my feelings change constantly. Life experience has taught me to not make life changing choices based on how I feel now. Mature people, self aware people, recognize that their feelings now are fickle. They realize the absurdity of ending a marriage because their spouse did a poor job of making them feel loved today. They don’t resign their employment because their boss made unreasonable demands yesterday. Perhaps they wait or exercise patience with the hope that difficulties will work out favorably. Maybe they manipulate or massage difficult people and tough circumstances to behave in such ways that are pleasing to them. I suppose still others allow themselves to be victimized by people and circumstances and believe themselves as forever on the the short end of the stick. Is it possible that my negative feelings resulting from difficult circumstances or people are really just indicators that I should change? Is such a thing even possible?

When I make an important choice or arrive at a decision based exclusively on how I believe it will make me feel, that’s me adapting to my faithlessness. I was born with feelings. Emotional response to positive or negative stuff or people is programmed into me. Faith is something that I don’t have naturally. I can’t muster up my faith to see me through difficulty and pain. I can’t manufacture faith. Based on my life experience and calculating favorable odds that a difficult circumstance will ultimately work out is not faith. That just me rolling the dice. Faith has a source and it is not me. Genuine faith comes from outside of myself. It is given to me by God. Faith comes from God.

I fully realize that I am squarely on the lunatic fringe as it pertains to my beliefs about God. How do I explain that I believe an invisible King is my Lord and that He is everywhere all the time. He knows my name. What does a faith giving God have to do with how I feel? How can I use the faith given to me to feel better? Here’s how.

What if I am married to a person and our relationship hasn’t met either of our expectations? What if I consistently feel trapped, unloved, inadequate, or insignificant? Do I end this marriage? Do I endure the painfully difficult circumstances and hope for change? I feel miserable. I have to choose something. How does God figure into such a mess as this? If the thought occurs to me to seek answers from God, then that thought was a gift given to me by God. Crazy talk, I know. He invites me to give Him my festering marriage? How do I even do that? What does that mean, to give Him my misery? How do I stop negotiating, managing, and manipulating for a favorable solution? How do I let go and accept the free fall? How? God gives me a little piece of faith. It used to be that I thought it would be at this point that God would get the wheels rolling that would result in a correction of my circumstances or relationship so that I could begin the journey of getting back to feeling better. It doesn’t work that way and I learn most effectively the painfully hard way. I’ve given the mess to God and He does………nothing. Now my bad feelings have intensified and I feel that I have been duped by the cosmic king who enjoys pulling the wings from flys. Now I am really in the crucible. What does God do now? He reminds me of the faith He gave me and I remind Him of the uselessness of that faith because my situation has gone from unendurable to “pull the plug doc, the patient is brain dead.”

I cannot with any adequacy describe the gentle patience God has with those He has set His heart upon to rescue. But I still feel bad. Through the messes of hard times and fractured relationships God finds a way to bring me where He must have me. I have learned that God and I aren’t and weren’t partnering in an effort to change another person or to improve difficult circumstances for the purpose of making me feel better. It has ever been His resolve to change me. I am changed. I am changing. I am grateful.

I enjoy my good feelings and I get through the bad ones. I try to assign my feelings their proper role and value. I don’t have to feel good to know that it is good. Some people say that’s what joy is. God gave me a little piece of faith that freed me from the tyranny of having to feel better.