Hi Friends!

 

Welcome back to our Happy Monday series, The Surrendered Life.” If you missed last week’s kick-off on Surrender Principle #1, you can read it here.

 

This week, we’re moving on to Surrender Principle #2: I choose to live by faith, not rush to follow my feelings. How do we keep our faith in the driver’s seat of our thoughts and decisions and make sure that our feelings don’t grab the wheel? For sure, when our feelings are at the wheel, it’s always a wild ride that doesn’t always end well. Today’s devotion tackles that question with a powerful verse and a helpful tool to calm your big, anxious feelings.

You’re supposed to have emotions! God created us to experience a wide range of emotions in our bodies. Feelings and emotions can be messy! Some of us were raised in families where big feelings led to careless words, yelling, or even abuse. Or, you may have grown up in a family where feelings were suppressed, or you were shamed if you showed emotion.

 

The truth is that our emotions are neither good nor bad. Friend, whatever you feel is real. But our feelings aren’t facts, just attention-getters. Your emotions should draw your notice, not determine your direction.

 

This brings us to today’s verse:

 

 

Whenever I see this verse, I’m reminded of comedian John Crist’s popular saying, “check your heart.” That phrase warns us to stop scrolling so much or take regular rest so we can pay attention to what’s happening in our hearts. The wisdom of Proverbs 4:23 instructs us to guard what we think and feel, because our behavior is shaped by them.

 

Back to Surrender Principle #2 – think about the difference between living by faith versus following feelings. If we guard our hearts well, living by faith means we protect our time with God, so we have plenty of time to pray and read scripture, and we can think about them during the day. On the flip side, when we don’t guard our hearts against excessive negativity or go too long without prayer or reading the Bible, the walls of our hearts weaken, and our feelings can run wild all through our bodies. That’s not good. 

 

Here are some questions to consider:

·      When’s the last time that you checked your heart?

·      What are the emotions you’ve been feeling most often lately?

·      How often do you feel like your emotions are bigger than your ability to handle them?

 

I want to be careful to point out that Surrender Principle #2 is about “letting go of following feelings,” but not letting go of feeling. Again, God created us to experience emotions, so we don’t need to beat ourselves up for our big feelings. The goal of guarding our hearts isn’t to make us feel nothing. This Surrender Principle gives us wisdom on how to avoid the mess that usually comes when something strong stirs in our hearts, and we act on it without checking with God first.

 

Here’s some background on how this week’s Happy Monday impacted me: I wrote today’s devotion while traveling with the Aspire Tour this weekend. We had a great weekend, but I also experienced some big, unexpected feelings that shouldn’t have been a surprise, given today’s topic. Life is always waiting to teach a lesson!

 

Last night’s powerful event was hosted by a church that I spoke at in 2017. On the way, I remembered that I was still married when I last visited this church. Cue lots of big emotions all at once!  I felt a wave of grief, sadness, peace, and excitement hit me all at once.

 

This happens to all of us. Then, add in some perimenopause hormones for some of us, the negativity of the daily news cycle, and lack of sleep  – we need to guard our hearts well because this has the potential to create big feelings leading us to say or do things we regret.  

 

Then, let’s add in a little perimenopause, the news cycle, and my preparation for multiple talks, I knew that I needed to anchor myself in God so I wouldn’t bounce around emotionally all day. That’s exhausting.

 

I decided to use a tool that I wrote about in my Stronger Than Stress book called SOS Exercise. SOS stands for “stressed, overwhelmed, or struggling.” I utilize the SOS exercise regularly. I can anchor myself in God’s care instead of flopping in the wind of my unpredictable feelings. Here’s the exercise:

 

Repeat the following statements to yourself:

1.     I am safe and not in physical danger.

2.     I am secure. I trust God to provide everything that I need.

3.     I am unconditionally loved by God, and He is with me right now.

 

Speaking these present truths to yourself informs your body, especially your nervous system, that even when you feel overwhelmed by emotions or other reasons, your body is physically safe. Even though you may be deep in difficult circumstances, this, too, reminds you that God loves and cares,, so you don’t need to fear the future. This is how we speak faith over our feelings.

 

One more tip: It’s more helpful to calm my body first before I attempt to discern what’s going on.  If you’re like me, intellectualizing (thinking things through) comes easily, but that doesn’t mean it has an effect. Let’s calm the body and then ask God to help us from there.

 

I hope today’s devotion on Surrender Principle #2 was helpful. Only you can guard your heart, dear friends! I promise that the SOS Exercise is effective when used regularly.

 

Last night, I met Char when she asked me to sign her Surrendered Bible study. Check out all of those tabs! Her Bible study group attended last night’s event in Garden City, MI. Char’s group leader told me that they are finishing up the study soon, and they will miss it because they’ve had such a great time. 

 

Char told me that those tabs helped her keep track of everything that she was learning. Love it! If you haven’t done my Surrendered study, check it out!