Sometimes we simply have to push past our feelings, don't we? I well remember my running days--back before the earth's surface had cooled--and that sense near the midpoint of every race that I couldn't go any further. It's called "hitting the wall"--and it happened to me every single race in which I ever ran. It occurs in life too. Anybody else ever been there?
Here's how it invariably happens in a race--you're chugging along nicely, and then suddenly your body begins to send urgent and insistent messages to your mind: "You're exhausted. This is the dumbest idea in the world. Why would anybody submit themselves to this nonsense? Look how nice it looks over there on the sidelines. Time to quit...or at least dramatically slow down. You simply cannot go another foot. Are you listening?--quit now!"
And here's the thing--you have the choice. You can choose to listen to that seemingly sensible voice telling you to stop or slow down or give up...or you can choose to listen to your heart and mind that tell you a dramatically different message. "You've trained for this. Keep going. Just put one foot in front of the other. You can do all things through Christ who strengthens you. It's always too soon to quit. Trust your training and keep running." And if you listen to that voice of truth--that voice that urges you to keep going, one step at a time--you'll discover to your amazement that you can push through that wall and finish the race. And believe me, there's not a better feeling in the world.
But I'm telling you--it's a battle. Every. Single. Time.
I don't do much running these days--it's usually walking with Mr. Bingley or exercising with my buddies--but it's still just as true in regular old, ordinary life. Every day presents us with choices that invariably involve, at their most basic level, a fierce battle. Seriously, daily we all must engage in often herculean battles. Will we choose feelings or faith? Will we succumb to those emotions of discouragement or exhaustion or fear...or will we boldly choose to walk by faith in the unshakable promises of God and the unseen presence of the Savior?
"Now faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen." (Heb.11:1)
Faith is "assurance" and "conviction," and we must choose to act upon that faith rather than giving in to our feelings of worry or defeat or despair or sometimes plain old inertia and exhaustion. (I, for one, have found that just "going with the flow" tends to result in my drifting away from the Lord and drifting towards self-pity and selfishness. Hebrews put it this way: "Therefore we must pay much closer attention to what we have heard, lest we drift away from it." (Heb.2:1) Nope, forget going with the flow of our feelings--we've got to actively choose faith over those feelings.)
I love how one commentator explained that this verse reveals that "faith is a settled confidence that something in the future--something that is not yet seen but has been promised by God--will actually come to pass because God will bring it about. Thus biblical faith is not blind trust in the face of contrary evidence, not an unknowable 'leap in the dark'; rather, biblical faith is a confident trust in the eternal God who is all-powerful, infinitely wise, eternally trustworthy."
Faith is not "hope so" but "know so" based upon the unshakable promises and unchanging Person of God. Our feelings vacillate wildly, because they are based upon our ever changing circumstances, our emotions, and even what we ate that day, who we saw, and how much we slept! How reliable can that be?! But our faith, on the other hand, is buried deep in the bedrock of God's Word--both His written Word, the Bible, and His incarnate Word, the Lord Jesus. We can trust the immovable, immutable Rock.
Today, I needed to remind myself again--faith, not feelings. Just in case anybody else out there needed a little reminding, well, here it is--from one fellow battler to another! Sometimes we simply have to preach ourselves a little sermon, reminding ourselves of the true Truth based upon that which will never change and will never fail.
When we hit the wall, let's choose to place our trust in our faithful Redeemer and His forever Word rather than in our fleeting emotions. He'll get us through the battles and all the way to the end of the race...not somehow, but victoriously. To God be the glory.
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