What We Believe Day 2- Feelings and Facts
Yesterday in the introduction, we talked about the neurons in our brains and little bit about how hormones and thoughts affect each other. So to start us out today, I have a couple questions for you.
Where do our beliefs come from? Where do YOUR beliefs come from?
Ideas and little seeds of information are all around us, and those can grow in our minds. Anything that we see, listen to, or experience has an affect on our brain and what we believe. My husband explained this in a sermon recently. Take a sponge and dunk it in water. When you squeeze it out, what comes out? Water, of course. Now dunk it again and let it just sit there. Every
day add a tiny drop of red dye. At first it will not make much difference. But after awhile the red will start to consume and take over. When we let drops of the world enter into our mind, they slowly take over. We need to be putting drops of godliness into our minds every day, or maybe just give it a good soaking in Living Water. I know sometimes I need to rinse out my mind with the
Word of God to get all the worry and frustrations.
What we allow into our mind affects what we believe.
A few months ago our family went to see my parents. On the way there, some cars were pulled off on the other side of the road and people were standing around looking at the biggest deer I had ever seen. Some one had hit it on the road. On the way back home, hours later, people were still there. It was dark by this time. But we were on the same side of the road as the animal and as we passed it I could see in the headlights I could see that it wasn’t a deer but a hog! It was massive! I knew hogs probably lived around my house but I’d never actually seen one. And I always look for deer because they are everywhere. But now I have to look for hogs! A hog could take out our van, total it! I could feel the anxiousness rising up inside me. I watched the road and the edges of the woods more intently than usual. If the wind blew a branch, I saw it. My husband kept driving. And I kept watching. We were only 15 minutes from our home. We would be there soon. I was just going to keep watching. Everything would be fine.
And then…I saw it. In the grass on the side of the road, it was going to cross the road any second!! I scrunched up my legs ready for impact (which is a bad idea by the way). I started yelling, “HOG! HOG! HOG!” My husband just looked. Where? He couldn’t see it. “Right there!”
It wasn’t a hog. It was a log. A log that I see almost everyday. That exact log has been on the side of the road for months! But that is was happens when feelings getting in our minds. What we see or listen to isn’t the only thing that can take over our minds. Feelings can make us believe a lot of things that are not true. So many times we have a feeling that something will happen and so we believe it. It becomes fact and so we act on that “fact”.
I KNEW there was a hog. I knew it was coming, and we were going to be hit. But that wasn’t the truth. When we live and make our decisions based on how we feel, we don’t usually make the right decisions.
Remember yesterday we talked about feelings and hormones? Those two go together like bread and butter. When we go with our feelings and focus on them, the neurons in our brains are heightened with hormones. As we think and remember, the neurons are making connections (a synapse) and sending electrical signals. 
When we have a feeling, whether positive or negative, hormones are released in different areas around the body, and those hormones also go into the synapse between the two neurons, causing our thoughts to be emotionally charged. That’s why when we remember something we also feel that memory. What we believe affects our feelings, and our feelings affect our beliefs.
Have you ever tried to have a conversation with an angry person? It doesn’t go well, does it? Nothing they say makes sense but they believe wholeheartedly that they are making complete sense.
What did your momma say about grocery shopping? Never go when you’re hungry. Why? Because you’ll buy something you don’t need.
What happens if your car breaks down and you decide to go look at new cars? You’re mad at your old car and will talk yourself into buying a new one instead of fixing the old one.
Money ever burn a hole in your pocket? Happened to my kids recently. They are so excited to have any money at all that they want to buy everything they see.
We can rationalize anything when we feel a certain way, and if we don’t keep our feelings in check, they will control what we say and do. To change how we feel, respond, act, say, and do, we have to change what we believe. And to do that we have to back up and ask ourselves: What are we believing in the first place?
Our beliefs should come from facts, a place of truth.
Feelings aren’t facts. Facts are facts and truth is truth. So we need to start with the truth and not our feelings.
When we turn things around and start with truth instead of feelings, our beliefs are coming from a place of truth. Our actions, words, thinking, feelings are based on facts and truth.
Let’s look at some truth.
Feelings aren’t bad but they can get us into trouble. What “feels” right in the moment is rarely the right thing. We are wise to stop and pray when feelings come up.
Feelings should give us pause, not cause.
Feelings should make us stop and pursue truth; that’s what the prudent man does. When we base what we believe on truth, on God, we will never be steered in the wrong direction.
Yesterday, I ended asking you to pray about something you need to work on, a thought you need to get out of your mind. Today we are going to capture those thoughts just as 2 Corinthians 10:5 says to and make them obedient to Christ in 3 steps.
3 Steps for Capturing Your Thoughts:
1. First write out your old, negative, false, or sinful thought.
2. Then, find a verse that gives truth.
3. Now write the truth.
Now it’s your turn. Write out each step. Find the truth and write it out. The goal is to make the thought obedient to Christ by speaking, writing, and praying the truth of God’s Word into our minds. We want to get rid of the thought that is a lie; get rid of that neuron. Remember, a neuron that isn’t used loses the connections and dies off. We want to make neuron connections in our mind that are strong in the truth. The more you state what is true, the stronger the connection.
Ways to see the truth all day:
- Write this verse on a card and keep it with you all day.
- Put a copy in your car.
- Get a dry erase board for you refrigerator and write it there.
- Write it on your bathroom mirror with dry erase markers.
- Talk to your family about it.
Most of all pray. Pray this verse. Pray for God’s help and thank Him for the help He has already given.
The journey of transforming our minds isn’t over. There’s more to come.
Read the rest of the posts in this series:
