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Are you married, engaged, or dating? Let’s put our relational shoes on and try to understand what’s happening behind the door to the other person’s mind this week. Many times we see someone behave a certain way, but in reality, that behavior is just a reaction to what is going through their head. What goes on in our head is based on our history and it’s often based on feelings.
Feelings Are Fickle
Relationships usually start out exciting, but after a few months or a year or a few years, the rough edges begin to show and the excitement wears off. Sort of like the elation of getting that new car until the cost of the car payment sinks in. That is how feelings work and that is why we can’t trust them. God tells us what we should think, who we are and how we should focus our thinking. His ways are firm and don’t change, while our feelings change every few minutes. Feelings are fickle.
Self-criticism Keeps Us From Receiving Love From Others
Our history is that old voice recording in our head. It might be insecurity about someone leaving us, it might be insecurity about our looks, so we don’t believe they think we are attractive. Insecurity also can cause us to be more defensive and to take innocent comments the wrong way creating arguments. Or we may be so critical of ourselves that we can’t receive the love and compliments that another person has for us because if we don’t love ourselves, we can’t comprehend someone else loving us. It’s like someone handing us a gift and we just keep pushing it away in disbelief that they REALLY want to give it to us. So we keep arguing with them.
We’ve Got To See Ourselves As God See’s Us
Once we ask God to come into our life, God sees us through Jesus-glasses, the glasses of a righteousness that we can’t get on our own. So we have to start seeing ourselves as God does. We have to start feeling about ourselves the way God in heaven feels about us. Once we see ourselves the way He sees us we can be healed. We can become ready for wholeness in a relationship with another healed and whole person.
When We Push Our Feelings Aside, We Can Act On What God Says Instead Of What We Feel
We all have baggage. In 1 Corinthians 15:31, Paul writes, “I die to self daily.” This means He doesn’t consider His feelings or Himself. He knows He can’t trust his feelings because they change so often. Think about it, do we trust someone who changes their mind every 5 minutes? Not likely. So we should be careful when we want to act on what we feel, whether in love or anger. I’ll give some examples of how we act on our feelings tomorrow. For today, I’d like to encourage you to take a moment when you feel strong about something and pause and think before you respond verbally. It just might be one step towards restoring or saving a relationship, personally or professionally.
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