Feelings vs. Faith: All-In August #4

Good morning, my friend. Dr. Lee Warren here with you. It is all-in August.

It's August the 4th, and it's Sunday, so I'm not going to bring you a whole new episode today.

We're going to take a little Sabbath and worship with our people and have a

day where we're not doing so much work. But I want to bring you back an episode.

In case you're working or traveling or something today, you have time to listen to an episode.

This is a powerful and important episode about the difference between feelings

and faith. This is from All In August last year. On August 3rd, we played this, 2023.

Got a bunch of testimonials from the voicemail that I'm going to play you.

And remember, you can leave me a voicemail, drleewarren.speakpipe.com.

Several people have already done that this year. Tell me how you're going All In.

Tell me how you're getting ready to make it happen this year,

to move from contemplating to operating in your own life. You might show up on the podcast.

Some of those that we've already received will be there pretty soon.

I want you to have this episode, Feelings vs.

Faith. it's an important distinction if you really want to go all in let's get

after it hey this is Courtney from Waterloo Illinois and you can bet I'm all in all the time Dr.

Lee this is Janet Deaver from North Platte I'm ready to go all in hey Dr.

Warren I'm from Casper Wyoming just to let you know that I'm all in this is

Denise from Michigan and I'm all in I'm all in I trust in your word as I trust in my Lord.

I will certainly go for it. Good morning, Dr. Warren.

This is Sarah Araya, and I am calling you from sunny South Florida,

and I'm calling to let you know that I am all in.

Music.

God bless you. God bless Lisa. Have a wonderful day.

Be blessed, and thank you for all the encouragement. God bless. We love you guys.

Hi, Dr. Warren. This is Roberta Wilson from Oregon. I'm all in for August,

and I'm starting today. Good morning, friend. How you doing?

Hope you're well. I want to say thanks to everybody who's called in with a voicemail

and let us know you're all in. I'm going to try to get as many of those on this month as we can.

Please say your name and where you're from if you do that. It's really cool

to know where you're calling in from.

This morning, I want to talk for just a minute about feelings. Feelings are not facts.

If you're starting to get up in your feels and it's hard to make good decisions,

I want you to remember what Willie Nelson said and do yourself a little feeling

biopsy. Here's what Willie said.

After taking several readings, I'm surprised to find my mind still fairly sound.

How will you know if your mind is still sound if you're not taking readings of it, right?

So one thing that happens when we try to make big changes in our life is we

start to remember how we feel.

We focus on how we feel, and we think about how we feel, and we then go down

this rabbit hole of remembering the last time I tried to do this,

that happened, and I gave up, and I failed, and I feel like a loser,

and so I probably shouldn't try again,

and all these things that circle around feelings.

Well, feelings are neurochemical events in your brain.

We go back to one of our verses for this month, Proverbs 3, 5 and 6.

Trust in the Lord with all your heart and do not lean on your own understanding.

In all your ways acknowledge him and he will make straight your paths.

Listen to that first part of verse 5.

Trust in the Lord with all your heart and do not lean on your own understanding.

That's a surrogate for feelings. Your feelings are not reliable indicators of what is real. deal.

Our old preacher in Alabama says you can often act your way into feeling better,

but you can never feel your way into acting better.

In other words, when your brain chemistry is off and you feel sad,

if you just think about your sad feelings, you will 100% only get sadder.

If you're anxious and you think about the thing that's making you anxious and

you focus on what could happen and how this could play out in a way that would

harm you, you're only going to get more anxious.

You never feel better until you start doing better.

Now, I understand I'm not talking about the psychiatric implications of some

major depressive disorder or anxiety, any of those things.

Obviously, there are some medical issues and some psychiatric issues that need

to be addressed sometimes.

And mental health is real and medication is helpful.

I'm talking about for your day-to-day relationship with your feelings versus your actions,

because you can change your mind and sometimes

you can change how you feel by changing

what you do you say yeah i feel sad so maybe i should

get up and walk around the yard for a few minutes and

get a little bit of sunshine maybe i'll feel a little bit better and you will

you reliably and some things aren't possible right you can't think your way

out of having your diabetes better but you know what you can do you can say

you know what i feel like i can't get over the top on this diabetes thing,

but I'm going to listen to what my doctor says.

And I'm going to just have a little bit less soda. And I'm going to be a little

more careful with my blood sugar ratings.

And guess what will happen in 30 days? Your diabetes will be somewhat better.

Your control will be tighter if you pay more attention to it.

If you consume less calories and you exercise a little bit more,

you'll lose some weight. You will.

So some of the things that seem impossible that you failed at,

sometimes we continue to fail at because we continue to do the same things in

relation to them or not do the same things in relation to them.

Sometimes we just circle around this inevitable inability to make progress because

we refuse to change the ways that we are approaching those things.

If you've got a habit in the evening of doing a certain thing and you always

feel bad about having done that thing, then you need to change up your evening habit. it.

If you end up having a bowl of Cheetos every time you sit in your recliner to

watch Matlock, I don't know why I said Matlock.

I haven't seen Matlock in years. But if you do that.

Then here's what you need to do. Unwind the pattern of your habit and go back

and don't sit in the recliner.

I say, you know what? It's 5.15.

This is when I normally would turn the TV on and sit in that recliner.

And then I ended up feeling like I need a snack.

So instead of doing that, go for a walk around the yard.

Instead of doing that, read your Bible for 20 minutes.

Instead of doing that, read a chapter of All In August at the kitchen table

of All In by Mark Batterson at the kitchen table, just, just shake that habit

up and get out of that chair and sit somewhere else.

And you'll make a new mental snap said, okay, at five 15, instead of sitting

in the recliner and watching my lock and eating Cheetos, I'm going to sit at

the kitchen table and play Scrabble with my husband,

or I'm going to get on the FaceTime and talk to my grandkids,

or I'm going to go for a walk, or I'm going to do this or do that.

Then after 30 days, I guarantee you, you'll have a new habit.

You'll have a little progress made instead of that long circle of defeat.

You can't feel your way into better actions, but you can act your way into better feelings.

So if we're going to go all in in August, we have to start being aggressive

and being willing to change our behavior if we want our feelings to change for the better.

Feelings aren't facts, friends, and you're not stuck with them.

You can trust in the Lord with With all your heart. And you don't have to lean

on your own understanding. Just because your feelings tell you.

That a certain outcome is inevitable or a certain thing is bound to happen or

that this will never occur or they will never love you or she'll never come

back or you'll never get on top of this financial situation.

Just because you feel that way doesn't make it so, okay?

Some things are true. Like if you've got terminal brain cancer,

you can't think your way out of changing that.

But what you can do is say, hey, I have a blessing and I know what the rest

of my life, I know a particular time frame. So I have to make sure that I leave

my family in as good a situation as I can. I need to repair these relationships.

I don't want to leave this broken relationship with my sister on the table.

I've got this time limit now, and I need to get after it.

You can decide that you're going to tell a better story with the rest of those days. You can.

I told you yesterday, there's some dark times for us in August.

We lost our son in August, and we're hearing from a lot of people for some reason

that August is a hard month for them.

Here's a lady. Listen to what she says about August. Hold on.

Hi, Dr. Warren, Lisa, and Tata. This is Kathy Weaver from Westerville, Ohio.

I'm letting you know that I'm all in August. I've been listening to you for

a couple of years, and I never knew how much your words would be resonating with me today.

My husband passed away suddenly in December, and since then,

I've struggled with how to have the joy along with the sadness.

My husband's birthday is in August, so I know that this month in itself is going

to be a challenge to get through.

I'm looking forward to listening to

your podcast every day, and I've also downloaded the All In Audible book.

Thank you for everything that you do for the wellness community,

and I'm grateful for what you have put out there for us to listen to.

And I'm looking forward to the end of August when I will be all in and ready

for September. Thank you and have a nice day.

Did you hear what she said? I love how Kathy put that.

She's trying to figure out how to have the joy along with the sadness.

We talked about that quantum nature of our God, is that you can have a hard

thing, difficult thing, but you can have joy at the same time.

You can have abundance in the midst of the strife.

And the thing that Kathy did is she said, okay, I'm looking ahead.

I know that my husband's birthday is going to be hard.

It's going to be hard because I lost him. And that's how we look into August

every year. August 20th is coming. It's going to be like a gut punch.

But we're going to be okay because we also know that there's joy and there's light.

And we can start to just buy into the idea that you can have the and.

It doesn't just have to be the but.

So the secret, my friend, of going into all in August and going into a life

that's going to be hard but also beautiful is to decide that you're going to

believe God's promises.

And you're going to believe them and you're going to live them.

Okay? That's the secret.

James 1.6 is talking about praying for wisdom. And he says, when you ask,

you must believe and not doubt, because the one who doubts is like a wave of

the sea blown and tossed by the wind.

He's not saying it's not okay to have doubts. We've talked a lot about that.

I wrote a whole book about it. I've seen the interview.

It's okay to have doubts. But what he's saying is when you ask God to keep his

promises, you have to believe that he will, because he does.

And it's only when we fail to believe that he'll keep them that we fail to live

in the power and the promise of them, okay?

God will keep his promises for you, friend. He will keep his promises.

So when he tells you, trust in the Lord with all your heart and don't lean on

your understanding, one of his promises is that your feelings aren't as powerful as his realities.

In all your ways, acknowledge him, and he'll make straight your paths.

Kathy's saying it just right.

Hey, we're going into this month. It's going to be hard. but I believe I can have joy and sadness.

God won't take away the pain of losing your husband, Kathy.

It's always going to hurt. And he won't, you won't just wake up one day and

he's back in the kitchen having a cup of coffee. That doesn't happen that way.

I can tell you years into losing my son. I still wish that would be true.

Sometimes I, this is a silly thing. I'm going to tell you, I don't know if I've

ever said this to you before, but once in a while I'll catch something moving

out of the corner of my eye or something in my brain. I'll say,

oh, Mitch just walked by.

I have just a random thought where for a second I forget that he's gone,

and I think maybe he's actually going to just walk into the room.

It's been a big misunderstanding or a bad dream, but it's not.

The fact is my son's gone, and I'll get to see him in the resurrection again

someday, but I won't get to see him again in this lifetime.

And every year I get older and he stays 19 and my other kids have kids and they

all grow up and they're all older than he was now.

You know, one day my granddaughter Scarlett's going to be older than her uncle

Mitch was when he passed away. That's going to happen.

Lord, you know, it's just going to happen. So I have to, the fact is I have

to believe and not doubt that God will keep his promises that he's bigger than my feelings.

He's bigger than my anxieties. He's bigger than my fears.

He's bigger than the resistance. And whatever it is that I need to overcome

this month, friend, if it's financial problems,

if it's a relationship issue, if it's struggling in your career,

if it's getting off the couch and getting moving, if it's getting rid of an

addiction or finally bringing something into the light that's been in the darkness for a long time.

Whatever it is, you can do it, but you have to go all in.

You can't sort of be partway with it. Mark Batterson talks about who's in charge here.

Do we say, Jesus, you're the Lord, I'm going to follow you? you,

no matter what, I'm going to follow you.

Or do we say, Jesus, I need to go do all this stuff. I really wish you'd come with me.

I really want to, you know, I feel like I deserve this glass of wine because

it's been a hard day, but I still want you to be with me even though I'm giving

into my addiction again.

I still want you to come with me even though I'm going to this person's house I shouldn't be going to.

I still want you to be on my side. Are we in charge or is he in charge?

You won't unlock the secret of an all-in life until you let Him direct your step.

Trust in the Lord with all your heart and lean not on your own understanding.

Don't take a reading and see if your feelings are telling you the truth or not.

Find out if your mind is being sound, and often it's not.

And when it's not, let God direct you in all your ways. Acknowledge Him,

and He'll make straight your path.

Don't be wise in your own eyes. That's a red-light verse.

Proverbs 3, 7. Fear the Lord and turn away from evil, friend.

You'll have healing to your flesh and refreshment to your bones,

verse 8. Think about that for a second.

You're hurting. You're struggling. You're tired. You're just tired of everything

feeling so hard. And he says, you trust me.

Believe my promises are true. And I'm going to bring healing to your flesh and

refreshment to your bones. He's saying you're going to feel better.

So, friend, I don't know how August is going to play out for you.

I don't know what you're dealing with in your life. You can email me or send

me a voicemail, and Lisa and I and Tata will pray for you about it.

But you're going through some stuff that we don't understand fully,

and we're going through some stuff that you don't understand fully.

But I can promise you this.

You can take God's promises from the theoretical to the experiential. You can.

Mark Batterson wrote about this. It's a great, great paragraph.

In Chapter 8, the chapter called Realm Huggers in the book All In,

Mark talks about the experiential versus the theoretical. Right.

When it comes to God's promises, he says, I have a simple take on maturity, spiritual maturity.

It's all about the theoretical becoming experiential. When you first read a

verse of scripture, it's nothing

more than a theory because you haven't experienced it personally yet.

Until you experience it for yourself, God's grace is theoretical.

And I would add his power, his mercy, his kindness, his ability,

it's all theoretical until you experience it. But once you experience it,

Batterson says, it becomes the reality that redefines your life.

The same is true of his promises.

You have to prove them by putting them into practice.

And when God delivers, theory becomes reality. So over time,

the Bible becomes less theoretical and more experiential.

Verse by verse, the Bible becomes your spiritual reality, a reality that is

far more real than the reality you can perceive with your five senses.

He says, listen, friend, there's an amazing book that I read after I mentioned

that called Lament for a Son by Nicholas Wolterstorff.

Written back in the 80s, he lost a son, and he wrote this beautiful prayer of lament.

It's just a great little book. If you're grieving or have lost someone,

Lament for a Son is a great, it'll help you put some words on your prayers.

But he has a line in there. I've used it in two of my books so far.

I've written about it. I've talked about it. And this line has helped me so

many times. But Walter Storff says, faith is a footbridge that you don't know

will hold you up until you step out on it.

So you're looking at all in August, Kathy, and you're wondering how you're going

to make it through your husband's birthday, these big milestone events,

the first time they come through.

And the only way to get there is to put your foot down on that bridge of faith

and say, God, I'm going to trust that you say you will carry my burdens.

You say your yoke is easy and your burden is light. You say you're big enough

and strong enough to hold me up.

You say get out of the boat and come and walk with me.

And I'm going to put my foot down on that promise.

And until you do, until you put your foot down on that promise,

friend, you don't really know if it's going to turn out okay or not.

You have to take some readings of God's promises and see if they turn out to be sound.

And I can just promise you they are.

I promise you they are. Go all in with God.

Go all in. Move forward and stop looking back. This is day three.

I'm going to play Tommy Walker's song forward again, and we're not going to play it every day.

Don't get tired of it. I'm playing it because I want you to have it as some

prehab in your heart and in your brain.

I want you to have this idea that it's time to press forward.

Put your foot down on the bridge, okay?

Sarah, Brian, Clay, Will, Diane, Denise, and I want you to have this idea that

it's time to press forward.

Everybody that's listening and calling in, I want you to put your foot down

on the bridge and let's go all in and let's make it practical and relatable

and reality and not theory anymore.

It's time to believe that we can go all in and he will make our path straight

because he will. He will.

Feelings aren't facts, friends. They're not. Feelings are neurochemical events in your brain.

And you can do self-brain surgery to act your way into feeling better.

But you can never feel your way into acting better.

And if you want to know if God is big enough and strong enough and powerful

enough and kind enough and merciful enough and gracious enough and loving enough

to hold you up when you put your foot down on that bridge over that scary thing in your life,

you won't know until you do it. And you have to go all in.

And the good news is, my friend, you can start today.

Hope that was helpful to you, friend. Feelings versus faith.

It's time to go all in. And if you want some resources to help you,

check out Mark Batterson's book, All In, and check out my latest book,

Hope is the First Dose. It's the treatment plan for recovering from trauma,

tragedy, and other massive things.

Listen, Hope is the First Dose will give you a primer, a basic beginning point

for the neuroscience of how we smash faith and science together to get back

on our feet when hard things happen, how we reorient ourselves towards hope.

It's time to get after it, friend. It's all in August. God bless you.

I'm Dr. Lee Warren. I'll talk to you tomorrow.