Letters to Annie: Put Faith Above Feelings

Dear Annie,

Knowing you as proved to me that there’s still friendship and honesty in the world. You are the best friend and a lover any one can have! Knowing someone as sincere and honest as you has made my faith in the future grow. Now that disbelieve seems to be taking over our lives, to know there are people like you makes all the problems look smaller. It’s great to be your boyfriend and friend and to be able to look in your eyes and see a mix of serenity and hope. For me, this fairly recent relationship is something I consider to be sacred already. It makes me have faith again. Thank you Annie for loving me.

As much as I love you, this feeling can come and go. Faith is, however, much better. Let us have faith in each other and most importantly, faith in God. “Now the just shall live by faith” (Hebrews 10:38). This teaches that we should live by faith in God. “We are to live by faith, not feelings,” said Kay Arthur. Yet sometimes Annie, despite our best intentions, negative feelings can rob us of the peace and abundance that would otherwise be ours through Christ. When anger or jealousy or doubt or anxiety separates us from the spiritual blessings that God has in store, we must rethink our priorities and renew our faith.

Annie, and I want to tell myself: We must place faith above feelings. Human emotions are highly variable, decidedly unpredictable, and very sad to say – often unreliable. Our emotions are like weather, only far more fickle. So we must learn to live by faith, not by the ups and downs of our own emotional roller coasters.

Annie, remember our last night conversation? Have faith. Sometime during this day, you will probably be gripped by a strong negative emotion (I love you for who you are). Distrust it. Reign it in. And turn it over to God. Your emotions will inevitably change; God will not. So trust Him completely as you watch your feelings slowly evaporate into thin air – which, of course, they will. Helen Keller, blind early of her life, writes, “It gives me a deep, comforting sense that ‘things seen are temporal and things unseen are eternal.’”

I love you: that is both faith (that we going to be together) and affection (at this moment) for you.

But more than that, God loves you. Have faith in Him and live by faith.

                        You don’t have to understand everything,

Richard

THINK BIG. START SMALL. GO DEEP.