The story is told of three friends, Faith, Facts and Feelings, who decided to take a walk on top of a wall. Their start was shaky and it progressively became worse. Then the inevitable happened!! Feelings, the heaviest of the lot fell down first, quickly followed by Faith, who was the thinnest of the lot. Facts, the strongest, retained his perch. Reaching down, he pulled Faith back on top of the wall. Next, Faith and Facts pulled Feelings back up again.

I think all of us can identify with this familiar sequence of events. Many times our journey through life is rocky because “feelings” constitutes the largest and most unstable component in it. It is the first causality in an attack. Next, we can always do with more faith. So our skinny faith nosedives when our feelings are unsettled by the circumstances. It is finally the Facts from the Word of God that remains unshaken. That has the power to pull up faith and together they bring back our feelings to normalcy. The giants of faith also faced exactly the same challenges. Martin Luther, the great reformer wrote the following verses.

“Feelings come and feelings go,
And feelings are deceiving;
My warrant is the Word of God–
Naught else is worth believing.

Though all my heart should feel condemned
For want of some sweet token,
There is One greater than my heart
Whose Word cannot be broken.

I’ll trust in God’s unchanging Word
Till soul and body sever,
For, though all things shall pass away,
HIS WORD SHALL STAND FOREVER!”  ― Martin Luther

The Bible reminds us that our walk is by faith and not by feelings. Paul writing in 2 Corintians 5:7 writes, “..for we walk by faith, not by sight.” If we walk according to the testimony of our senses, then our circumstances will determine our status. If we walk with our focus on the Word of God, the Spirit of God will assist us to walk in God confidence.

J Oswald Sanders, In his powerful book “In Pursuit of Maturity” writes, “Much distress in the lives of Christians stems from an unresolved conflict between these two principes – faith and sight. Sight is concerned with the visible and tangible: faith is occupied with the invisible and spiritual. Sight is worldly prudence: faith is other worldly wisdom. Sight concedes reality only to things present and seen; 'faith forms a solid ground for what is hoped for, a conviction of unseen realities.; (Hebrews 11:1, Berklee). Each principle strives for the ascendancy, and the believer chooses which will dominate his life.”

“The testing circumstances of life afford us the opportunity of adopting one principle or the other as a rule of life and action.... It is to be noted that faith is the confidence of things not seen.' not the consciousness of things not seen. Before we can feel them, we must exercise faith in them... for feelings spring from facts. And the facts that impart stability to faith are those revealed in the promises and declarations of Scripture.”

When we look around we are dismayed. When we look back we are discouraged by our past failures. When we look up/ look at the Word, we are delivered. Look up!