Jesus said to him, “If you can believe, all things are possible to him who believes.” Mark 9:23 (NKJV)
Persistent feelings are signs and symptoms of what’s going on in the deepest beliefs of your heart.
Sometimes feelings are fleeting—they can come and go depending on how much sleep you’ve had, what you’re thinking about or what you’ve eaten that day. But other feelings run deeper. You can’t just ignore these persistent feelings and pretend they aren’t there. They aren’t just going to go away. You need to deal with them, but this process isn’t as difficult as you might think.
If you feel like you can’t stand your spouse and that feeling keeps coming up, it’s an issue. If you feel like you’re never going to get ahead and you’re probably always going to struggle to make ends meet, that’s a problem. Don’t ignore those feelings; deal with their root!
Those feelings come from your beliefs. To change them, you need to start with your thought life. Start by paying more attention to your thoughts because they have an effect on how you feel.
At the same time, realize that persistent feelings that seem to keep coming back often come from your beliefs. You need to get these deep beliefs in line with what God says in his Word because, as Jesus said, all things are possible to those who believe.
The key lies with what you believe. We might think that faith is an emotional thing—that if we work up the right level of emotion, we’re full of faith. It’s not true. Faith isn’t an emotional reaction; it’s a confident belief you develop over time—time you spend getting convinced that what God’s Word says is true.