Living in Victory: Choosing Truth Over Feelings

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Some say, "How you start is how you finish."

But I've learned that isn't always true.

There have been plenty of times I've started something full of faith and ambition, only to fall flat on my face in discouragement and despair. Each experience left me more disoriented than the last, wondering where God was in the middle of it all and why life always seemed to be such a struggle.

Especially because I grew up hearing that, in Christ, we already have the victory.

Yet my reality often felt anything but victorious.

And somewhere along the way, I began measuring God's goodness by my outcomes. If life seemed to be going well, God was good. If it wasn't, doubt quietly crept in.

But here's what I've come to realize:

Victory is not a feeling. It is a principle.

While our feelings aren't wrong, because God gave them to us, they were never meant to be what leads us. Our feelings rise and fall with our circumstances, making them unreliable foundations for our faith.

Principles, however, are different. They are steady, unchanging truths that remain regardless of what we feel. Even better, as believers our victory is founded entirely upon Jesus Christ, making it totally unshakable.

And that struggle that we often feel? That's usually the battle of opposition. The fight for our faith when the enemy seeks to destroy it.

If you've ever wondered if your feelings of discouragement and despair were just the result of your circumstances, think again. The enemy uses real tactics and schemes against us, seeking to pull us away from the truth of who God is. If he can distort our perspective, he can shift our focus and challenge what we believe.

But I am here to encourage you: God uses those moments as an invitation to grow in your faith, because the principle of our victory through Christ Jesus doesn't change. And what we believe about Him doesn't have to either.

Over the years, God has continued to remind me of two simple truths:

"For My thoughts are not your thoughts, nor are your ways My ways," declares the Lord. — Isaiah 55:8 NKJV

His ways are higher.

His thoughts are greater.

He sees what I cannot see and accomplishes things in ways I could never orchestrate on my own. He isn't merely interested in giving temporary relief or fleeting happiness, but rather producing lasting life within us.

God was good in the beginning.

He is good today. And He will be good forever.

He cannot be anything other than good.

And if that's true, then the way I interpret my circumstances must begin with His character and not my emotions. If God is good, then I must believe His intentions toward me are also good, even when I don't understand what He's doing.

But I also understand that is not always easy to process. Our emotions often work overtime to convince us otherwise.

This doesn't mean we pretend difficult seasons don't hurt. Faith isn't denial. In fact, we are free to grieve, wrestle, ask questions, and feel the weight of disappointment.

But faith was never intended to be governed by feelings.

Faith is the continual choice to believe God is who He says He is. Even when our circumstances argue otherwise.

It is written:

"For everyone born of God is victorious and overcomes the world; and this is the victory that has conquered and overcome the world –– our [continuing, persistent] faith [in Jesus the Son of God]." — 1 John 5:4 AMP

Notice what the verse doesn't say.

It doesn't say we're victorious only when everything works out.

It doesn't say we're victorious when life feels fair.

It doesn't say we're victorious only when we understand what God is doing.

Victory isn't dependent upon favorable circumstances. It's established by Christ.

Our continuing, persistent faith in Jesus allows us to stand in the middle of hardship and still declare that God is good, His intentions toward us are good, and therefore we remain victorious, even when our present reality doesn't seem to reflect it.

That kind of faith doesn't ignore reality. It simply refuses to let reality have the final word.

So perhaps the saying needs a slight adjustment.

You may not always finish the way you started.

But you will finish according to what you continually choose to believe.