Feelings Lie
by Sara Rivas
Morning, Downey Church friends and family. I’m excited to be able to share the kid’s story again with you.
All right, so today we’re gonna talk about one of my favorite Bible verses and that is Philippians 4:8. So if you have a Bible with you, I would like for you to grab your Bible and look up Philippians 4.8. So Philippians is towards the end of your Bible, kind of like here. And it’s a very short book. It only has four chapters. So you’re going to the fourth chapter, the last chapter in that book. And then you’re going to find verse eight. And so we’ll read it together in a sec. But I want you to do something. So some Bibles have this little bookmark string. I would like for you to put it right on that page, Philippians 4:8. Or if you don’t have a string, you could also doggy ear mark it. So that it’s easy, so you fold that one corner of where it’s at, and then when you look for it, you’ll see, oh, yeah, look, it’s right there. You can tell right where that fold is. And so you can open it and go straight to Philippians 4:8.
And so I’m gonna tell you why Philippians 4:8 is so important, here we go. So that verse says, whatever is true, whatever is noble, whatever is right, whatever is pure, Whatever is lovely, whatever is admirable, if anything is excellent or praiseworthy, think of such things. So I love this verse and it’s a verse that I go to often and I read every night actually. I have it printed on canvas and it is up in my room with all of the, just to give me an opportunity to reflect on what I’m thinking, what I’m doing. And it kind of helps me check in and recenter.
All right, so I want you guys to know that your feelings will sometimes lie to you. And so if you’re old enough to have shared with your parents or for your parents to have shared with you better said that we’re living in times of a spiritual warfare. So the bad guy, the devil wants to steal our happiness, our joy, our peace. the fruits of the spirit, he’s really going after them. He doesn’t want us to have them. He wants us to feel pretty miserable. And so when you’re feeling down or bad or low or angry or even just bored, go to this.
This is the one that I have on my bedroom and read it. Am I telling myself things that are true? Check in with yourself. Is it a fact that… You know, maybe your brother hates you. Probably not. Probably brother doesn’t really hate you. A brother probably just wants to read a book and really isn’t feeling like going outside to play basketball right now. And that doesn’t mean he hates you. So really reflect on what you’re telling yourself. Reflect on your thoughts. And then if you’re bored, hey, let me do something that is admirable. Let me do something that’s excellent or praiseworthy. And go. Think of something, God will give it to you. So the nice thing about having access to the Bible is that the Bible is God’s living word. And if you need something, the answers are in here a lot of the times. And sometimes we think, you know, oh, but I’m feeling this way. And I don’t know why I’m feeling so miserable. It might just be you need a moment to pause. and reflect on Philippians 4:8. Go there and also go to your God. Talk to him in prayer and tell him what’s on your mind, what’s in your heart and what’s bothering you. And he will make sure to help you. He’s always there for you.
All right, boys and girls, let’s go ahead and bow our heads and say a quick prayer. Dear Heavenly Father, thank you so much, Lord Jesus, that we could come to you and that you have your living word there for us, that we can go and we can find answers to our problems and that you give us all of these stories and examples and the proverbs and you just have so many nuggets of wisdom in there for us. Please help us to search for your word every day. Help us to live up to Philippians 4-8 to think of the things that are good things for us and to help us to be better servants. and to be ready for your second coming. In your very sweet name we pray, amen.
All right, until next time, bye-bye.