A Trust & Faith Sandwich

Give It Some Thought: Your feelings are neither good nor bad; they just are what they are. But you have not been called to follow your feelings. Those feelings, rather, are simply meant to be a reminder, a catalyst, if you will, that in any particular moment of pain, you need to realign your life by faith and in trust to God’s perfect plan. So, the next time you get an emotional ouch, go ahead and say, “That stinks!” but refrain from attaching a judgment from the hurt too quickly. Take it to God, and yes, pour out your heart, but don’t forget to make a holy sandwich out of it—a trust and faith sandwich!

A Journey of Worship // Psalm 62:5-8

Let all that I am wait quietly before God, for my hope is in him. He alone is my rock and my salvation, my fortress where I will not be shaken. My victory and honor come from God alone. He is my refuge, a rock where no enemy can reach me. O my people, trust in him at all times. Pour out your heart to him, for God is our refuge.

A while back, I was with a good friend who had been through an especially rough stretch in his life. His world had been rocked, and he had been deeply disappointed by people who had been close to him. Yet he had landed upright and was now in a very good place spiritually, emotionally, and professionally. In fact, in my observation, he was in a better place than before his disappointment. Truly, God had been a shelter for him in the time of storm; much like David, he had found refuge in the God who turns bad into good for his children.

I asked my friend, in hindsight, to share with me the biggest takeaway from his experience. I thought his response was nothing less than profound. I’ll paraphrase what he said: “I learned that my feelings were simply my feelings. I was hurt and disappointed, but that was okay—those were just my feelings. But I learned not to attach judgments too quickly to those feelings. Though I felt bad, I learned not to think or say, ‘this is the end of the world”, or ‘those people who did hurt me deserve to suffer.’”

In other words, he learned to detach from how he felt at the moment in the sense that he gave the circumstance time to be reworked by the God in whose hands his life was held. In the rearview mirror of life, he was able to assess his painful past in a whole new and much brighter light. The things that hurt and the people who disappointed me are now a cause for thanksgiving.

That is what David is doing in this psalm. It is likely that Psalm 62 was written during or shortly after the personal upheaval that he experienced with his rebellious son, Absalom. On the one hand, David is pouring out his feelings to God (“Pour out your heart to him,” Psalm 62:8b)—which is good—but on the other hand, he is placing his faith in the One who is master over both feelings and the circumstances that led to those feelings (“O my people, trust in him at all times … for God is our refuge,” Psalm 62:8a and c).

Interestingly, David sandwiches his feelings (“pour out your hearts”) between a statement of trust (“trust him at all times”) and a declaration of faith (“for God is our refuge”). By the way, that is a great way to master your feelings and bring them under the dominion of God’s sovereign will for your life: Sandwich them between trust and faith!

You see, feelings are neither good nor bad—they just are what they are. But we have not been called to follow our feelings. Our feelings, rather, are simply meant to be a reminder, a catalyst, if you will, that in any particular moment of pain, we need to realign our lives by faith and in trust to God’s perfect plan.

So the next time you get an emotional ouch, go ahead and say, “That stinks!” but refrain from attaching a judgment from the hurt too quickly. Take it to God, and yes, pour out your heart, but don’t forget to make a holy sandwich out of it—a trust and faith sandwich!