This morning, I didn't do anything special or out of the ordinary of my usual routine: I woke up, took a shower, checked my college assignment board to see what was due today, put on a couple worship songs and continued to get ready for the next 24 hours ahead of me. I said my daily prayer, cracked open my Bible, and dug into a devotion on the YouVersion app called, "When It Hurts." (Side note - I would totally recommend checking that out if you're a college student or young adult.)

Only, today's devotion wasn't just some everyday thing that you skim over; it wasn't some Godly advice that someone just mentions in order to get you through some sort of overwhelming problem...no, today's devotion was meant for me to hear and reflect on in order to apply it to my current stage of life: "Living in a Peaceful State of Mind."

Easier said than done, right? Sounds like it, but how peaceful can we really feel when we are dependent and focused on Earthly materialistic things that don't compare to God's greatness? If we are constantly focusing on the wrong, on our thoughts, or even letting our feelings run our lives, it is much harder to feel at peace with everything chaotically going on around us.

You see though...that's the gist - your faith shouldn't be defined by your feelings, but rather by the choices you make. Faith is a choice, not a feeling. You wake up every morning and go to sleep every night with the choice that You are trusting God or trusting yourself with what happens.

Feelings fluctuate and can be everything but constant based on your situations from day to day - sometimes they are at an all time high, feeling like you could conquer anything in sight, but other times they are at the lowest of lows and all of a sudden, you don't know how to get out of this rut you got yourself into.

Hebrews 11:1 says, "Now faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen (ESV)."

Let me put it this way, how many times have you clicked "I Agree" in the Terms and Conditions without even reading it? You have faith that you automatically agree with everything in that document written even though you haven't fully read it.

In a sense, faith is equivalent to trust. Faith is taking God as His Word no matter where you are. Faith is having the confidence that God will bring you through the valleys and will provide even in the darkest of hours. No matter how strong your feelings might be, faith is not about having positive feelings all of the time. Remember, the promise of The Word of God is:

1. Truer than anything you feel.

2. Truer than any situation you experience.

3. Truer than any circumstance that you face.

4. Truer than anything that this world has to offer.

Sometimes we think we don't feel God's love, sometimes we don't feel like our prayers are being heard, sometimes we don't feel like we are good enough...but God's Word will always tell you differently. In 1 Corinthians 13:7-10, God specifically tells us that we all are loved with not just any kind of love, but specifically everlasting love: "Love never ends. As for prophecies, they will pass away; as for tongues, they will cease; as for knowledge, it will pass away. For we know in part and we prophesy in part, but when the perfect comes, the partial will pass away."

After I put this perspective into my mind and started applying it to my life, I was given the opportunity to be honest with God straight forward and choose to believe His Word even when my feelings contradicted His promises.

Make the commitment to bank your life off of what God's Word says, and have faith that God will honor that commitment because even your feelings can be screaming at you from all different directions, the only voice that will lead you the right direction is God's!