Helen Howarth Lemmel wrote the lyrics to “Turn Your Eyes Upon Jesus” in 1922. She loved music her entire life and even studies vocal music in Germany for a time. But by the time she was 55, she had become blind, been abandoned by her wealthy husband, and suffered various other tribulations. And that’s when she came across a little tract that deeply impressed her. The pamphlet read:

“So then, turn your eyes upon Him, look full into His face and you will find that the things of earth will acquire a strange new dimness.”

And Helen Lemmel responded with a song:

It’s a wonderful song, but it’s even better counsel. It is, in fact, very counsel we could receive during times of difficulty. During those days – during dark days – we will find that our feelings are spiraling out of control. And it’s during days like that which we must remember that even when we can’t make ourselves feel better, we can always control where our focus is. We can’t control how we feel but we can always control where we’re looking. And where we’re looking is actually more important than what we are feeling. Here’s why:

We cannot trust our feelings to tell us the truth:

The heart is more deceitful than anything else,
and incurable—who can understand it? (Jer. 17:9). 

This is indeed an uncomfortable truth. It’s a decidedly different truth than the version of truth we find anywhere else in the world. While movies, Hollywood, and self-help gurus will tell us to follow our own hearts, the Bible says we should follow Jesus. While the world tells us that the source of truth is within us, the Bible tells us that our hearts are liars. While the world says that we can’t go wrong if we trust in ourselves, the Bible tells us that a sure way to go off track is to trust our own feelings.

Think about it personally. What do you feel right now? Do you feel hopeful? Sad? Happy? Excited? And now ask yourself whether you decided to feel that way. Probably not. Instead, you just feel what you feel at a given moment. Sometimes it’s motivated by the circumstances around you. Sometimes there is no valid reason for those feelings at all. But in the end, you feel what you feel. We all do.

You can’t control what you feel. But you can control what you look at.

The psalmist was one who recognized this:

I will set no worthless thing before my eyes… (Ps. 101:3, NASB).

Now while we might typically think about this verse in terms of something like pornography (which we should), there are all kinds of worthless things we might set before our eyes. But why the resolution not to put anything before his eyes? I mean, it’s only looking, right? Except for the fact that the psalmist knew that where we look determines where we focus. And where we focus often will determine what we value.

By that logic, then, if we are resigned to the fact that we are going to feel what we feel, and that those feelings might not be right, then the most proactive thing we can do is to make sure we are looking at the right thing. To make sure, even in the midst of feeling what we know we should not, that at least our gaze is on the right place.

And so then we turn to the New Testament, where we find that which ought to be ever before us. That which, if our focus is right, will determine the way we should go and what we should value:

Therefore, since we have so great a cloud of witnesses surrounding us, let us also lay aside every encumbrance and the sin which so easily entangles us, and let us run with endurance the race that is set before us, fixing our eyes on Jesus, the author and perfecter of faith, who for the joy set before Him endured the cross, despising the shame, and has sat down at the right hand of the throne of God (Heb. 12:1-2).

Christian, you may or may not be feeling rightly today. Regardless, make sure you are “looking” rightly. No matter what you’re feeling, turn your eyes upon Jesus. And find that those things of earth which might be making you feel this way or that will slowly but surely grow strangely dim.

This post originally appeared at Think Eternity.