The Trouble With Feelings

Strange title, I know.

But I’ve been thinking a lot lately about feelings and how they disrupt our lives. All around us, we see people giving into damaging emotions and taking the emptiness that follows out on whomever crosses their path. We all do this. I’m not pointing fingers. But I believe we need to take a step back and consider the consequences. Let’s do so, however, in hope and in the mindfullness of God’s love. It’s not His intent for us to live that way and He knows how to fix it. He always does.

First off, let me reassure you that God created feelings and did so out of His profound love for us. Our ability to know great delight is God’s gift. He could have created us with the ability to feel hunger but not the pleasure of taste. He could have created us to interact without the exhilarating joy of human connection. He could have given us hearing but no music, seeing but no sunsets, experiences but no passion. He could have made us machines. But He made us very, very human. And He gave us many, many things to enjoy. For that, we should be most thankful.

But being human comes with its fair share of challenges. We have to fight the beckoning of overindulgence. Because the good things of this world only remain “good” when they don’t begin to take the place of God Himself. If God moves outside the center, we find less and less pleasure in the things we’ve replaced Him with and more and more struggle in our inability to practice temperance.

God didn’t make things that way because He’s an egomaniac. He did it to save us from ourselves and to restore our joy when we’ve allowed our priorities to get out of whack. Our truest and most content selves are who we become in connection to Him. If we think we’ve found our completeness in others or in things, we will be devastated when we realize they can’t be more to us. Humans are humans and we can’t fill each other fully, as much as we’d like to sometimes. And things are just things; they can’t love us back.

What happens when we overindulge our emotions and allow them to run wild? And let me just lovingly say on a sidenote, this is not just a “woman thing”. Men’s emotions take different forms but they too struggle to keep them under control and the bravest of men will admit this. So, to answer that previous question, what happens is this: emotions and feelings become the inconsistent and unreliable foundation on which we try to plant our feet.

Things sometimes work very differently in the Kingdom of Heaven than they do here on this broken earth. And sometimes, God calls us to react based on what we know rather than what we feel promising if we do, the good emotions will follow.

For instance, what are you feeling today? Are you struggling with anger? Sadness? Worry? What does God’s Word say about these things? Submitting to God and His Word should be our go-to response but it takes practice.

God is our Vindicator and Defender. (Psalms 18, 59 & 91; Isaiah 12:2, 50:8, 54:17)

God is our Strength. (Nehemiah 8:10; Psalms 28:7, 46:1; Isaiah 40:29-31; Habakkuk 3:19; 2 Corinthians 12:9-10; Philippians 4:13)

God is our Refuge and Hope. (Dueteronomy 33:27; Psalms 119:114; Proverbs 18:10; Isaiah 25:4; Jeremiah 16:19; Zechariah 9:12)

When we begin to stake our claim on the truth of His promises rather than on the emotions that often mislead us, we do a few very important things:

1) We offer God a true worship. We can’t embrace bitterness or worry and still offer Him our trust. But when we believe His heart for us, we worship Him in truth thus deepening our relationship with Him and experiencing His joy.

2) We allow our strength to come from within, where God resides (rather than looking for it in outside things) thus developing a stronger coping ability and a calmness to our presence.

3) We offer the people around us a consistency we couldn’t offer them before. Our loved ones can approach us without being afraid of what mood they’ll find us in or worrying if they will overwhelm us. They can rely on us.

4) We begin to heal. When our emotions have been given free reign for an extended period, we cause damage to ourselves and to others. But turned over to God, we tap into His never-ending supply of patience and love which heals our hearts and helps us offer patience and love to others. Basically, we are restored…and our relationships are too.

The verses offered above are a very small portion of what’s available. God gave us His Word so we could learn His heart and have His help in our time of need. Learning God’s Word is a powerful weapon against the enemy and it is exactly what Jesus used to defeat Satan in the desert (Matthew 4:1-13, Luke 4:1-11). Do we need a better example than this? Jesus, who was tempted far beyond what we’ve had to endure, has taught us how to overcome our feelings and He did this by teaching us a truth that changes everything:

There is supernatural power found within the Word of God.

Within, we find:

Power to rise above circumstances. Power to be healed. Power to be more than just a victim of the negative thoughts that work to harden our hearts.

We need only speak His truth into our cicumstances to take hold of these blessings…even if we’re just speaking it silently in our hearts.

Lean hard into God’s love today, my dear friends. And take just a little time daily to learn and memorize His Word. So much is in store for those who unlock the mysteries of His Kingdom. Our Father has always longed to reveal them because He desires our joy to be full…and our emotions to reflect the peace that comes from knowing just how loved we are. In fact, a really good verse to keep in mind every single day is John 10:10…

The thief comes only to steal, kill and destroy; I have come that they may have life, and have it to the full.

Praise to the God who daily makes a way for us to obtain the blessings of His beautiful heart. The more we look to Him, the more our feelings become grounded in security, hopeful expectation, joy, strength and love…and the fuller our hearts become.