“Our feelings are important. They are an integral aspect of our God-given humanity and are not to be neglected.”
Trevor Hudson
Our emotions are a gift to us from God. God, in His embodied form of Jesus, had emotions and we were created in His image. Emotions were part of the package of human creation that God reflects on in Genesis 1:31a. “God saw all that he had made, and it was very good.”
Jesus had emotions and expressed them. John 11:35 mentions that Jesus wept when he saw Mary weeping over her brother’s death. His anger at those who were buying and selling in the temple courts caused him to overturn the tables of the money changers driving them out of the temple. Jesus’ emotion of compassion is repeatedly seen in the gospels with His response to heal and set free those who were hurting physically, spiritually, and emotionally.
Emotions alert us to how we feel inside when something is hurting us. They’re like the warning lights on our car’s dashboard informing us when something is wrong. They let us know what’s going on in our internal worlds and give us valuable information so we can figure things out. But emotions don’t have to control us. We’re the ones behind the driver’s seat and they are merely passengers in our car of life.
Emotions aren’t the problem; it’s what we do with them that can be problematic. One of the worst ways to handle our emotions is by ignoring and denying them. Sometimes they seem too painful to deal with and to face the truth. Yet, if we don’t process our hearts, they will control us, and our physical bodies will bear the brunt of our unprocessed emotions.
When you notice something is not right in your emotional world, identify, name, and own what you’re feeling. Trevor Hudson warns us in Discovering Our Spiritual Identity that “Unspecified emotions tend to have a draining and depressing effect.” Recently, I processed my heart with the Lord about a specific hurt, but it continued to rule my emotions until I expressed it to close friends. Weeping before them, sharing the ugly vain imaginations I was fighting against, and having them pray for me released me from the hold those emotions and lies had over me.
Embrace your emotions as a gift from God and steward them by acknowledging and sharing them with God and those who are close to you.
“Owning and expressing our feelings to the God who came in the flesh helps us to live fully and maturely.”
Trevor Hudson
Relevant Reflection:
What emotion do you need to manage by naming it and entrusting it to God and others?
Image by Gino Crescoli from Pixabay
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