Do you ever struggle with hard emotions? Bad feelings? Insecurity? Resentment? Well, I hops so! I don't want to think I'm the only one! As Christians, how are we supposed to handle those feelings? I think, far too often, we try to squelch them, ignore them, or put them down. In some cases, we are even encouraged to do this. We try to have our emotions match our theology, and they won't cooperate. The thing is, what does proper Christian theology really say about emotions? I believe that not enough has been said, and I am going to be addressing what the Bible actually says about emotions, and to give some ideas about how to handle them.
It is true that Jeremiah 17:9 says, The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately wicked, who can know it? This being the case, phrases like "follow your heart" are not good advice. Our emotions can have us thoroughly confused. It is not good to make decisions from a place of emotion. God's word, not our feelings, should be our foundation. However, having said that, this verse is talking about the unregenerate heart, not the heart of a born again Christian who is being sanctified. In saying that, am I suggesting that Christians should "follow their heart" instead of the Bible? No! The Bible, with the inner guidance of the Holy Spirit, is to guide us. While emotions (especially heat of the moment emotions) are not a good indicator of what we should do, they are still part of how we experience reality. If you truly feel something inside, examine that. Ask God to show you why you feel this way. This is especially true if it isn't just a heat of the moment emotion. For example, if you feel uncomfortable around certain people or situations, examine that. Don't just squelch it.
David gave a good example of this in the Psalms. His writings express things he was feeling--things many Christians would be ashamed to actually acknowledge feeling. Psalm 42 seems to indicate that David struggled with depression and other deep emotions. My tears have been my meat day and night... (verse 3). When I remember these things, I pour out my soul in me... (verse 4) Why art thou cast down, O my soul? and why art thou disquieted in me? (verse 5). Deep calleth unto deep at the noise of thy waterspouts: all thy waves and thy billows are gone over me. (verse 7). In fact, if you read this whole psalm, you can see the back-and-forth emotions David is battling between despair and trusting in the Lord. In the end, he comes to the right place: hope thou in God: for I shall yet praise him, who is the health of my countenance, and my God. (verse 11). David shows here (and in other Psalms) that he knows how to unpack his feelings and deal with them.
We are told to love God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength. (Mark 12:30). This leads me to believe we are to love God with all that is in us, including our emotions. Our relationship with God is not mechanical. It is a living, real relationship, where we speak to God and He speaks to us. He wants to hear from you, from the depth of what you are feeling. Faking your emotions is not a good way to love Him with all your heart, soul, mind or strength.
Yet, while we are being real with what we feel, we should also look at what we are to do with those emotions. Feeling something isn't sinful, but indulging feelings can be, if they lead us into sin. We are told in Proverbs 4:23, Watch over your heart with all diligence, for from it flow the springs of life. What we allow in our hearts will take up residence there, impact what we do. What should we do when we feel something that is contrary to what God has said in His word? Jesus answered that in Luke 9:23, And he said to all, “If anyone would come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross daily and follow me. All of us are called to do this. We need to deny ourselves all things that are against God's will. For example, I have struggled at times with a silent harboring of resentment, and passive-aggressive revenge. But this isn't God will for me. I need to deny those feelings, taken up my cross (all that goes with that) and follow Jesus and His will for me. No one gets a free pass on this. We all must deny ourselves, take up our crosses daily, and follow Jesus. It isn't easy for anyone, but it can be done, with His help. Matthew 11:28-30 beckons us: Come to me, all who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you and learn from me, for I am gentle and humble of heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy and my burden is light. This promise tells us that whatever emotions we are battling, He is with us, empowering us to do right, and ministering to us.
We know He cares about what we are feeling. The very shortest verse in the Bible (the shortest verse in English, anyway) is John 11:35, which simply says, Jesus wept. This verse appears in the middle of the story of Mary, Martha and Lazarus. Jesus was deeply close with them. When Lazarus died, Jesus wept with Mary and Martha, even though He knew He was about to raise Lazarus from the dead and give his sisters so much joy. He was able to be with them in their pain of the moment, and feel with them. He does the same for us. Psalm 56:8 says that He keeps all our tears in a bottle, and has every one of them in his book. He keeps track of everything that happens to you, and how it makes you feel. In light of all of this, let's examine how not to handle difficult emotions.
In my high school and college years, I did several domestic and international mission trips. Doing ministry is a wonderful place to meet like-minded, godly friends. It is also a place to become very frustrated at times. The enemy often pits us against each other. This isn't new. We read about conflicts in the New Testament, and the Apostle Paul even had to remind the believers at Ephesus, Our struggle is not against flesh and blood... (Ephesians 6:12). There are a lot of complicated in's and out's about human interaction and relationships. There are also multiple motives behind a person's desire to go on a mission trip, and that can feed into the way he or she relates to others on the trip. On a basic level, think of this: two (or more) people who didn't know the other existed are meeting up at a training, having a short time to get used to each other, and then having to live in close proximity on a mission field, in the midst of intense spiritual battle. Even under the best of circumstances, with wonderful people, this can lead to conflicts and misunderstandings. They haven't had a lifetime to get used to each other's idiosyncrasies, and things often seem magnified in the midst of spiritual warfare.
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| I am pictured as a college student (second from right) with a mission group I was part of. |
Many of those who trained us for these mission trips would constantly tell us, "The number one reason missionaries leave the field earlier than planned is because of other missionaries." This was said to give us the sobering reality that conflicts can ruin ministry. We see that in the Bible. Paul and Barnabas served together in Acts 13-14, but conflicted sharply in Acts 15, and went their separate ways. God used this for His glory, doubling the ministry efforts. Notice, there is nothing recorded of Paul and Barnabas bad-mouthing each other. They were real about their differences. They didn't try to force themselves to work together with plastic smiles. They parted company, and yet did not wish ill on each other. Sometimes, conflicts and partings happen, and I feel that modern Christians are quick to see that as a sign of failure. It certainly wasn't a failure in the case of Paul and Barnabas. Another thing I was told in my missionary training days was, "If you think there's a problem, look in the mirror, because it's really you. If you're doing what you're supposed to do, so will everyone else. Problems come when you're busy looking at others instead of yourself." While I agree this can be part of a problem, it isn't all of it, nor does it even play a part in every problem. In my experience, this teaching brought a lot of false guilt into my heart, and gave others a green light to overstep bounds unchecked (because if someone corrected them, they could come back with, "Look at your own sin, not mine!"). Other times, Christian leadership in my life minimized the issues. Sometimes it was actually good advice in itself, and would have worked if we were dealing with people who actually wanted to get along (and many times I was). Sadly, that isn't always the case. We can't assume everyone is reasonable. We can't assume everyone wants peace. I was told things such as, "You need to be more loving." or "You need to be a better Christian," or the ever-famous line, "Get into the Word more." These are all biblical ideas, but they are not going to automatically dissolve a difficult situation or difficult emotions. Sometimes, things need to be unpacked and dealt with. There is a battle going on, and this kind of trite, over-spiritualized advice minimizes it, often allowing wrong things to continue. We need to be real about how we handle things we are experiencing.
Years ago, I was offered a ministry opportunity I just wasn't very jazzed about. I was already doing something in that chapter of my life that God had clearly led me to, and I just had no sense of desire to leave it. I had no peace in considering this opportunity that was presented. When I told the person, "I don't feel led to take you up on that," the person said, "You shouldn't go by your feelings." Well, I didn't necessarily mean my emotions didn't want this. I just didn't have a peace, desire, or inclination toward it. I was a Christian who was hiding God's word in my heart and trying to hear His voice. When this opportunity came along, I just didn't sense God leading me to it. People who tell you to disregard what you're experiencing internally might be trying to manipulate you, or they might genuinely not have a healthy sense of how we are created as thinking and feeling beings.
I remember several years ago, I was involved in leading a youth Bible study with another woman. It was a bad relationship from the get-go. This woman was very rude, in a sickeningly sweet voice. She had an inferiority complex she tried to overcome with a false superiority complex. She said cutting things to me (when she would talk to me at all), and she would barely look at me or acknowledge me. In my kind but naive heart, I thought, "I'm going to only think godly thoughts about her. I won't even acknowledge her bad points. I'll just do the ministry and not focus on her." My intention was right, but I was incorrect.
God didn't create me (or anyone else) to just not feel the sting of pain when someone hurts us, and this woman inflicted hurt on me. I just kept a plastic smile on my face for weeks. Finally one day, a few months into our working relationship, she was being particularly difficult, and I blurted out, "You are such a snob!" What's worse, we were with a few other people when I said it. She looked totally shocked, and, I am ashamed to admit, I felt a sense of satisfaction in this. We were able to superficially smooth it over, but our relationship didn't improve. We had moments where it looked like things were better, but that ultimately didn't happen. In my desire not to be resentful, I stuffed all the frustration inside of me, where it continued to fester.
I never complained about her to anyone, so, aside from my initial slip of calling her a snob in front of a few people, no one had any idea how much of a difficult relationship we had. What I didn't know was, she was slandering me to others, including the leadership of this Bible study. Since I was not complaining about her, they assumed that I was the problem, and took her complaints seriously. I was eventually kicked out of this Bible study, without even being given the benefit of consideration or able to share my side of it. I learned from that experience. If nothing else, I learned to document everything, and cover my bases by mentioning all issues to those over me, just so they will be aware of them, should they ever come up. I actually learned much more than that. In fact, I gained so much more than I lost from that whole time in my life, and I have no regrets in this experience. Did I make mistakes? Yes. Was I wrong? In some cases, yes. But that's how we learn, and I am so thankful for all I gleaned.
Dr. Allison Cook, a Christian psychologist I follow, gives this advice for dealing with difficult emotions.
1. Notice what you're feeling today.
2. Get curious about it. "I wonder why I'm feeling that way." (no judgment)
3. Name it.
4. Invite God into what you are experiencing (versus praying it away)
5. Consider speaking on behalf of it with someone you trust in order to unpack it.
I wish I had known this earlier in my life. I wish I had known that it was okay to feel these negative things. I wish I had known it was okay to acknowledge it, name it, and invite God into it. I wish I had known it was okay to share with someone I trust. I always thought that was gossip. It can be gossip, which is why we need to be careful. Find someone you can trust. I do find it interesting that in our world today, Christians seem a lot more phobic of being accused of gossip than first-century believers were. Jesus very openly warned His disciples about the Pharisees' hypocrisy (Matthew 16:6), and didn't preface it with any sort of caveat about trying not to slander or gossip. The Apostle Paul constantly mentions people by names in his epistles. This makes me wonder if, today, we call things gossip when they really aren't. That's a subject for another time (you can go back and read my post from February 18, 2020 entitled Gossip). In any event, we don't want trouble, so be careful in whom you confide. Ask God to direct you to someone. At this point in my life, I am blessed with two mentors, who give me biblical counsel, let me share with them, and hold me accountable. I am also able to bounce things like this off my husband. Find someone you can trust, who really hears you out. What I have since learned in my life is that, when I follow these steps, the burden largely disappears. I'm no longer trying to deny real feelings inside. I am handling them biblically, without expecting anything in return. This truth has been a lifesaver to me, and I hope it is for you as well!
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