One sweet thing that I get to do while squad leading is teach in front of the squad. Here is part of a message that I shared during a recent debrief with the whole squad about emotions in light of the kingdom. Hope you enjoy it. 🙂
A chunk of this comes from a book that started reading on my original race called Emotionally Healthy Spirituality. I would highly recommend it if anything from this teaching stands out to you!
How were we created?
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You were made in the image of God, you were made whole. (Gen 1:26-27)
This includes 5 different dimensions: Spiritual, physical, mental/intellectual, social and emotional. All equally a part of us and interconnected.
Now let’s focus on our emotional being.
What are some things that you have been taught to believe about emotions (positive and negative)?
Maybe…
-That unpleasant emotions such as anger, sadness and fear are sins to be avoided.
-When we feel these emotions it’s an indication that something is wrong with our spiritual life
-Anger is dangerous and unloving towards others.
-That sadness indicates a lack of faith in the promises of God; and depression is a life outside the will of God.
-And fear? we are commanded not to fear in the bible many times. We aren’t even supposed to experience fear.
-That our feelings are unreliable and not to be trusted. Therefore we don’t have permission to admit our feelings to others or express them openly.
All these things we believe or have been taught in the past more than likely effect how we deal with our emotions today, (especially ones that we see as negative, i.e. pain, hurt, anger, sadness etc.).
So, why is it important to acknowledge our emotions?
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our emotions/emotional being is an essential part of our humanity and unique personhood as men and women made in God’s image.
If we were created in the image of God, which includes our emotions/emotional being, let’s take a minute and look at our creator and how that is within his image.
Scripture reveals that our God is an emotional being who feels also:
Genesis 1:25,31, God delighted, beamed over us in creating us.
Genesis 6:6, Regret, hurt, grief.
Exodus 20:5, Jealousy.
Jeremiah 30:24, Anger.
Jeremiah 31:3, Love.
Hosea 11:8, Compassion.
Matt 26:37-38, Sorrow.
Mark 3:5, Anger and distress.
Luke 10:2, Joy.
“You are made in his image. God thinks. You think. God wills. You will. God feels. You feel. You are a human being made in God’s likeness and part of being made in his likeness is feeling.”
To deny this part of ourselves is to deny a part of what it means to be an image bearer and distort the picture of what it looks like to bear the image of God. It would be the same if we denied any of the other aspects of our being, i.e. physical, social, spiritual, mental/intellectual etc.
So, ignoring or cutting ourselves off from feeling(s) is essentially slicing off a part of our humanity, since feelings are a component of what it means to made in the image of God.
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God can use our feelings/emotions to communicate to us.
God can speak to us through our feelings in our physical bodies: a knot in the stomach, muscle tension, trembling and shaking, headaches, suddenly elevated heart rate. God may be screaming at you through your physical body while you are looking for a more spiritual signal.
Our body often knows what we are feeling before our mind does, i.e. heart beating fast because the Holy Spirit is prompting you to do something, headache, pain in your chest every time you into a temple or place where other god are being worshipped.
He can also use our emotions.
Emotions that are classified as positive, feel like they bring life, i.e. joy, peace, fruit of the spirit OR emotions that are more likely to be classified as negative, i.e. frustration, sadness, anger etc.
If we ignore those feelings/emotions how can we know what the Lord is communicating to us through them?
And how can we test/know where these feelings/emotions are coming from?
1 John 4:1. Sometimes they are fleshly desires or the enemy, sometimes it’s the Lord prompting us to do something.
Since this teaching is slightly lengthy I am going to break this up into two posts. So, stay tuned for part 2! 🙂
