Processing is one of the hardest things to do, well for me it is. In fact, going into the race it’s been one of my biggest prayers. I prayed that throughout these nine months that the Lord will teach me how to process emotions in a healthy manner. God has grown me a lot in this area. I still am learning a lot and I still struggle with processing, but it’s been on my heart to share with you what the Lord has taught me. I hope and pray that the Lord teaches you something in this blog and that because of it you will be able to comprehend how long, how wide, how high, and how deep the Father’s love for you is (Ephesians 3:16-19).
(Side note: I encourage you as you read this blog to open up your Bible and to dive into scripture with me!)
THE PURPOSE OF EMOTIONS:
God has given all of us emotions. The purpose of those emotions are: to empathize with others and to follow the greatest commandment (to love God and love others). Emotions are great and healthy aspects to our lives, but just as easily they can become very unhealthy and damaging if we aren’t careful. God created emotions so that we can feel them, empathize, and love, but He didn’t create them so that we could dwell, ignore, bottle up, act upon, or use them as a weapon. If we do those things not only do our emotions become unhealthy and affect us, but they also affect others around us. This is the risk we take with our emotions if we don’t process them with the Lord.
(Side note: The fruits of the Spirit in Galatians 5 are not emotions. They are gifts from God. So in whatever circumstance we are in we can have love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control because God has given us these gifts and tools when He adopted us into His family.)
WHAT IS PROCESSING?:
Processing in simple terms is surrendering, walking in our identity, trusting God, and a gift from the Lord. Before I explain in further detail what processing is let’s take it to scripture and see Jesus’ example of processing.
In Matthew 26:36-44, Jesus is praying in the garden right before He is sent off into the hands of the Romans to later be crucified on the cross. There is a few interesting things that Jesus, the Savior of the world, did before He went to the cross. I’ll give you a hint: He processes His emotions!
The first thing Jesus did was He brought along His friends and asked them to pray. Even though Jesus is God’s son and could easily go to the Father whenever He wanted He saw the importance of community. In Jesus’ example we can see that processing was not meant to be done alone; we need people! Romans 12:15 even says, “Rejoice with those who rejoice; mourn with those who mourn.” In whatever situation we are in life whether that’s a time of rejoicing or mourning we need each other; we need the church. Even Jesus needed the body of Christ. If that’s what He saw as important we should also see the importance in the body of Christ.
Then in verse 38, Jesus says to His disciples, “I am deeply grieved to the point of death.” Jesus not just brings His disciples along for the ride, but He’s vulnerable with His emotions. He sees the importance of being vulnerable and inviting His disciples into His hardship and pain.
Next it says, “he [Jesus] fell face down and prayed, ‘My Father, if it is possible, let this cup pass from me. Yet not as I will, but as you will.'” The two things that stick out to me right here was the fact that Jesus had so much honor and respect for God that He bowed down to Him. Jesus knew His place in the presence of His Father and it’s a great reminder of the honor, praise, respect, and glory our Heavenly Father deserves.
The other thing that touches my heart is what Jesus says. Jesus prays this beautiful, short, bold, intimate, and trust-worthy prayer to the Lord. Jesus comes to the Father in grief, vulnerable, and honesty, but He also comes with a heart open to whatever the Lord wants. He trusts the Lord in this situation whether that means His life will be spared or that He will die a cruel death. Jesus’ prayer shows that He indeed trusts the Lord’s plan and what God’s going to do through it than His own plans. He surrenders His emotions, His will, and His life in this short beautiful prayer.
After He prays this prayer He comes back to find all His friends sleeping. He asks Peter, “‘So, couldn’t you stay awake with me one hour? Stake awake and pray, so that you won’t enter into temptation. The spirit is willing, but the flesh is weak.’” He really wants His disciples to be praying and be there with Him in this hard time of processing. He knows His disciples are human and can easily slip up if they aren’t careful and focus on the Lord. Out of anyone, Jesus can relate to them the most because He is human.
What amazes me the most from what Jesus says is Jesus’ humble request before He dies on the cross. He requests to have His disciple’s process with Him and hear what the Lord is saying to them. Wow! Even when Jesus knows He’s about to die His final request is to hear the Lord’s voice and to invite the disciples into the Lord’s work. He does this because He so dearly loves the Father and His disciples. The last thing Jesus does is process His emotions in a healthy way and from that He was able to love God and others.
The end of verse 41 Jesus says, “The spirit is willing, but the flesh is weak.” This passage also parallels to Proverbs 18. Proverbs 18:1 explains, “One who isolated himself pursues selfish desires; he rebels against all sound wisdom.” Jesus knew that His disciple’s selfish and human desires are prone to take over and cloud clear wisdom and judgement. He was concerned about His disciples. He wanted the best for them even though later some would run away when the guards took Jesus, another would deny Him 3 times, and another would hang himself out of guilt.
Jesus knew this, but He still didn’t want that for them. Jesus tried to tell them that God’s not done with them and He wants to use them for His plans. Jesus tries to care for their hearts, give them advice, and give them an opportunity to follow the Holy Spirit living within them. Yet, all the disciples could do in that moment is to sleep. Even in Jesus’ time of processing His own hardship He was processing the fact that His disciples won’t listen and surrenders His disciples to the Lord.
This scene continues two more times. Even though He knows God heard His prayer the first time Jesus still decides to pray without ceasing (1 Thessalonians 5:16-17). Jesus knew how important it is to continue to pray and not be wavered by the situation. So, Jesus continued to give it to God.
In this section in Matthew we can see how Jesus processed. We can see how Jesus surrendered His emotions to God, walked in His identity as a son by praying bold prayers in the authority of God, trusted the Lord’s will, and stewarded this gift of processing well. Jesus knew that these things were important. He valued community, His relationship with the Lord, and this gift of emotions and processing God gave Him.
***I’m staring a series about processing! Yay!! In the next blog I will share another example of how Jesus and Mary processed together in John 11. There is a lot I have to say on this topic so I’m going to spit these ideas into different topics to it’s easily to read and digest. Stay tuned for the next blog on processing!***
