Pain.
Fear.
Uncertainty.
Rejection.
These are all things we’ve dealt with at one time or another, but for some, it seems that it dominates their life.
I am one of those people.
I would like to share with you something I believe God is teaching me and has certainly put on my heart: emotions are not bad, they are good, because God created them and whatever God has created is inherently good. Of course, Satan, or us, can twist their true meaning and they are then put in a place that they were never meant to be. I am guilty of this. For the longest time, I truly believed that my emotions were too much for me and too much for God. I didn’t want to deal with them, so I ran the other way and pretended they weren’t there. Of course, they were and it effected my entire life. Trying to shut out a key component of who I am was bound to end disasterously.
This is where God steps in: I believe He purposely has put me through things to get to this point, to learn to feel my emotions, even the bad ones, and trust Him enough to feel them. When Jesus first invaded my life and I read scripture for the first time with new eyes, I came across a scripture in Ecclesiastes 7:3 which says, “Sorrow is better than laughter, for sadness has a refining influence on us.” That hit me hard because it finally made sense why God would allow me to go through pain. It’s because He’s teaching me that even in the midst of fear, depression, disappointment, anxiety, and whatever other negative emotion there is, He is right there with me. Psalms 34:18 says, “The Lord is close to the brokenhearted; he rescues those whose spirits are crushed.”
My point is this: in today’s world, and especially in America, there seems to be this persona, or image, that when you’re a Christian, everything about you has to be perfect. You have to have a perfect life, perfect family, perfect children, or whatever else, that if you believe in God, everything will work itself out and you’ll never have any problems and life will be just swell, all to make God look good and attract unbelievers to church. But it’s a dangerous lie and God certainly doesn’t need our help to make Him look good. I don’t know where this idea originated from, but I’ve witnessed it firsthand. It turns so many people away, including myself at one point, because you hear it said, if you just trust God everything will work out or just pray more, fast more, and eventually God will turn things around in your favor. I’m sorry to say that scripture disagrees. But when it doesn’t happen and people don’t get that relief from there problems, they understandably think it’s all nonsense and we’re lying. So they walk away. Truth is, God doesn’t take your problems away, in fact, when you commit to Him, it usually causes even more. The promise God gives is that He’ll be there with you in the midst of your problems and pain. He will help you carry the burden, not that they’ll just magically disappear. You don’t have to go through it alone. He is right there with you and He knows everything about you. If you just trust Him, talk with Him, and give everything to Him, circumstances may not change, situations may not get better, feelings may stay the same, but with Christ, you’ll have this hope and peace that you can’t even begin to describe, even in the midst of bad things! This is what I have experienced. Jesus is there with me every step of the way. I can talk to Him and I can share with Him. He is my friend, my savior, my rock, my everything. My identity is in Him now and I don’t have to go through this life on my own. He is with me and that makes all the difference to me.
I don’t want to be a “fake” Christian. Go to church on Sunday, but live every other day as if God doesn’t exist. If I’m going to follow Christ, it has to be everyday, even every moment of everyday, or I can’t do it. In scripture, Christ’s relationship with us is compared with that of a bride and bridegroom. If you were married, how would you feel if you’re spouse only talked to you once a week and never about anything important? Never being vulnerable and never saying what’s really on their mind. Just kind of checking in and saying hey and then leaving again to go do their own thing. It wouldn’t last very long, would it? It’s the same with Jesus, it’s a committed relationship and if you don’t treat it as such, it withers and dies.
I’m ready to see people understand this, and see just exactly who Jesus really is. He’s not some unapproachable figure in the sky that only gets on to you when you mess up. He came as a man, like us, experienced being a human, and knows exactly what you’re going through. He can relate. He was hurt, rejected, and mocked. He broke down in tears and had emotions, but also burst out in laughter. We so often lose the humanity of Jesus because we think He’s “too holy” for such things. But he’s not.
I hope that this post speaks to someone’s heart. I know that this knowledge has helped me tremendously.
