The next article I wrote for the VCF newsletter, on dealing with emotions. Hope you have the patience to get to the end.......

Dealing with Emotions

“The heart has its reasons, of which the mind knows nothing.” –Blaise Pascal

The whole emotional cocktail of happiness, sadness, anger, fear, loneliness, disappointment, even anger at God, is part of the recipe of everyday life. And yet while so much focus has been placed on the intellectual aspect of our faith, there is so little said about the emotions. Many of us will confess that we have felt these emotions before, and struggle to deal with them.

The Bible reveals that we are not alone when we face these dreaded emotions. David routinely expressed his manifold emotions in the Psalms, along with the other Psalmists. Significantly, David is known as the man after God’s own heart. Perhaps as we read the Psalms, the full impact of the emotions do not hit us at first glance. But try this- when a moment comes that your emotions are especially strong, try to express them on paper in a song, poem or just plain words. A few days later, re-read those words. My guess is that they will never convey the true depth of emotions you have felt. Ask another friend to read them and he too probably will not grasp how strongly you felt. It is the same with the Psalms- on paper they do not sound impressive, but try imagining what the Psalmist was really feeling, comparing his emotional experiences with some of your own. Then perhaps you will understand more clearly the depth of emotion in words like, “How long, O Lord? Will You forget me forever? How long will You hide Your face from me? How long shall I take counsel in my soul, having sorrow in my heart daily? Psalm 13:1-2. The Psalmists did not just express their negative emotions. “You have turned for me my sorrow into dancing; You have put off my sackcloth and clothed me with gladness, to the end that my glory may sing praise to You and not be silent.” Psalm 30:11-12. The fact that these songs of emotion are part of our Bible should hint to us that our emotions are very much part of our spiritual lives and a key part of our relationship with God. After all, it was God who first placed the ability to have emotions within us, we being made in the image of the One who feels.

The first step in dealing with emotions is perhaps the most important- identify them. A doctor must have an accurate diagnosis to treat a patient effectively. Now often we assume we know what we are feeling, when in reality we could only be seeing the tip of the iceberg. Our emotions are much more complex than we think, and inextricably linked to one another in a deep interconnected web. We know this when emotions that we never thought we feel suddenly appear, to our horror. We know this when an apparently benign emotion triggers off an entire avalanche of feelings that cascades like those giant rolling snowballs we see in cartoons. We know this when we know we feel something but just cannot place our finger on it. Identifying our emotions may require more than just a casual thought at the moment. It may require us to sit down in quiet for long periods and reflect. It may require us to analyze past and present emotional experiences, make comparisons and observe trends in the same way we do for economics. And often it is not just one emotion but many that surface, all linked to one another.

The second step, after we have correctly identified the emotions, is to bring them to God. Sounds cliché, but it is a sad fact that many Christians stop short of bringing the full extent of their emotions to Him. They will bring their happiness, some degree of sadness or disappointment, but the ugliest emotions, they will leave buried. The underlying problem is that many Christians unknowingly believe that they must put on a glad and cheerful face before they come to God. “Unholy” emotions such as anger and resentment, especially against God Himself, should be held back. After all, you are coming to the Almighty God, the One who is always good, the One who is in control! But while this remains ultimately true, the emotions are not dealt with and remain in the heart like a thorn in the flesh. Kathleen Norris in her book The Cloister Walk writes, “Church meant two things to me when I was little: dressing up and singing. In my adult life I came to believe that one had to be dressed up both outwardly and inwardly to meet God. I held the insidious notion that I had to be a firm, even cheerful, believer before I dare show my face in His church. Such a God was of little use to me in my adolescence, and, like many of my generation, I simply stopped going to church when I could no longer be “good” which, for girls especially, meant not breaking rules, not giving voice to anger or resentment and not complaining.”

The underlying fear behind this insidious notion that Norris speaks of is a fear that God will not be happy with us if we appear less than “good” before Him. But the message of the Cross is the exact opposite- He loved us while we were yet sinners, and that is exactly when we first came to Him- when our lives were in a mess. His love is faithful and unchanging; He will always love us, no matter how blemished and imperfect we remain in this life. “For we beat on His chest from within the circle of His arms,” Suzan Lenzkes writes. Bring all your emotions to God, even if they are against Him Himself. Cry out, scream, weep, complain, just as the Psalmists of old did. Be real with God, and then He can be real with us. A counselor cannot help a patient if he hides all his emotions and comes behind a smiling mask.

But before we move on, I must clarify that there is a difference between a bitter non-believer cursing God in anger and a Christian bringing his anger to God. Behind the Christian’s confession of anger lies the belief that God will help him and the desire to know Him more. The Psalmist revealed this when he wrote, “I cried out to You, O Lord; and to the Lord I made supplication: what profit is there in my blood, when I go down to the pit? Will the dust praise You? Will it declare your truth? Hear, O Lord, and have mercy on me; Lord, be my helper!” Psalm 30:8-10. Behind his cries of despair was the belief that God would help and deliver him, so that it would be him and not the “dust” praising God.

A number of things happen when we bring our deepest, darkest emotions to God. Steam accumulating inside a pipe must be released or else it will rupture the pipe. Confession of emotions brings great release and relief, even if they remain unresolved. The second thing that happens is that our emotions are channeled to where they can be resolved. Allow me to explain. Dr. Tremper Longman writes, “All our emotions find their final object of focus in God…at the root of all joy is the wonder of redemption; at the root of all negative emotions is the question: is God good?” While I think that this statement is too general to make, I do agree that the root of all negative emotions is somehow linked to our knowledge of God and can be thus resolved if brought to God. We can try to deal with our emotions without Him, but we will achieve maximum effectiveness if we include Him in the picture, because in essence only the Almighty Creator is big enough to solve all our problems.

And this brings me to the third step in dealing with emotions. Once the emotions have been identified and brought to God and released, we need to now see them in an objective light, understand the reasons for our emotions and then temper them with what we know about God. The mathematician Blaise Pascal wrote, “The heart has its reasons, of which the mind knows nothing.” These reasons, the causes of the emotions, vary from person to person, and may be seemingly ridiculous or perfectly reasonable. They may be totally opposite of what we know in the mind. No matter what, those reasons must be fleshed out and reasoned against. The heart and mind cannot be separated; they must work together and support one another. Hear Jesus’ commandment- “Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.” (Matt 22:37, emphasis mine).

Let’s look at a few common examples. When we are angry with someone because he has done something we perceive as wrong, we believe that he should be punished. But such anger can be calmed with the knowledge that justice and vengeance belongs to the righteous Judge of all (see Rom. 12:19). And that is exactly how David dealt with his anger against His enemies; he never took action, but asked God to deal out the punishment. “Let his children be fatherless, and his wife a widow. Let his children be continually be vagabonds, and beg; Let them seek their bread also from their desolate places.” Psalm 109: 9-10. Insecurity about ourselves and who we are can be calmed by the knowledge that our Creator knows us better than we know ourselves (Psalm 139: 1-6) and has “fearfully and wonderfully” made us (Psalm 139:14).

In an astonishing display of emotions in Jeremiah 20 (I urge you to read it for yourself), Jeremiah alternates between expressions of praise and resentment towards God. “O Lord, You induced me, and I was persuaded; You are stronger than I, and have prevailed. I am in derision daily; everyone mocks me…But the Lord is with me as a mighty, awesome One. Therefore my persecutors will stumble, and will not prevail. They will be greatly ashamed… Sing to the Lord! Praise the Lord! For He has delivered the life of the poor from the hand of evildoers. Cursed be the day in which I was born!...Why did I come forth from the womb to see labor and sorrow, that my days should be consumed with shame?” Jeremiah 20:1-18. His discourse shows us one thing- it is entirely possible for negative emotions and trust and faith in God to coexist.

Amazingly as we go through this process, our emotions naturally become windows into our own soul. Just as each person has been shaped with a unique emotional disposition, that person will react emotionally to an event very uniquely. As we analyze our emotions, we begin to understand the deep forces that shape our emotions, and as our heart of hearts is laid bare real transformation can occur through the knowledge of God. In medical terms, it is going beyond mere symptomatic treatment to treating the real underlying disease and strengthening the body to fight against future ailments. For example, if we find that the root cause of a lot of our emotions is envy, then we can begin to take to heart Paul’s admonition that “godliness with contentment is great gain” (1 Tim 6:6). If the root cause is bitterness at God for something that has happened, then we can slowly begin to sort things out with Him, ask and see how He is working for good(Rom 8:28) and remember His goodness in the past. If the root cause is fear about the future, then we can begin to trust more and more in God’s promise to provide (Matt 6:33). As time goes by, we find that we are more able to deal with our emotions when they surface.

The process here sounds simple, but just like the emotions that it deals with, it is much more complex in real life. Emotions are like the disobedient kid that you just cannot control. One night you may think you have them in control and the very next morning they return in a surge to haunt and cripple you. Old emotions that you thought were dead and buried are reawakened by some emotional trigger. And there are times when your emotions just refuse to be reasoned with, sweep you off your feet and you are left crying out with Christ Himself, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” All the more important then is the time we spend with our Lord and the practice of returning to Him in quietness and rest!

Thankfully God has not made Man to be alone. It is no secret that those who are most affected by emotions are those who are alone, and loneliness itself is one of the toughest emotions to face. Share your emotions with your friends. In addition to the release and relief that this brings, our friends can also help us to see our emotions from a different point of view and hence reason with them more effectively. An encouraging word, a comforting hand, a shoulder to cry upon can mean so much when all our efforts prove to be in vain. “Two are better than one, because they have a good reward for their labor. For if they fall, one will lift up his companion. But woe to him who is alone when he falls, for he has no one to help him up. Again, if two lie down together, they will keep warm; but how can one be warm alone?” Ecclesiastes 4:9-11.

May we be encouraged by the fact that our Lord Jesus Himself was no less emotional than any of us. In the Garden of Gethsemane He faced an emotional struggle the likes of which none of us will ever know. “My soul is exceedingly sorrowful, even to death…” And yet He came to His Father, acknowledged His fear and sorrow, and ultimately found the reason to carry on. “O My Father, if it is possible, let this cup pass from Me; nevertheless, not as I will, but as You will.” Matt 26:39 “Or do you think that I cannot now pray to My Father, and He will provide Me with more than twelve legions of angels? How then could the Scriptures be fulfilled, that it must happen thus?” Matt 26:53-54. He believed in His Father’s will, trusted that He would deliver Him ultimately, and hence overcame His emotions. May we find that same kind of faith!