God's Grace in My Life

this is a site where you can learn about random, weird, and crazy things that can happen in a girl's life as well as how God uses all of these things to bring honor and glory to him

February 18, 2009

Is life always Sunshine, Lollipops and Rainbows?


So lately I have been reading "The Cry of the Soul" by Dan Allender and Tremper Longman. It is a book that uses the Psalms to show how our emotions reveal our relationship with God. I don't let people see me cry and I sorta take pride in that. As a matter of fact, only my family and very few of my close friends have seen me shed a tear. I am a toughie...or so I thought. Basically, what I realized was that the reason I do not show what is considered "negative" emotion is because I refuse to acknowledge it until I absolutely must. Therefore, if I can remove myself from the situation, I don't have to feel any pain. I tend to let all my joy seep out of my entire being and suppress any anger, sadness, or bitterness because I don’t want to feel it. I learned that not allowing myself to feel the pain or process it properly is saying that I don’t trust God to protect, comfort, and heal me.

This is not the way Christ was and it isn't the way the many in the Bible were. In fact, Psalm 88 (the entire thing) shows despair, sadness, and desperation. Contrast that with Psalm 42 which starts out with confusion and tears and ends triumphantly! Refusing to acknowledge emotions other than "frustrated" or "happy" has made me realize one thing: I don't trust God enough. I figured that I could handle everything because I was afraid if I let my self "feel" then he would never take away the pain. So I would internalize it.
I guess my point is that Christ wants us to feel. Fundamentalism today seems to place such a low (or non-existent) priority on emotions and feelings whereas the Bible recognizes them as a mode of grieving, praising, mourning, etc. Understandably, emotions need not be overemphasized, but they do play a role in our spiritual growth. I tend to forget that Christ, in his perfection, has emotions just like me. He gave us emotions for a reason. No, I am not going all crazy on you and think that we need to "follow our feelings" and "emotions rule the heart" or anything like that. However, I do agree with the following statement by the authors, “Every emotion, though horizontally provoked, nevertheless reveals something about the vertical dimension: our relationship with God.”

Labels: , ,

Name:
Location: New Hampshire, United States