Emotions are Indicators

You have probably all read a children’s book about emotions. “Elmo dropped his ice cream. Elmo is sad!” etc. We spend a good amount of time teaching little ones the vocabulary of emotions. We want them to be able to tell us how they are feeling. But somewhere in there around the teenage years, our culture starts to tell our kids that emotions are bad. That they shouldn’t feel angry or sad, that they should just “get over it”. We shouldn’t be surprised that men who were told that “boys don’t cry” grow up to be aggressors and girls who can’t be angry end up depressed. What we should be teaching is that emotions are useful. It is how we respond to them that sometimes get us in trouble. My thesis today is that God gave us emotions and that emotions are indicators. Emotions let us know when something is going wrong and needs to be checked out.

Let’s look at a real world example. When your car’s check engine light comes on, you have a few options. You can ignore the light as if there is nothing wrong and continue to drive until your car breaks down and you have a bigger problem that what you probably started with (denial), you can completely freak out and stop driving your car at all because it might blow up on the highway (overreacting), or you could go have it checked out (diagnose the problem). These are the same ways that some people deal with their emotions. Some people stuff them and pretend that nothing is wrong and eventually blow up or break down, some people completely overreact and go over the top when they are faced with an emotion they don’t like, and some people learn to confront their emotions so they can be processed and the root of the problem resolved.

I’m here to suggest to you that God gave you emotions for a reason. And he gave us the bible for a reason. It is full of real people having real emotions and how they dealt with them. If you ever need to feel like you aren’t the only person who has ever been mad, check out some of the Psalms. You can also find authors who were sad, or depressed, or afraid, vengeful, or joyful. The Psalms are raw and real.

Here are my three points on how to process emotions:

• First, you have to admit you are having an emotion and actually consider why. What is it that is creating this feeling in you and what events or people triggers that emotion? This requires being honest and maybe having to look back and some of the things that have happened in your past to see why you react the way you do now.
• Don’t get stuck in the first step because the second step is to turn our eyes to God. When we change our focus back to Him instead of thinking about our emotion we are able to look at what we are dealing with in light of our amazing and loving God. Our troubles tend to shrink when we change our perspective. If we keep our eyes on Jesus, His truth will set us free. We have to give our emotion to him and ask him to heal us.
• The third step is to pray through our emotion. I promise you that if you ask God for help, he will show you what you need to do. If we truly believe that the God who created the universe loves us, we can rest easy that he wants to help us overcome our problem. Maybe we need to forgive, maybe we need to ask for forgiveness, maybe we need to make amends for something we did or let go of something we have been holding on to. God’s love for Jesus was stronger than death, what is a little bit of my emotion compared to that? He doesn’t want us to wallow in our emotions. The emotions point to a place in our life that needs healing. And God promises to heal us.

Here are a couple of verses to take home today:
Psalm 147:3 He heals the brokenhearted and binds up their wounds.
Psalm 34:4 I sought the Lord and he answered me, he delivered me from all my fears.
These verses don’t tell us that we won’t ever have wounds or fears. They promise us that when we do, God will heal us or deliver us. We just have to ask.

My challenge today is for everyone to take an emotional survey of themselves. We are living in a pretty stressful time right now. Lots of people are dealing with a variety of issues. We shouldn’t add emotional baggage to the already difficult days. Let’s let God heal our hearts so we can be healthy and ready to show God’s love to others.