01 Jul How to deal with how you feel
Feelings are weird. They’re often hard to explain and usually hard to navigate. Thankfully, we aren’t left in the dark about how to handle them. We see clear pictures of good and bad practices when we look at the life of David in the Bible. If you’ve studied the Old Testament at all, you’d have no trouble arguing that David was a man of many feelings. He was an emotional guy. That was used for good many times, but sometimes it got the best of him. Throughout the 75 psalms he wrote, we get a good idea of how hard he worked to manage his feelings. In Psalms 56:1, he tells us how he handled the ever-present emotion of fear when he wrote, “When I am afraid, I will put my trust in you.”
Just like you and I, David had to learn to fix his focus in the midst of his feelings. Throughout Scripture, he shows us three major things about emotions that are important for every believer to understand. First of all, there is a purpose for every one of them. That’s hard for us to comprehend sometimes, because we generally frown on feelings like anger, when in fact, anger has a purpose, too. The Bible says, “in your anger, do not sin, or you’ll give the devil a foothold.”
So, anger in itself isn’t wrong; it’s what we do with that anger. For example, God displays healthy, righteous anger toward sin. He doesn’t get angry because he is weak; He gets angry because He is strong about not letting anything destroy our lives.
Secondly, we have to understand that our feelings can be a problem when not handled well. Here’s the truth about emotions: they aren’t reliable, they can be exploited and they can trap us, if we’re not careful or if we allow ourselves to get tired. David’s life proves this. There was a 16-month period when his spirit got weak. During that time, he wrote no psalms and sang no songs to God. It wasn’t long before he found himself in a series of bad decisions including an affair and a murder—bringing pain on him and his family for a long time.
The final thing we must understand about our feelings is that we can experience God’s presence in the midst of them—even the negative ones! Here’s how. First of all, we must let God help us to identify them. We let Him choose which ones should stay, and which should go. Then, we have to let Him interrogate them, allowing Him to ask the tough questions. We’ve got to seek what He has to say about our situation. Finally, we must let Him instruct us. We must let Him show us how to use our emotions for His purposes.
If we will learn to deal with how we feel God’s way, our life will reap great rewards!