Emotions

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Our family is going through a season of change. I'm off of work for the week, enjoying a little time at home in Minnesota with my family. My older sister, brother-in-law, and nephew left to start medical school in Missouri early this morning. My 19-year-old brother is preparing to move to Virginia for school next month, and I head back to Michigan next week. There are little pieces of my heart all over the place, and it's a time full of so many mixed emotions!

Thankfully, each emotion we experience is an invitation to enter into and experience another piece of God's heart. 

We serve a God who not only created emotion, but who is also emotional. He wants us to come to him (not run from him) when we feel new emotions.

  • John 3:16 - God loves
  • Exodus 34:14 - God is jealous
  • Psalm 37:13 - God laughs
  • John 11:35 - God cries
  • Psalm 38:1 - God gets angry 
  • Numbers 11:1 - God feels disappointment
  • Matthew 14:14 - God feels compassion
  • Ecclesiastes 3:1-15 - There's a time for every emotion

In the book Understanding Emotions, it says that "human emotions mix much like streams of paint flowing into a bucket" (Groves & Smith, 2019). All the different "colors" you experience in life mix to create a specific shade with which you paint your day... and it's a specific mix of all your feelings and experiences.

Unfortunately, emotions aren't simple things. Sometimes I wish there were an easy on-and-of switch for specific ones... but there's not. So, here we are, needing to actually address what's going on in our hearts. Huh. 

Thankfully though, when we recognize emotions as invitations... we get to learn a whole lot more about the character of our amazing God. He's with us, and invites us to delight in the truth that we don't have to deal with emotions alone. 

"The steps of a man are established by the Lord, when he delights in his way." - Psalm 37:23

Here's a fun little exercise for you:

Take a piece of paper. Grab a pack of markers. Channel your inner kid.

Fill up that piece of paper with colors, representing each emotion you feel with a different color. You may be surprised by the beauty of the result - and it's a great way to be more in tune with how you're feeling. Now, take that piece of paper, and think about God entering into each of those colors with you. He feels deeply, too. He created color. He wants your life to be full of color, not just a swirl of blackness resulting from not knowing how to separate the hard emotions from the happy ones. 

So, surrender your colors, and delight in God. No matter what happens in life, when the emotion of DELIGHT is found in God, He promises to establish our steps. What a promise!! 

Today I want you to remember that we're never alone in a single emotion. In each one, we get to experience another piece of God's heart. 

#spreadtheword




References: 

https://www.ibelieve.com/faith/god-emotional-bible-verses-about-gods-feelings.html

Groves, A. & Smith, W. (2019). Understanding Emotions. pp. 46-47.



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