What do you do with ALL those feelings? Many have certainly linked feelings and emotions to physical health. But we are going to address their interactive role with soul and spirit.
Depending on who you ask, some religious circles dismiss feelings and emotions because they are tangibly influenced by factors such as food, sleep, hormones, stress… Yet, your entire physiological person – body, soul, and spirit – gives those feelings honor by responding to them. Immediately.
Feelings can be regarded as life’s sign posts along the road. Informative. They do not choose your direction, only identify it. They inform you of the enviornment you are passing through, what you can expect ahead and what you left behind.
When you give your life to Christ, and we become a new creation, the old is gone and all things are made new which includes your feelings. As you grow in Christlike character, as His light pierces the darkness of your heart bringing healing to old wounds, a transformation takes place.
Your feelings, your old road signs, are being transformed too. The old Pleasantville is no longer pleasant. The old environments are no longer enjoyable, the old jokes are now grating. The old lies are no longer binding and the old fears are no longer threatening. Our feelings, sanctified by Christ, reflect these changes.
Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, the new creation has come: The old has gone, the new is here!
2 Corinthians 5:17
One reason for this, is that God designed our emotions to play a massive role in our spiritual discernment. Emotions honed by God’s truth are a helpful tool in spiritual discernment and often lead us to choose healthy, appropriate responses.
For example, after giving your life to Christ, let’s say you walk into your family’s Thanksgiving and immediately negativity surrounds you, pulling your emotions down into a dark place. Before Christ, you would have relished the argument… even started a few. Now, you grieve the division. What happened? God happened! Christ changes everything.
When we submit ourselves to Jesus’s transforming power, our emotions are made new as well. Allow God to recalibrate them. Submit your feelings, no matter what they are (God isn’t scared), to His truth so that when they do show up, you are not afraid to address them.
I pray that out of his glorious riches he may strengthen you with power through his Spirit in your inner being, so that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith. And I pray that you, being rooted and established in love, may have power, together with all the Lord’s holy people, to grasp how wide and long and high and deep is the love of Christ.
Ephesians 3:16-18
When you do find an emotion that is out of place, a trigger flaring up when it shouldn’t, thank God for that sign post too. This is the Holy Spirit, loving you enough to reveal the places in you that still need the freedom of God’s transforming love.
Declaring freedom and light over you in Jesus’s name.
– Leslie