Lesson #113 Unleash a Revelation in Your Life … Part 2 Last week I said that when we integrate emotional health and spirituality … there are three primary gifts that enable us to participate in the process of authentic and healthy transformation. They are “The Gift of Slowing Down” … “The Gift of Being Secure in God’s Love” … and The Gift of Breaking Free from Illusions”. We looked at the first two last week, and tonight I want to start with the third. The third gift is “The Gift of Breaking Free from Illusions”. The world is filled with illusions and pretense. Webster defines illusion as, “something that deceives by producing a false or misleading impression of reality, the state or condition of being deceived.” We can convince ourselves that we can’t live without certain things … accomplishments … relationships. And so we pursue them with great intensity … and we become addicted. We attach our wills to the belief that something less than God will satisfy us. If we could just have this … stuff … toys … cars … houses. The problem is … after a while … the accumulation of these things no longer gives us the initial “rush” it did. The great feeling wears off … so we convince ourselves we need more. We can be seduced by the false gods of approval … of status … of attention … of fame! It’s an illusion that if we just get a few more words of praise from a few more important people … it will somehow be enough. Emotionally Healthy Spiritualty gives us a good perspective on the limits of all the “stuff” we think we need! That includes accomplishments and approval … it helps us stay grounded in Kingdom reality. Emotional Healthy Spirituality is really a call to a radical … countercultural life! Emotional Health says: I break free to live in truth. I stop pretending to myself, to others, and to God about what is taking place inside me. I break free by choosing to live the unique life God has given me. I break free by acknowledging my brokenness and vulnerabilities rather than trying to cover them over. I rediscover God’s grace and mercy. I break free from the need to attach myself to accomplishments, things, or people’s approval. I experience the gift of being God’s child. I break free from the generational patterns of my family and culture that negatively shape how I live. I break free from the illusion that there is something more important than loving and being loved. Authentic Spirituality says: I break free from the layers of my “false self”. I purpose to allow my authentic self in Christ emerge. I break free by realizing things are not as they seem. The idols in my life are smashed as the illusion of what they promise is exposed. I get perspective on my life in Christ over and against success as defined by the world. I break free from selfish desires that consistently move me away from God to do my own will, not His. Being aware of yourself … of what’s going on inside … and your relationship with God … are intricately related. Ephesians 4:22-24 says, “to put off your old self … and put on the new self, created to be like God in true righteousness and holiness”. John Calvin in the year 1530 wrote, “Our wisdom … consists almost entirely of two parts. The knowledge of God and the knowledge of ourselves”. The vast majority of us do not know who we are! Most of our discipleship and spirituality has failed to allow us to feel … we have been taught to ignore our insecurities … we have been taught that our feelings are unreliable and not to be trusted. Feelings go up and down and are the last thing we should be attending to in our spiritual lives. How sad and how wrong! God created humans to feel a wide range of emotions. He also created us to have control over those emotions … and not ignore them! Researchers have classified them into eight main families. Anger … fury, hostility, irritability, annoyance. Sadness … grief, self-pity, despair, dejection, loneliness. Fear … anxiety, edginess, nervousness, fright, terror, apprehension. Enjoyment … joy, relief, contentment, delight, thrill, euphoria, ecstasy. Love … acceptance, trust, devotion, adoration. Surprise … shock, amazement, wonder. Disgust … contempt, scorn, aversion, revulsion. Shame … guilt, remorse, humiliation, embarrassment, chagrin. I think for many of us … it never enters our minds that God might be speaking to us in the “feeling” realm. Dare we listen to our desires … our dreams … our likes … and our dislikes? Shouldn’t we ignore our fears … our shame … our anger … our sadness. So we ignore them! And we stuff them … and after a while … they begin to leak all over everybody in our relationships. When we deny our pain … our losses … and our feelings … we become less and less human. We transform into empty shells with smiley faces painted on them. And that is the fruit of much of our discipleship in our churches. The journey of transformation to emotionally healthy spirituality begins with a commitment to allow yourself to feel. Let me give you some scriptures that reveal God as an emotional being. And we were made in His image … emotional! Genesis 1:25, 31 says, “God saw that it was good … very good!” God delighted, relished, beamed with delight over us. Genesis 6:6 says, “The Lord was grieved that He had made man of the earth, and His heart was filled with pain.” Exodus 20:5 says, “I, the Lord your God, am a jealous God!” Isaiah 42:12 says, “For a long time, I have kept silent, I have been quiet and held myself back. But now, like a woman in childbirth, I cry out, I gasp and pant.” Jeremiah 30:24 says, “The fierce anger of the Lord will not turn back until He fully accomplishes the purposes of His heart.” Jeremiah 31:3 says, “I have loved you with an everlasting love; I have drawn you with loving kindness.” God thinks … we think. God wills … we will. God feels … we feel. The call of Christianity includes experiencing our feelings … reflecting on our feelings … and then responding to our feelings under the lordship of Jesus Christ. You feel … even if you are unaware of it! So much of our true selves is buried … sadness … rage … anger … tenderness … joy … happiness … fear … depression. God designed our bodies to respond to the world around us. God speaks to us through a knot in the stomach … muscle tension … trembling … the release of adrenaline into our bloodstream … headaches … an elevated heartbeat. God may be screaming at us through our physical body while we look for and prefer a “spiritual” sign! The fact is … our bodies often know our feelings before our minds. How many of us have ever had these thoughts? I am not very good at feelings. I really don’t have time for it. / I don’t know what I’m feeling. It’s all a big blur! / At times when I am about to interact with an authority figure or somebody I don’t know, I get very anxious and I don’t know why. / Sometimes I get flooded by emotions that disorganize and confuse me. / Sometimes after a difficult meeting with someone I get depressed. / I can watch a TV commercial and tears come to my eyes. / I carry an overwhelming feeling of being shameful and guilty. / My family taught me that nice girls don’t get angry and big boys don’t cry. The problem for many of us comes when we have a “difficult” feeling like anger or sadness. We “unconsciously” have a rule against those feelings. We feel guilty because we shouldn’t be feeling those things. And we lie to ourselves … convincing ourselves that we aren’t feeling anything … because we don’t think we should be feeling it. AND WE SHUT DOWN OUR HUMANITY! Please hear me … isn’t it time to be honest with ourselves and with God! Isn’t it time to quit neglecting our most intense emotions and living a false life!? You may feel awkward at first when you began to be honest with your feelings. You are NOT betraying God! You will not open a Pandora’s Box … you will not get lost in a black hole of emotions. God will help you handle the eruption of whatever emotions have been stuffed for years! The founder of the Jesuits was Ignatius of Loyola. He wrote on the importance of maintaining a balance between our reason (intellect) and our feelings (heart). His understanding the importance of how our emotions play a huge part in discerning God’s will has served the church for 450 years. He emphasized the foundation of a complete commitment to intimacy with God … living and knowing the Word of God … and seeking wise counsel. He also provided guidelines for understanding how God speaks to us through raw emotions. This is very cool! Ignatius taught the difference between consolations (feeling that bring life, joy, peace, and the fruits of the Spirit) and desolations (that which brings death, inner turmoil, disquiet, and spiritual turbulence). He echoed the apostle John as he described this “inner awareness” of what we feel in our “insides”. 1 John 4:1 says, “Dear Christian friends, do not believe every spirit. But test the spirits to see if they are from God.” God intends that we mature in learning how He speaks and guides us through our feelings. One of our greatest obstacles in knowing God is our lack of self-knowledge. So … we end up wearing a mask … before God … ourselves … and other people. We can’t become self-aware if we cut off our humanity because we are afraid to look at our feelings. BOTTOM LINE. The unwillingness to know ourselves as we truly are stunts our growth in Christ! Ignoring our emotions is turning our back on reality. Listening to our emotions ushers us into reality … and reality is where we meet God! Emotions are the language of the soul … they are the cry that gives the heart a voice. In neglecting our intense emotions … we are FALSE to ourselves and therefore lose an awesome opportunity to know God. Let’s not forget that change comes through brutal honesty with God. I want to invite you to experience all that God has for you! Don’t ignore your feelings! Let those “buried alive” emotions rise from the dead! I encourage you to quit living a FALSE SELF! God has shaped and crafted each one of us with a unique personality. He has given us thoughts and dreams. He has given us a temperament, feelings, talents, gifts, and desires! He has planted “true seeds of self” inside of us! We are deeply loved … we are a treasure!
Posted on: Thu, 13 Mar 2014 13:08:10 +0000
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