CE 1 YEAR: 30 God’s Will for your Bad Emotions I: Recognize & Rebel

Week 30

God’s Will for Your Bad Emotions I: Recognize & Rebel

Painful and sinful emotions like anger, worry, and discouragement plague many Christians. How can we be free of them? The Psalms give us examples of godly men who were willing to recognize bad emotions, talk to God about them, and have God’s truth change them. The Psalms teach us that healthy and mature Christians must know how to process their painful and sinful emotions.

Psalm 42:5 is a guide for us. Please read it now. In this one verse we see four steps to respond to painful emotions in a godly way. These include: recognize them, rebell against them, reveal their source, and replace their lie. The first two steps will be discussed this week, and the other two steps next week.

The importance of recognizing bad emotions

One of the greatest mistakes Christians make is failing to recognize throughout the day whether Sin or the Spirit is controlling them. Of course, if you are committing obvious sins like stealing, lying, or adultery, it is relatively easy to know your sinful nature is in control. But most of the “fruit” of the sinful nature is more subtle and so common in Christian’s lives that they do not even notice. They have lived under the power of anger, worry, guilt, and discouragement for so long they believe these sinful feelings are part of the normal Christian life. But this is not true for a person who is indwelled with God’s Spirit whose powers are love, joy, and peace!

Christians assume that feelings like anger, worry, and discouragement just come upon them and cannot be controlled or changed. They continue to live out of the Holy Spirit’s control because they think they have no other choice. But recognizing that your anger, worry, and discouragement come from your sinful nature, is the first step to overcoming them.

The Psalmist who wrote Psalm 42 understood what you read last week. One of the best measures of your spiritual health is how you feel. The Psalmist noticed that he was not feeling the joy of God’s Spirit, but feeling discouraged. He noticed he was not feeling the peace of God, but feeling troubled and anxious. Why did the Psalmist notice these things? Because he knew these feelings were a sign that he was disconnected from experiencing God’s love.

Express bad emotions to God

Some Christians have a very difficult time expressing emotions. This includes doing this with God. But the Bible says Jesus prayed to God with tears and loud crying (Heb 5:7). He was comfortable telling His Father how He felt. Are you?

Some Christians struggle with expressing sinful feelings like anger and worry to God. But read the Psalms. They are a record of divinely inspired God Times and there is a lot of emotion expressed in them. Both good feelings like joy and thanksgiving, but also bad feelings like anger, envy, sorrow, disappointment, guilt, and fear. Your Father tells you to give all your worries and cares to Him because He cares about you (1 Pet 5:7). How can you GIVE your worries to God without EXPRESSING them to Him? Learn to be open with God about what is in your heart so He can help you change it.

David asked God to help him recognize hurting places in his heart that were not being controlled by the Holy Spirit (read Ps 139:23-24). This is a vital part of experiencing an honest, mature, and REAL relationship with your Father in Heaven. David was willing to face the painful, sinful, hiding parts inside of Him. Why? Because David wanted to love God with His whole heart. He wanted God’s Spirit to control his whole heart. And David recognized that bad feelings were a sign that he was not experiencing God’s love for him.

David’s conviction of God’s unconditional love for him gave him the freedom to be honest with God about his bad feelings. David’s love for God gave him the motivation to do this. He wanted God to control his whole heart. This is a foremost reason that David had such a vibrant relationship with his Father. He was honest with God about his feelings.

Admitting that sinful emotions control you and hurt others is the first step to resolving them. Instead of venting our sinful emotions to others and hurting them, or suppressing these feelings indefinitely, God wants you to begin giving and expressing these things to Him.

Perhaps you grew up in a family or church where there was no one who accepted your feelings and wanted to know them or help you resolve them. Now you have Someone, a loving Father, who wants to do that. David believed God was a safe Person to yell at. You are not going to hurt His feelings. The Bible says God cares about the anguish of your heart and He wants you to talk to Him about it (Ps 31:7). David tells us to trust in God as our refuge so that we will pour out our heart to Him (Ps 62:8).

God can handle whatever emotion you want to express to Him. But people cannot. You will hurt people with such emotions. This is another reason God wants you to talk to Him about these things. Expressing feelings like anger to God helps to reduce your anger. This is a wonderful gift God gives you. You can pour out your heart to God, including the bad ugly stuff you want to get rid of, and it will not hurt God but actually make Him feel closer to you. Being open with God about your struggles and sin gives you spiritual power over them.

Negative emotions including anger, worry, depression, and shame are spiritually toxic and poison to your soul. David tried to keep his shame inside and refused to talk to God about his sin. As a result, he said his body became very weak (Ps 32:3). We must rid these spiritual toxins from our heart. And the first and safe step to doing that is expressing them to God.

This is why God created you to breath. Whenever you exhale you remove poisonous carbon dioxide from your body. Likewise, when you practice openness with God, it helps you rid your heart of spiritual poisons like anger and fear.

It is helpful to identify your emotional “triggers.” These are people or events in life that habitually cause us to be “out of the Spirit” and feeling angry, worried, or discouraged. The primary way we know our sinful nature has been “triggered” is by what we are feeling in the moment. The Bible says the peace that comes from Christ should rule your heart (Col 3:15). The Lord of peace wants to give you His peace in every situation (2 Thess 3:16). So then, if we are not feeling peace, something is wrong.

Rebel against bad emotions

First the Psalmist in 42:5 recognized bad feelings. Secondly, he rebelled against them. He did not accept these feelings as from God’s Spirit, or as a “normal” part of a life lived with God. He recognized them as wrong and unnecessary, and confronted them. He even commanded his heart: “Stop being discouraged and troubled and put your hope in God!”

Why should you rebel against emotions that are not coming from God’s Spirit? For several reasons. First, sinful emotions deceive you and therefore control you. If you feel angry, worried, or discouraged, your emotions want to deceive you into thinking you should feel that way. You learned in Week 24 the vital truth that YOUR FEELINGS REVEAL WHAT YOU BELIEVE. But here you must remember another vital truth: YOUR BAD FEELINGS ARE BAD GUIDES FOR WHAT IS TRUE!

This is why a familiar slogan in Christianity is that “faith must come before feeling.” This is an important reminder that you cannot trust your bad feelings to tell you what is true. You need to rebel against sinful emotions because they do not tell you what is true. How could they? Sinful feelings like anger, worry, and discouragement are ALWAYS empowered by a LIE.

You may FEEL separated from God, but you never are (Rom 8:35-39). You may FEEL alone, but you never are (Heb 13:5). God’s word and His promises tell you what is true. When you are trusting God’s truth, your feelings will be controlled by His Spirit. But when you are not trusting God’s truth, your feelings will be controlled by your sinful nature. Then you must focus on what God’s word is telling you, not your feelings (Isa 26:3; Phil 4:6-8).

It is because people believe their feelings reflect what is true, that they give them power to control their lives and never question or rebel against them. The Psalmist did not do this. He recognized that feeling discouraged and troubled was not from God and he confronted those feelings.

Stop accepting anger, worry, and discouragement as something you are just stuck with. God offers you the powers of the Spirit which are love, joy, and peace. Because God lives in you, you do not need to be controlled by sinful emotions.

YOU MUST CONSTANTLY RECOGNIZE YOUR SINFUL NATURE AND REBEL AGAINST IT! You must stop tolerating its control in your life because now God lives in you. Do not merely accept feeling angry, afraid, lonely, or worthless but hate these things because they are sin controlling you. It is time to declare war on your sinful, God-hating, people-hating, destructive nature within you!

Violence is commanded of the Christian for only one thing. Killing your sinful nature (Col 3:5). God commands you to hate and murder the sinful habits inside of you. And the invasion of His Spirit in you gives you the power to do this. Scripture promises that if the Holy Spirit controls your life, then you will not do what your sinful nature wants to do (Gal 5:16).

There is another vital reason to rebel against and suppress sinful emotions: they hurt people. What causes more hurt in our world than anger? Even worry causes us to do foolish and harmful things that can negatively affect others.

Practical Application: An “emotional trigger” was defined as people or events in your life that habitually cause you to be “out of the Spirit” and feeling angry, worried, or discouraged. Can you identify a few of these and begin to pray about them?

In your small group meeting this week, share praises and prayer requests and then discuss these questions:

1) Why is it important to recognize sinful and painful emotions that control us?

2) Why is it helpful to express painful emotions to God? How do you feel about doing this?

3) What is an emotional “trigger”? What are some examples in your life?

4) Why should you rebel against sinful emotions?

5) What was especially meaningful to you in this chapter? Why?