CE 1 YEAR: 31 God’s Will for your Bad Emotions II: Reveal & Resolve

Week 31

God’s Will for Your Bad Emotions II: Reveal & Resolve

God’s desire for you to resolve your painful emotions

God created you with the ability to suppress painful emotions to temporarily protect your life and others from them. But He only meant suppression to be a temporary help. How do you know that? Because there is NOTHING in Scripture about merely suppressing bad and painful emotions. God does not want you to medicate emotional pain with alcohol or entertainment. He does not want you to ignore it by blaming others or trying to forget it.

God’s word always commands you to resolve and eliminate your painful and sinful emotions. The Bible says, “Put to death the sinful things within you (Col 3:5) and eliminate all anger (Eph 4:31). This is why the Psalmist did not merely suppress painful feelings, but confronted them (Ps 42:5).

Painful emotions are like electricity. They are not destroyed and always must go somewhere. For example, merely suppressing your anger DOES NOT get rid of it. It just goes into hidden parts of your heart and is stored there.

The weight of carrying negative emotions (e.g. anger, anxiety) that God did not intend for us to carry will affect us physically. God’s word teaches the relationship between our mind and our body. It says a peaceful heart leads to a healthy body. But a painful emotion like jealousy is like cancer in your bones (Prov 14:30). Unresolved bitterness and anger have been proven to cause all sorts of physical ailments.

God did not design you to store toxic emotions for long. Eventually, the parts of you that keep them inside get exhausted. Then those parts of you that are angry, afraid, or depressed begin to control you. Suppressing or denying them does not resolve them. And later they begin to “leak” into your life when you are emotionally “triggered.”

And when these toxic emotions “leak” out of your heart and into your life, they will infect your children. Generational and family sins are a law of life (Exod 20:5). A father’s anger will teach his son to be angry. A mother’s worry will teach her daughter to worry. Toxic, painful emotions that are not transformed, will be transmitted.

Reveal the lie behind your bad feelings

How do we begin to eliminate these painful and even sinful emotions from our life? Notice that the Psalmist does something very powerful in verse 42:5. He simply asks the question “WHY?”

You may not understand this yet, but that one question is one of the most important steps in effective personal spiritual warfare. Do you want to be transformed by the renewing of your mind (Rom 12:2)? Then start asking WHY you are feeling something painful. Do you want to take captive every thought to make it obedient to Christ (2 Cor 10:5)? Then start confronting your anger, worry, and discouragement with the question WHY like the Psalmist did. Don’t just accept feelings that do not come from God’s Spirit, but seek to reveal their root cause.

Why does the question WHY so effectively reveal the root cause of your painful emotions? Because as explained previously in Week 24, bad and painful emotions are ALWAYS caused by believing a LIE.

Many Christians have never made the connection between what they BELIEVE and what they FEEL. Therefore, they believe they cannot control what they feel. Their feelings feel forced on them. But understand this Christian: THERE IS A BELIEF UNDER AND BEHIND EVERYTHING YOU FEEL. Your feelings do not simply descend on you from nowhere. They are always based on what you are believing in that moment.

This is revolutionary for many Christians. How do many respond to their anger, anxiety, lust, and depression? They expend a great deal of energy to run from them, hide them, and cope with them. They even expend a great deal of money to take medications for them, or deal with the physical ailments caused by them. But what if you could reveal the real cause of your painful and destructive emotions and permanently renew them? Do you doubt this is possible? Then what else is God promising and even commanding when He says: “Be transformed by the renewing of your mind” (Rom 12:2)?!

If you want to be a spiritually healthy and free Christian, your motto must be: “DON’T JUST FEEL, BUT REVEAL.” That is what the Psalmist did. But it is the LAST thing the Devil wants you to do. Satan just wants you to FEEL. He is trembling in fear right now that you are learning how he influences you. He is very afraid of you actually CONFRONTING your anger, worry, lust, and depression with the question WHY.

Asking WHY you feel what you feel allows you to begin to understand the beliefs causing your feelings. When you begin to confront those feelings with the question WHY, you begin to get behind and under the feeling and expose the LIE that empowers your anger, worry, lust, or discouragement.

More specifically, you are looking for an “Identity Lie.” This is a lie about yourself. It is a lie about God’s love for you. The most common “Identity Lie” is that you are WORTHLESS. Another common one is that you are ALONE. These “Identity Lies” deny the love of your Father, but will control your life with painful emotions.

Replace an “Identity Lie” with the truth that sets you free

We have noticed how the Psalmist recognized, rebelled against, and began to reveal the cause of negative emotions in his life. All of these were essentially accomplished by confronting his feelings with the question “Why?”

Now notice how the Psalmist sought to resolve his negative emotions. He said: “Put your hope in God, for I will yet praise him” (Ps 42:5). Putting “your hope in God” is simply trusting His truth. Why is trusting God’s truth the cure for negative and painful emotions? Because again, the power of such feelings is an Identity Lie about yourself.

The Psalmist was simply practicing what Romans 12:2 commands and promises: “Be transformed by the renewing of your mind.” What does “renewing your mind” mean? As explained in Week 24 of the Essentials, renewing your mind is replacing the LIES you believe about yourself, with God’s TRUTH.

But many Christians will testify that they know God’s truth, have studied the Bible, and even memorized many Scriptures. Yet anger, worry, lust, and discouragement continue to control them. In other words, God’s truth does not seem to change them. Why is this?

BECAUSE THEY DO NOT HAVE GOD’S TRUTH IN THE RIGHT PLACE. Understand that your heart is in parts. One part can believe God while another part does not. For example, the Bible describes a large part of your heart as hidden and subconscious (Ps 19:12; 51:6; 139:23-24; Heb 12:15). Most of Christian ministry is only directed toward your logical/conscious mind. But Scripture says God desires truth in the deepest and hidden parts of us (Ps 51:6; the Hebrew words used here, tūhôt and sātam, mean “covered, hidden” and “hiding for protection”).

Why does God want His truth in the hidden subconscious part of your mind? Because there are lies there that continue to control you despite what the logical/conscious parts of you believe.

This is why you feel like you really believe God loves you. You have verses memorized about it and are convinced of it. If someone told you, “God does not love you” you would strongly object because of the biblical truth you know. But you still worry. You still lust. You still feel and act as if God does not love you. Why are you so divided? Because your heart is in parts.

These biblical truths reveal something revolutionary about how to be transformed by the renewing of your mind (Rom 12:2). The Psalms teach us that mind renewal must include the hidden and subconscious parts of our mind. Unfortunately, most Christians interpret Romans 12:2 as simply needing more truth. But this is rarely the case. What most Christians really need to be transformed is this: To get THE TRUTH THEY ALREADY HAVE IN MORE PLACES! of their heart and mind. To get the truth they already know in their “head” (logical/conscious mind) to their “heart” (the still deceived and subconscious parts of their mind).

How do you do this? How do you find and access those hidden and deceived parts of your heart? The answer is this: follow those painful feelings! They come from parts of your heart that are believing lies about yourself. If you follow their “path,” asking those WHY questions, you will find the hidden and hurting parts of your heart that still need to experience the love and truth of God that the rest of your heart already knows. We will give an example of this below.

But first notice that not even the Psalmist expected this to happen immediately. There is one little word in Psalm 42:5 that is important. A literal translation of the Hebrew is, “Put your hope in God, for I will yet praise him.” The Psalmist had not put his “hope in God . . . yet.” He believed he eventually would, but in the very next verse he still must admit, “I am deeply discouraged” (v. 6). A few verses later, we find the Psalmist still wrestling with God and his painful emotions (v. 9).

Christian, God promises you can “be transformed by the renewing of your mind” (Rom 12:2), but that does not mean the process will be easy or quick.

The example of forgiveness

Let us illustrate the steps of processing painful and sinful emotions with the example of forgiveness. The first step to getting rid of your bitterness is to recognize and ADMIT YOUR ANGER. It is vital that you are willing to admit before God that there is a part of you that HATES another person. Until you do that, you will NEVER forgive them and be free of whatever they did to you.

Secondly, you must rebel against your feelings toward this other person. It is not acceptable to God (Matt 6:12; Col 3:12-13; Eph 4:31).

Thirdly, reveal the lie behind your anger. Remember from Week 24 that “no one makes you mad.” What someone said or did to you is not what caused your anger. It is what you believed about yourself, because of what they did, that made you angry. What did their hurtful actions against you cause you to believe about yourself that is a lie? Did they make you feel rejected, worthless, or alone? Discover the “Identity Lie” behind your anger and you are ready to forgive them from your heart.

Finally, replace the “Identity Lie” with God’s truth. Someone made you feel worthless or alone. But are you? No! God loves you even if someone else did not. Replacing the “Identity Lie” the person caused you to believe about yourself, with the truth about God’s love for you, will set you free from the pain they caused you.

Forgiveness is not simply a decision. It happens when you renew your mind about what someone did to you. When someone sins against us, it costs us something. We need to feel significant, secure, and accepted. Someone’s sin makes us believe we have lost these things. But you never can because of God’s love for you. Forgiveness is trusting God to give you what the sins of others have cost you (if you need it). When you trust God with the cost of another’s sin, you will be able to forgive them.

Practical Application: Spend some time with God to have a conversation with your heart like the Psalmist did (42:5). Below is an example dialogue to help you experience the steps you have learned the last two weeks.

The two questions that will help you the most to discover the “Identity Lie” that is causing painful emotions are these:

How am I feeling?

Why am I feeling that way?

Therefore, a conversation with your “heart” may look like this:

How am I feeling?

Discouraged.

Why am I feeling that way?

Because my spouse pointed out something I did wrong.

How does that make me feel?

Rejected.

Why does that make me feel that way?

Because I keep failing people.

How does that make me feel?

Worthless.

Remember, the most common “Identity Lies” are revealed by feeling worthless or alone.

How can you replace this “Identity Lie” with the truth? Ask another powerful question:

“What would Jesus who died for you on a cross, say or do to this part of you that believes it is worthless?”

Don’t be surprised if a part of your heart experiences the love and truth of Christ in a way it never has before!

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

1) Why does the question “WHY?” so effectively reveal the root cause of your painful emotions?

2) Why would the Devil just want you to “feel” painful feelings instead of “reveal” their cause?

3) How did the Psalmist seek to resolve his painful emotions?

4) Why does knowing God’s truth in your logical/conscious mind not always work to change your feelings, desires, and actions?

5) How do we access the hurting and deceived parts of our heart?

6) What are the most common “Identity Lies” causing our painful emotions?

7) How do we discover these hidden “Identity Lies”?

8) Why do we say that forgiveness is not a decision, but the renewing of your mind about what someone did to you? What do you think?

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