I was sent a copy of Pastor Eric Johnson's church newsletter at on FEEL and thought I would share it. Thanks Eric! How can I empower a better understanding of God's plan for your emotions at your fellowship?
Hello Friends,
Quick quiz: What is the missing word in each song?
It’s the End of the World As We Know It (And I ____ Fine) – R.E.M.
Man! I ____ Like a Woman! – Shania Twain
I ____ Good – James Brown
Can you ____ it? – The Jacksons
Probably like you, I’ve read many Christian-authored books over the years. The latest one that I’ve been reading has been the most spiritually impacting book I’ve read in recent years. It’s simply called FEEL (which is the answer to the quiz). It’s by Matthew Elliot (my new Facebook friend!).
I grew up in eastern Kentucky, so I’m "Appalachian-American" by birth. I grew up where you did three things with feelings: hide, repress and/or ignore them. Want to cry? Hold it in. Want to scream? Don’t. Want to share something you’re struggling with? Better not.
Through reading this book, the Lord drove it home to me that I’ve always viewed emotions/feelings as a liability, and never an asset.
How many times have you heard . . .?
"Your feelings cannot be trusted."
"Emotions can cloud your thinking."
"God cares about what you believe, not what you feel."
I’ve grown up hearing these statements, from believers, non-believers, and even Christendom. However, these statements are myths. Even though we’ve repeatedly heard them, they are unbiblical and untrue.
Many Christians simply aren’t experiencing abundant life. There can be a heavy focus on doing our duty and living by reason (like our favorite Vulcan Spock!). When what we know trumps how we feel, it can leave us feeling stolid, dull or like we are suffocating spiritually. Our Heavenly Father wants our passion restored so we can live the life that Jesus came to give us.
In the book, Matthew Elliott takes a deep and powerful look at what our culture and many churches have taught about controlling and ignoring our emotions. He contends that some of the great thinkers of the modern era got it all wrong, and that the Bible teaches that God intends for us to live in and through our emotions. Emotions are good things that God created us to feel.
FEEL has really helped me personally understand my emotions. It’s also equipped me to nurture healthy feelings and reject destructive ones. It’s been refreshing and convicting in so many ways.
A few of the author’s conclusions, which may make you do a double take, are: 1. Emotions were given by God to drive us to our best. 2. Emotions are among the most logical and dependable things in our lives. 3. The true health of our spiritual lives is measured by how we feel.
God gives us permission to feel, to express. Our spiritual lives don’t have to be dull or uninspiring.
So with that, I want to invite you to walk with the Lord through becoming more emotionally whole and expressive. God wants you to soar. He wants a "you" more full of vitality and spirit than you can imagine. It will be an amazing journey, and as we know, the journey is the destination.
Can you feel it?
Pastor Eric
Emotion and Their Physical Responses
A FEEL reader writes:
Thank you very much for the book, Feel. It is a terrific help to me in my journey to personal freedom in Christ.
One issue I was looking to understand better is how emotions are tagged to physical responses. You wrote how that's why the Church and rationalists suppress emotions. I have observed how certain emotions relate to physical responses both good and bad and the opposite is true too. I think it conditions us to gratify or repress certain emotions or seek to gratify or repress certain physical responses.
Don
Great Questions Don, here are some thoughts.
This is something we all wrestle with, what feelings in our bodies are tied to our emotions, and what feelings are just because we are bodies are reacting to something directly? On a basic level, emotions are not necessarily linked to a particular feeling in our body. In early psychology, William James and others, wanted to find a permanent link for every emotion to a particular sensation so they could study emotions by looking at how the body felt. But nobody could do that successfully. In fact, researchers were so unsuccessful that they had to move on – there is no sure way to measure or quantify an emotion by how your body is feeling.
If we look at philosophy, we also find very strong arguments for the fact that emotions are only necessarily linked to our thoughts, values and judgments and require no corresponding feeling in our body. They are independent from bodily sensation. For more on this, you need to read the early sections of Faithful Feelings.
That is good to know, because it means we need to be careful in figuring out one to one correlations with what we are feeling emotionally and what our body feels physically. Our body relates to our emotions, but it relates to all manner of other things as well, so the signals it is giving us can be based on a combination of all kinds of things.
On a practical level, our emotions very often find expression in our bodies. How our bodies feel can be used as one indicator of the intensity and nature of an emotion we are experiencing. We can cry in sorrow or we can cry for joy or we can cry because we just hit our thumb with a hammer – a person on the outside may interpret our tears as sorrow when in fact they are for happiness. Only us, who know why we are crying, can correctly interpret the tears. But even we need to be careful. Are we crying over “spilled milk” (something minor) because it is really that upsetting, or is it because our bodies are stressed and exhausted? Each situation requires its own unique analysis. As we mature, we get better and better at figuring these things out quickly and correctly.
We need to recognize that we are complex, that we are so integrated that each part of us is so deeply interrelated – the rational, the physical, the emotional – that they are all always reacting to each other. Sometimes, it is easy to tell how our emotions are affecting us physically. Other times we need to do a little digging, even getting some help to unravel our feelings and emotions and learn how to be more mature emotionally and spiritually. I believe that as we do that, we can undo some of the unhelpful links our mind has created between our bodies and our emotions – like we get sick to our stomach building toward an ulcer when we increase in anxiety - while learning healthy emotional expressions in our body. We need to learn to face hard emotions as emotions, not allowing them to destroy and harm our bodies as they have to leak out somewhere. We can also learn healthy physical expressions for our love, joy as we let them out to bless our families and friends in laughter, hugs, or other forms of expression and affection.
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