Engaging Your Emotions

Katlego Monkga Moshatane
May 22, 2020
2 min read

I believe God created us as emotional beings and I personally believe how we feel matters to God, He does get concerned about how we feel. There are two reasons, not the only ones though, that I believe God created us with emotions- it’s so that we may draw closer to Him in love and obedience, and that we may also treat others with compassion and love.

I will only touch the surface on this topic for now, hopefully we will go deeper at a later stage.

I find Jesus, in the Gospels, to be a very emotionally available man but who never- as I read somewhere- lived at the mercy of His emotions or was enslaved by His emotions. We read of how He was moved by compassion, even of how He was grieved because of the hardness of His accuser’s hearts- yet the Bible says He never sinned, He only did what He saw His Father do. So ultimately He was governed by The Father’s will.

Jesus the perfect feeler- the ultimate definition of what a man is- weeps in public, is in agony at the garden of Gethsemane and cries out to the Father on the cross, in the midst of His opposition!

Some things I concluded from observing Jesus, is holding that tension of feeling loved by God and yet feeling an emotion like agony or hurt, instead of just denying what I feel or just sweeping it under the rug is helpful. I have learned to be honest to God about how I feel, asking Him to help me more accurately identify what I’m feeling, help me more accurately identify the root of me feeling the way I feel and help me process it. I never rush this process, it may sometimes take months of intentionally setting out time with God just to go back to that same emotion, asking God to help me process it all in light of His written Word.

I have found that the act of confessing my emotions to God- instead of denying or ignoring them, asking Him to help me more accurately define my emotions and thoroughly process them always leads me towards a journey of learning how to express my emotions in a God honouring way, healing and wholeness. I also involve another person I trust in this process, I find it helpful to get perspective from someone else concerning matters that I face.

So in conclusion, God created us with emotions, so that we may draw closer to Him in love and obedience, so that we may treat others with compassion and love. Feeling isn’t necessarily wrong but I think we should never be at the mercy of our emotions or be enslaved by them. I don’t think it’s helpful to deny or ignore our emotions- rather process them with God and another person you can trust.

I know I just touched the very tip pf the surface on this post but I hope it will be of some help!