Today I am posting a blog I found on Peacefulwife. I find so many of her writings to be helpful. I hope you enjoy this posting today!
God gave us our feelings and emotions to bless us.
It is important to know what our emotions are at any given time. Our feelings can be flags that tell us that all is right in our world or that there is a big problem -happy, sad, afraid, nervous, angry, worried, joyful, grateful, etc… are all gifts. If we use them well.
Negative emotions tell me that something needs to be changed or fixed. They tell me I have a problem.
- If I am angry, I might need to ask someone to stop doing something that violates my boundaries or to stop sinning against me.
- If I am lonely, I may need to seek out companionship, friendship and encouragement from others.
- If I am sad, I may need to process why and decide if I need to speak up to someone I care about or share my feelings with someone.
I must remember that I am responsible for my own emotions and my own happiness. My husband and other people are not. If I have a problem, it is up to me to do what it takes to fix it. I may need to tell my husband that something he did hurt me. But ultimately, if I am unhappy, I am responsible to take care of myself. The best way to do that is to find all of my love, acceptance, purpose and identity in Christ alone.
Sometimes – we learn to rely TOO MUCH on our feelings and emotions.
It can be easy to make our feelings more important than anything else.
That is not a healthy balance. So we must be careful to learn to listen to our emotions but not allow them to become the biggest priority in our lives.
- Feelings are not a source of absolute truth.
- God’s Word is the only source of absolute truth.
It is easy as a woman to think:
- I feel unloved, so I am unloved.
- I feel sad, so my life is awful.
- I feel angry, so someone must have wronged me. Maybe God has wronged me, or a man or family member or friend.
- I feel afraid, so I am in danger. I can’t trust God.
Sometimes these feelings are true – but not always!
I can tell you from personal experience that there were MANY, MANY times that I was SURE that Greg didn’t love me, or that he even hated me based on his actions. I was 100% sure I was right to feel unloved. I assumed that his motives would be the same as my motives would have been if I was doing what he was doing. But now that I know his heart and how he thinks and how different he is from me – I know that he always did love me. My assumptions about his motives were WRONG because I didn’t understand that he is not me and he doesn’t think/feel/act just like I do.
Unless our husbands actually tell us they don’t love us or there is very clear proof that they don’t love us – they don’t want to live with us anymore, they say they don’t love us and want a divorce, etc… – let’s not automatically assume the worst about them.
Many times, if our husbands are halfway decent men, we may not understand why they are doing what they are doing - but most husbands are not purposely trying to hurt their wives. Most husbands do not truly have evil motives toward their wives. Most husbands would really love for their wives to be happy. Many of them just don’t believe it is possible for their wives to be happy and have stopped trying because they hate to fail. Sometimes what seems unloving to us – is actually our husband’s response to something we did or said that felt disrespectful/unloving to them. Or sometimes it is just that our men have different needs and priorities or that they are showing love in ways we don’t recognize.
Sometimes we expect our husbands to meet needs in our hearts that only God can meet – and we become insatiable black holes of need. No human husband can meet that kind of need. Only Jesus can! Sometimes our discontentment in our marriage is a flag to remind us to look to Christ and to be sure we are not making an idol of our husbands.
- Sometimes our emotions tell us the truth.
- SOMETIMES OUR EMOTIONS LIE TO US.
SOMETIMES WE MAY NOT BE ABLE TO TRUST OUR EMOTIONS:
- When we are exhausted
- When we are hormonal
- When we are super hungry and have low blood sugar
- When we are really sick or in a lot of pain
- When we are consumed with doubt, fear and worry
- If we have a lot of scars and wounds from our past from abuse, from our own sin and/or from other’s sin against us
WHAT IS TRUE
- Emotions can change.
- Emotions can lie to us sometimes.
- Our emotions are not always trustworthy.
If we make our feelings the most important thing – we can actually make idols of our emotions.
We can turn “feeling loved” and “feeling accepted” and “feeling cherished” or “feeling in control” into idols that we cherish more than our intimacy with Christ.
If I think “I MUST FEEL LOVED BY MY HUSBAND or I WILL NOT BE HAPPY,” that is dangerous ground.
God desires us to find our contentment only in Christ. God, mercifully, will not allow us to find contentment in anything but Himself.
Our disappointments and negative feelings are sometimes signals to us that we are looking to other things/people to meet the deep needs in our souls that only Jesus can truly satisfy.
- God’s Word is trustworthy. It is always true.
- God does not change like shifting shadows. We can depend on Him, on His promises, on the Bible and on His love.
WHEN MY EMOTIONS RAGE AGAINST MY FAITH
When my feelings (and/or the enemy) tell me lies:
- God doesn’t really love you.
- You can’t be loved by anyone, look how unloved you feel right now. Your husband sure doesn’t love you, or he would have done X not Y.
- if God loved you, He would do X for you.
- You’re all alone. God has abandoned you.
Recognize that these statements do NOT line up with God’s Word. Actually, they are from the enemy.
PLEASE, trust God’s Word over your emotions or the voice of the enemy every time!
GOD’S WORD IS ALWAYS TRUE.
I can read His promises and depend on them when I can’t depend on my emotions or anything else in this life.
Jesus is our ROCK. He is our Defender. He is our Shelter. He is the Life, the Truth and the Way. He IS Love. His love never fails. His promises can never be destroyed. We can find Shelter in the shadow of His wings.
OUR HUSBAND’S LOVE IS USUALLY CONSTANT
Unless you have SERIOUS issues in your marriage, most husbands view their love as being pretty much the same all the time. When my feelings take over and I feel unloved, I go to my husband and ask him to remind me what is true – and then I trust HIM more than my emotions – particularly when I am hormonal!
FROM A CHRISTIAN SINGLE MAN, RG:
From a Christian Single Man – RG…
One thing I learned a while ago:
It’s OKAY to feel sad, lonely, and even unloved by others, because those are JUST FEELINGS. They are not truth, and don’t reflect the full love of God.
Everything in life comes down to Faith, Hope, and Love, and the greatest of those is Love.
GOD IS LOVE.
So, the bottom line is this:
“Do I believe that God is who (and what) He says he is? That’s it!
I’ve come to believe this important thing:
“It doesn’t matter what I do, say, think, feel, or believe, because GOD IS GOOD.”
Should I obey his commands? Yes (though I have failed many times.)
Yet my actions/inactions/lack of faith will never change who God is.
My circumstances and feelings don’t change who God is, because he never changes, and HE IS ALWAYS GOOD.”
We each must decide if we want to believe what God says. Either we do or don’t, but if we don’t our lack of faith doesn’t mean he is somehow unfaithful.
When we FEEL like we “aren’t loved enough,” we can remain calm, and CHOOSE to praise and thank God quietly because HE SAID HE LOVES US AND HE IS NOT A LIAR. Even when we FEEL unloved, we KNOW that HE IS WHO HE SAID HE IS, AND HE IS NOT A LIAR.
HE IS GOOD.
The more we choose to submit and conform our feelings and emotions to HIM and his word, the more we strengthen our faith in HIM and his word, because we are choosing to trust HIM and build a better relationship (and real intimacy) with HIM instead of just trusting our feelings and circumstances.
- This world will lie to us.
- Our feelings and emotions will lie to us.
- We will not always feel loved as much as we want to in this life.
And that is okay, because GOD IS GOOD
Reducing Jesus Christ to an irresistible, relentless lover who exists solely to woo you has got to be one of Satan’s greatest cons.
- Jesus did not come to woo us.
- Jesus came to save us FOR HIMSELF.
We insult God when we make his love and sacrifice a reflection of our own perceived “worth.”
- The truth is that we deserve death and Hell, but He PURCHASED US FOR HIMSELF WITH HIS OWN BLOOD.
- We have no worth on our own. All of our value was GIVEN TO US BY GOD and FOR GOD.
- He OWNS US and WE OWE HIM EVERYTHING.
Women have no more value than men, and men have no more value than women, so the idea that either of us deserve to receive endless affection and adoration is insulting to God, because He’s the one who truly deserves it.
The next time we think we deserve (or SHOULD have) more love or respect, we SHOULD stop and thank God for what He has already done.
If we don’t FEEL “loved enough,” then imagine how Jesus feels, having already died for our sins, come back to life, gone to the Father, and is still being rejected by us.