Category: Truth About Women

How Can We Biblically Deal with our Emotions?
Biblical Womanhood · joy · peace · Truth About Women

How Can We Biblically Deal with our Emotions?

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Part 2 (You can find Part 1 here)

A good day can turn into a very bad day in a matter of minutes. Here’s how it goes –
1. I allow my feelings to dominate my thinking – (“This is the worst thing ever! I shouldn’t have to deal with this!” Neither of these statements are true.)
2. My reactions then reveal the emotional tidal wave by spilling from my mind into my heart. (I pout, am angry or I retreat)
3. My mouth speaks what I’m thinking. (I may accuse, complain or verbalize in other ways the things I feel)
4. The result is always regret. (Hurt feelings of others, distance in relationships, or spiritual coldness in my own heart)

However, when I begin to feel those emotions (and we will all feel things about our situations or relationships), I must make the immediate choice to deal with it in the three ways I mentioned last week. Then the blessed results of choosing right thinking will follow!
The results are…

  • Joy –   Eve lost her joy when she went on her feelings and failed to trust God. But we can follow Paul’s admonition and “Rejoice in the Lord always.” If there’s no one else or nothing else to think about with joy, our dear Savior is always the best place to meditate. In Him we have so many reasons to rejoice!
    He loves us unconditionally!
    He will never leave us!
    He lives within us!
    He’s made a promise He’s coming again!
    He’s praying for us!
    He has provided us access to the Throne of God!
    For this and so much more, He is the center of our joy.
  • Peace in your own heart and peace with others. Eve, lost peace with God when she sinned. Her relationship with Adam was scarred, too. Paul reminds us in Philippians 4 to “Be careful for nothing; but in every thing by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving let your requests be made known unto God. And the peace of God, which passeth all understanding, shall keep your hearts and minds through Christ Jesus.” This literally means “don’t worry about anything.” That “feeling” you have can become a fretful thing. Pray instead and let the peace of God rule in your heart!
  • Spiritual and emotional health – Strength and honour are her clothing; and she shall rejoice in time to come.Prov. 31:25 If we want to be strong spiritually and emotionally healthy, we simply live in the strength that comes from resting in the Lord. We can be like the virtuous woman in Proverbs 31:25 and have strength when we don’t lean on our emotions, but on our God Whom we are in awe of. We must realize that we can rest in His sovereign care for all that touches our lives and our feelings. When we have this kind of strength, we won’t end up an emotional wreck – no matter what we “feel.” Instead, we will be a woman of strength and honor.
    We hear a lot about emotional health. Here’s how to have it –

For good emotional health,

don’t depend on your emotions!

I don’t know about you, but I never like it when I’ve had times of emotional upheaval. Thank the Lord for His Divine help that enables us to mature in regards to our feelings.

If this post resonates in your heart at all, and you deal with fluctuating emotions as I have, make it a matter of prayer, asking God to help you apply #1-3 in the first part of this post.

Emotions are part of our make-up as women, but they should never be the boss of our lives! Let Truth override anything you may be “feeling.” Dig to find it in God’s Word. Ask loving questions of others. Then meditate on that truth instead.
You won’t have regrets for doing so.
Ask Eve.

Biblical Womanhood · joy · peace · Truth About Women

How Can We Deal Biblically With our Emotions?

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Part 1

I love that God made women to be emotional beings. We feel sentiments, we sense problems, we discern issues. Sometimes we are spot on. Sometimes that intuition and sense of sadness, trouble or even excitement were all correct and we nod our heads, thankful that we followed through to care for ourselves or the other people involved.

However, because we are far from perfect, we don’t always get it right. Let’s face it, sometimes we can be totally off. On those occasions, we can also track our incorrect feelings to our incorrect responses. Been there? Me too! We are not alone, though.

When we open to the first Book of the Bible and see Eve in the garden, we are met immediately with a woman who missed it. When Satan showed her the fruit of the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil, the Scripture says,

And when the woman saw that the tree was good for food, and that it was pleasant to the eyes, and a tree to be desired to make one wise, she took of the fruit thereof, and did eat, and gave also unto her husband with her; and he did eat.

She was looking at this whole situation and feeling that God had not been fair. He had withheld something that was good. Next we see that her wrong thinking/feelings, led her to act out her incorrect discernment when she took of the fruit and gave some to her husband, Adam.

There are several ways we can avoid jumping to conclusions as Eve did.

  1. Don’t go solely by your emotions. “I feel like…” Yes, sometimes we get it right, but emotions aren’t called “roller coasters” for nothing! If we go by what we “feel,” we’re very possibly going to end up with more than a crick in our neck. Like Eve, we will injure others in the process. Not going on our emotions is absolutely essential – especially when we are feeling things about God that are unlike His character!
    Elizabeth Elliot said, If you dwell on your own feelings about things rather than dwelling on the faithfulness, the love, and the mercy of God, then you’re likely to have a terrible, horrible, no good, very bad day.  Our feelings are very fleeting and ephemeral, aren’t they?  We can’t depend on them for five minutes at a time.  But dwelling on the love, faithfulness, and mercy of God is always safe.
  2. Seek out the truth. If your feelings are pushing you to do something, find out the truth before you do anything. If Eve would have gone to the Source (God Himself), she would have been spared the awful consequences that followed. Ask loving (not accusatory) questions. You might say something like, “I’m feeling like this is happening. Am I correct or am I in error?”
  3. Believe the truth. It’s easy to ask someone that question, but we can be so convinced we’re right about what we’re “discerning” that if they refute what we’re feeling, we refuse the truth when they state it. Perhaps it’s out of a desire to be right. Or perhaps we’re so sure of our feelings that we think we need to inform the other person.

The truth of this situation is found in Genesis 2:17

But of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, thou shalt not eat of it: for in the day that thou eatest thereof thou shalt surely die.

Eve needed to believe that God was so good to her and Adam. He had kept the evil from them! She found that out very quickly, didn’t she? You and I will often invite hardship, too, when we keep pressing into our emotions. What do we do then if we’re told that our feelings are inaccurate? We make a choice. We go to the Lord in prayer and ask Him to help us replace our feelings with right thinking. Philippians 4:8 Every time the emotion rushes in, we choose truth instead. It’s like choosing to eat something sweet and delicious, or picking up something disgusting from the sidewalk and popping it into our mouth and chewing on it. It’s our choice to choose.

Next week I’ll continue this post and I’ll be sharing the result of choosing right thinking over our emotions. For today, ask yourself:

  • Am I going solely on my emotions about the issue bothering me?
  • Am I willing to seek out truth?
  • Will I believe the truth when I hear it?

The roller coaster of emotions make for dizzy days. Guard your heart by seeking out the truth.

Motherhood · Truth About Women

My Child Owes Me!

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Christa Threlfall from Brown Sugar Toast asked me to contribute to her blog series on Lies Moms Believe, and this is one of the first lies that came to my mind because I’ve seen its devastation wreck its havoc in families.  See if you can relate…

lies moms believe

We might not ever really let the words come out of our mouths, but moms can often feel entitled to something from their child from the time they’re young or especially into their adult years. From appreciation, obedience, or regular calls and visits, we can have expectations that don’t line up with the kind of love our heavenly Father has for us. It’s a lie to think that they owe us anything! I’ve watched this lie choke my own heart at times, and I’ve seen other moms suffer the agony of this lie that destroys healthy relationships.

You can read the article here on Christa’s blog, and you’ll find the remedy of the Truth that we need to apply in order to be fulfilled instead.

After you read, why not come back here and leave a comment about whether you ever feel tempted to believe this lie, and if so, in what way?

Refresh your heart with truth, Mom!

denise a