Are feelings a blessing or curse? I recently went to a seminar where the presenter showed numerous pictures of babies showing emotion. It was obvious that feelings are an important part of our life experience. We could easily recognize happiness, sadness, frustration, anger, hurt, pain, shame, guilt, self-consciousness, despair, playfulness, and more.

God made us to feel a wide range of emotions—all of which he feels. Without emotions, our relationships would be sterile and life would be monotonous and empty. They make you experience all parts of life, the good and the bad; the pain and the ecstasy, the easy and the difficult. If we didn’t have emotions, we wouldn’t know how we are affected by people. Even painful emotions like anger, hurt, sadness, jealousy, disappointment, and rejection teach us important things about ourselves and others. Emotions give us and others feedback on what is going on with us and us with them. Just as physical pain is a warning, emotions can be a warning that something needs to be attended to.

Here are some important points to remember about feelings:

• Feelings aren’t right or wrong; good or bad. They just are.
• Feelings aren’t sin but what you do with them can be sin.
• Feelings can be a blessing or a curse depending on how you handle them.
• Feelings are normal and inevitable in relationships.
• Feelings aren’t facts and do not have to determine your choices. You can feel anger and still love the person. You can feel afraid and do what you fear. You can be sad and still live life. You can be happy while having difficulties.

Healthy relationships allow people to feel and express their emotions.

There are those of us who are shut down to our feelings because it hasn’t been safe to feel them. This happens when our feelings are either repeatedly denied or punished. If that is your case, begin to pay attention to discomfort you feel and try to identify it as one of the four basic emotions: mad, sad, glad, or afraid.

There are also those of us who believe Christians shouldn’t waste energy on emotions and should instead focus on spiritual matters only. If that is your belief, I would remind you that God feels emotions intensely and made you in his image. I would also guarantee you that your feelings are there whether you feel them or not and affecting your decisions in ways you don’t recognize. It is healthier to let them surface.

Then there are also those of us who are so ruled by our emotions that our lives are in constant turmoil and people around us walk on eggshells. When sin enters in to how people deal with their feelings, they become a curse.

We will look at each of the four basic emotions (mad, glad, sad, and afraid) over the next four newsletters because each of these emotions affects our relationships in important ways whether it is you feeling them or the other person.

By Karla Downing

Relationship Devotional Prayer

 
God,

Help me accept my feelings as a part of the life experience you have ordained for me to have. Help me see them as a blessing while learning to respond to them in ways that don’t make them a curse in my life and relationships.

Relationship Devotional Challenge

• Think about your beliefs about emotions.
• Do you see emotions as a blessing or a curse?
• Are you able to identify which emotion you are feeling?
• Do you allow yourself to feel your emotions or do you stuff them?
• Do you allow other people to have and express their emotions?

Scripture Meditation

 
Psalm 139:13-14

“For you created my inmost being; you knit me together in my mother’s womb. I praise you because I am fearfully and wonderfully made; your works are wonderful, I know that full well” (NIV).