Emotions pt. 2

     Often times in the world we're told to trust our hearts. You hear it in movies fairly often, especially in kids' movies when the child is curious as to what they should do. For me, I know that I have a hard time even trusting myself. I don't often know what I'm doing, and it often causes a pain in me that is hard to overcome without Jesus. It doesn't help that I often wonder if I'm truly capable of anything magnificent or extraordinary and whether I was truly designed for these great works in bringing a generation to God. I may be able to do my part, and I may be able to speak the truth, but I can not imagine myself having a grand impact on the hearts of others in any great multitude.

    The thing about these thoughts, and as painful as it is to admit, I would only be deceiving myself if I were to do these great big works without the glory of God in my heart and mind. The other thing is that if I were truly interested in the Kingdom of God first, I may never get to these works, and may just live a pretty normal life. Yet this is the tension that I feel, that because I have these desires to be winning souls to the Lord, He must've been the one who put them there. That is probably true, but even if I have the desire it will go unfulfilled unless I allow Him to fulfill it in the way He wants to, and for that these desires, even the ones He's given me, must be given back to Him. 

    So, in short, this is what I've been feeling as of late. These are the emotions I'm dealing with, and I'm trying to be brutally honest with myself because that's the only way to process these emotions without walking further into self-deception. Many websites, when you research "how to process emotions" simply say something like "feel them!". As helpful as that can be, at least for me, it leaves quite a bit to be desired as far as helpfulness and practicality. What's been most helpful for me is to find an adequate label for these emotions, and if necessary find a root or problem that could be causing them. For instance, nowadays I have to look inside and remark whether I find jealousy when someone else gets assigned to a task or given an opportunity to minister a certain way. This is easily combated with a C.S Lewis quote "If you are no longer needed would you be able to stand it?" - The Four Loves. Yet, how much it hurts to look myself in the mirror and know that I am not necessary for this context is a lot. It's easy for me to be needed, but it is very hard to not be needed. 

    If I were to put it in a metaphor of sorts I might say this: I feel that to be legitimate I must do, I must put in work, and I must be producing. Yet the pain is that there is nothing for me to do, there is no work that I am being assigned, and there are not fruits that I am producing. But, I must be able to say "that is enough." I don't need to be needed. To be is enough.

What legitimizes a relationship?

Personally, I think we have a lot of wrong ideas about what legitimizes a relationship. Of course, there's the tendency for outright sin in saying only sexual relationships are legitimate or "healthy". Then there's the gray area that says "Only relationships that have physical touch are legitimate." But that's a judgment from the flesh. 

Otherwise, what does God say righteous legitimacy is in relationships? Well for starters, I want to look at the relationships within the Bible. Let's consider Abraham and Lot, the little nephew of Abraham. Lot was a pretty dastardly character, not only was he lazy, but he had some serious issues regarding territorialness, and comfort. His relationship with his uncle was one I might consider to be a codependent/enabler type of relationship certainly because of the fact that Abraham never truly challenged him to live above the standard by which he was living. And yet the relationship stuck, and when Lot was needing help and Abraham was involved he was sovereignly saved by the Lord where he easily could've been turned to salt like his wife. 

But we must consider the fact that because he knew Abraham, and Abraham knew him, he was saved. In God's eyes I can't help but feel that he considered the relationship legitimate because of Abrahams love for his little cousin. 

How about the relationship between Jesus and Judas? Jesus himself was so good at processing his emotions that even though he KNEW Judas was going to betray him he still wanted to have him around. What legitimized that relationship? Well I might point to the exact thing that I said just before, Jesus liked and desired to spend time with Judas. Even in the midst of his very toxic heart, Jesus enjoyed his company. Judas didn't know it or receive it, but had he known I'm sure the world would be much different, and the story we know very changed. 

There's plenty of examples to look at as far as relationships, Moses and Aaron, Moses and Joshua, David and Nathaniel, Jeremiah and Baruch. As this thought develops I might like to deep dive into each of these individually. Otherwise, here is where we're at for now. 

Emotions

     This week I've started research on emotions. While I've had a long history with emotions, I'm embarking on the journey of both reconciliation with my own emotions, and moving from the maladaptive practices I've developed with feeling and processing emotions. Sometimes I ponder things about my childhood and I can't help but think "how have you screwed up so badly?". This question is an easy one to ask but a hard one to answer. Yet here I am, working through the reparation process and all the things that have lead up to me feeling the way I do about things that I really wouldn't need to be uncomfortable with, or even anxious over, had I had a framework of how to process and learn from emotions in a healthy way.

    I'm not the worst off as far as processing goes, and I know that for sure. One of the first things I asked God to do in my journey was to open up my emotional floodgates again and teach me how to feel. Floods are not necessarily the way we ought to look at our emotions, and of course there are times when emotions will be very intense in such a way that they feel like floods against us, but I think, like a valve, the flow can be tampered with, and like any plumbing job, will need repairs done on something as simple as the gasket, or as complex as the innerworkings of the pump.

    Then the easiest conclusion is that when things are working well, there's an obvious flow and ebb, a controllable function, and an interaction that you can have with the plumbing in the form of the water coming out. And when things are wrong... well it can be anything from a catastrophic -flood the whole house- kind of accident, or as simple as a 10ml/day kind of drip that, though incessant, is not the worst thing in the world. However, I believe where the difference in the design of how we're supposed to feel emotions, and plumbing, is that the design is for emotions to be in a constant flow and have a stream of water always available to us in the form of something we can easily interact with.

    A situation I've been struggling with emotionally is this: I desire a person close to me, and to be with them in such a way that it wouldn't comfortably be called friendship. The problem is I cannot flow with these desires as the situation simply wouldn't allow it without me rebelling against God and leadership, and mentors in my life, and so I can choose to block the flow, which may cause a sort of rupture in my emotional plumbing later on down the line, or I can choose to channel that flow, and allow it into another lake or pond. Or pour it out as a drink offering unto the Lord, and allow Him to burn those desires up. But being the person I am, and having the mind for efficiency that I have, I would simply not allow the amount of water flowing out of that spigot of desire to go to an offering my God wouldn't take a lot of pleasure in, but instead will ask for the tool of redirection so that I can cause a part of our empire to be flooded with His desire. 

    That and channel this relationship into a more profound love than the emotionally intense desire, and into a friendly self-sacrificing love that can learn to unpack the birthright of the other more than it's worried about unpacking the birthright of self. That can see themselves as servants and lower than the other. "This is love, that a friend would die for the sake of the other to live."

What revelation are you ready for?

     Jesus famously asks Nicodemus this question in the format of "if you can't understand things that I tell you which are of this earth, how do you expect to understand the things of Heaven, which have nothing like there is on earth?" Now Nicodemus was a teacher of teachers. It's likely that if he had an office given by Jesus then it would have been teacher as his main job was to educate others. Yet here he was, without understanding or even a thought close to being heavenly. Later what he did may be considered heavenly by others, by gifting the body of Jesus a great wreath, I have a hard time believing that what he did was anything but for the sake covering his own salvation in the only way he knew how, but he did it in such a way that he didn't bother asking the God whom he claimed to serve for advice on how to do that. Even though it was to THIS MAN that John 3:16 was delivered to, he still couldn't come to grips with the fact that all he would have to do is believe on Jesus.

    Whether the sacrifice is a statement of faith, lest Nicodemus actually learned something from Jesus, I don't have an answer with any sort of permanence. The problem that I'm trying to pose is this: we don't even know half of the things about Heaven that Jesus wants to tell us about because we don't have any sort of intimacy with the God we claim to worship. What if God told you that you are the queen of heaven? Would you be able to point to scripture and confirm that not only does God speak, but actually told you of a being mentioned in Jeremiah with a negative context, in a positive context? Not only did he tell you about her, but He told that you ARE her? How likely would you be to receive such a word? What if God said that you are designed to think with your feet? "What does that even mean?" You might ask, well if you were intimate with God you would probably already have something to refer to with that. 

    We must be intimate with God IN spirit. We often think of intimacy in a fleshly manner, but all three are available, and we've hardly touched the soul level of intimacy, let alone the spirit level. God is capable of all three, but He is asking us to come up to His level of intimacy. One of the posts I made a while ago talks about meeting God where He's at. 

    I feel strongly that this is still the call, and what the season is about for the church. But I'm afraid that hardly anyone is willing to accept such a teaching, and such a big responsibility.