Stability // How to Handle Uncomfortable Emotions

We're going to be in Psalm 42, and we're actually starting a new series entitled Stability how to Thrive in an Emotionally Unhealthy World.

Some of y'all are thinking we're really going to talk about emotions, bro, Like why are we going to do that?

Here's why One, because you have them, Because God talks about them, and then, third of all, because most of us have no idea what to do with our emotions.

For example, there are times in life sometimes where we experience something.

Maybe somebody cuts you off on the freeway you ever that happen to you before.

Or maybe somebody says a little something to you and you react and you think why did I react that way?

Or where did that come from?

I can't believe I responded that way.

Sometimes those things come from pent-up emotions that we haven't dealt with and somebody touches lightly, touches something in our life and we just erupt like Mount Vesuvius because there are things that we haven't processed and worked through.

And what can happen, either knowingly or unknowingly in our lives is we can live lives that are filled with bitterness and resentment and anger and cynicism because there are things that we haven't processed in our lives, Because it's hard to do that In fact it's a whole lot easier to bury things or to ignore things or act like emotions aren't really there, and the problem with that is, if we live our lives bearing things, we live our lives cynical or angry, or bitter, we'll never live joy-filled lives, and God wants you to live a joy-filled life.

When we talk about this conversation about emotions, I think it's important to note that Jesus had emotions.

Jesus had feelings.

I mean, think about this, Consider this.

There were times where Jesus felt sad and he cried.

There were times where Jesus felt forsaken In Mark 15, he had anxiety.

He was so overwhelmed with what he was about to experience.

There were times where he got angry.

And if Jesus felt emotions, it's okay for us to feel emotions too, and Scripture gives us a path to what I would call being spiritually emotionally healthy.

And spiritually emotionally healthy people are the people that are grounded, are the people that are the most loving, are people that are the most empathetic people you'll ever find.

And the reason why we talk about this is because it's impossible to be spiritually mature and emotionally immature.

Sometimes we think spiritual maturity is about how many things we know about the Bible or how long we've been in church, or if we have a relative that was involved in the church and we think I did this, I did that, so I'm spiritually mature.

You're not, Because spiritual maturity is not based on knowledge alone.

And what emotional maturity is?

Emotional maturity is the ability to feel what you feel without judging yourself, but not allowing those emotions to control you.

That's what it is Now.

When it comes to this conversation about emotions, a lot of us fall into one or two ditches.

Some of us fall in this ditch over here.

It's like feelings are the enemy.

I don't like feelings.

Maybe you were raised in a home where it was not touchy-feely at all.

We just don't talk about that.

And we're like I don't talk about feelings, I just, if I feel something, I bury it or act like it's not there.

There's this other ditch over here that says if I feel it, I'm just going to act on however I feel, Because if I act on it, well, I have to because I'm just being my authentic self.

So, because I feel it and I'm doing it, my actions are justified because, well, I'm just being my authentic self.

Now imagine for a second if every person in the world, all 7 billion people at the exact same moment, at the exact same time, said I'm just going to do.

However, I'm going to do whatever I feel.

Imagine what the world would look like.

I think it's crazy right now.

It'd be super crazy.

And what can happen is people over here can look at people over there and they're like look at the stuff those people do.

They're way too emotional.

They act out on everything.

I'm not going to be like that.

People over here are like those people don't even understand themselves.

They don't know how to feel.

And this is a ditch over here we don't want to fall into.

And this is a ditch over here we don't want to fall into.

But the reality is all of us kind of lean one way or the other way.

But the better way is emotional maturity.

It's the ability to feel what you feel without judging yourself, but not allowing those emotions to control you.

And this takes us to Psalm, chapter number 42.

Psalm 42 is written by a worship leader, by a musician that had been leading worship corporately in the temple, but he had been banished from the temple.

He was no longer there.

In fact, he was surrounded by his enemies and he felt overwhelmed and he felt weary and he felt down and he felt sad.

And Psalm 42 tells us how he processed those emotions and tells us what he did with those emotions.

So we're going to pick it up and we're going to see how do we handle our emotions, what do we do with them.

So let's pick it up in Psalm 42.

If you're ready for the word, would you say amen, Amen.

Psalm 42, verse 1, it says this as a deer longs for flowing streams, so I long for you, God.

Psalms 42:1

I thirst for God, the living God.

When can I come and appear before God?

Now this chapter it starts really, really spiritual, doesn't it?

I long for you, God, I thirst for you, God.

He gets in verse three and he starts talking about what he's experiencing, what the circumstances of his life are.

He says my tears have been my food day and night.

He's not eating, he's not sleeping, he's just crying all the time.

Life has just overwhelmed him.

Life has just overwhelmed him.

He says all the people all day, they say to me where is your God, the people around him, where's the God that you worshiped?

So, verse four he says I remember this as I pour out my heart how I walked with many leading the festive procession to the house of God with joyful and thankful shouts.

He's far from the temple where worship used to happen and he looks back and he remembers that.

He remembers worshiping God corporately and he misses that.

He knows he needs it.

He says, man, I miss hearing and seeing shouts of worship to God.

And then, in verse 5, he gives the honest truth about how he feels and maybe some of you can relate.

He says why, my soul, are you so dejected?

Why are you in such?

What's that next word?

Why are you in such?

Never felt that way before.

Put your hope in God, for I will still praise him, my Savior and my God.

When he's weary and he's overwhelmed, he has to tell himself to put his hope in God.

You know why he has to tell himself that?

Because he doesn't feel like doing it.

He feels overwhelmed.

And sometimes, when we feel overwhelmed, can we just be honest?

We don't feel like putting our hope in God and we have to tell ourselves to do that.

He goes on in verse six.

He says I am deeply depressed.

He's in a heavy season of life right now.

He's overwhelmed, he's depressed and in this season, look what he does.

He says therefore I.

What's that word?

Therefore I?

He remembers you from the land of Jordan and the peaks of Hermon from Mount Mizar and the peaks of Hermon from Mount Mizar.

He looks back and remembers God's faithfulness in the past.

I remember your faithfulness there.

I remember what you did for me there.

And it's so important in overwhelming seasons that we remember God's faithfulness in the past, because so often God doesn't feel faithful in the moment.

So often it's like God, where are you, God?

What is happening, God?

I don't get it.

And in those times that we have to do is we have to look back at God's faithfulness to us.

In fact, we say sometimes the greatest enemy to faith is forgetfulness, Because when we forget what God's done, sometimes we won't have faith in the present.

But when we look back and we remember the goodness of God and we remember the faithfulness of God, it gives us strength in the present.

Those times God came through, those times God answered that prayer and this is why I always encourage y'all to have some type of answered prayer journal or those God moments in your life.

Y'all know what I'm talking about.

You have those.

Y'all tell me about them all the time.

Right, Like we had this medical issue.

We went to the doctor and all of a sudden it was like gone.

How did this happen?

I'll tell you how it happened.

We prayed about that for weeks and weeks and weeks, right those moments.

That's when we write those things down.

So when we're overwhelmed and God doesn't feel like he's there and we feel abandoned, we say God, I remember, I remember what you did.

He goes on in verse 7.

He says deep calls to deep in the roar of your waterfalls.

All your breakers and your billows have swept over me.

His circumstances, they're just like a waterfall over him.

They've've swept over him.

He can't get out of him.

It seems like Verse number eight.

The Lord will send his faithful love by day.

His song will be with me in the night, a prayer to the God of my life.

I will say to God my rock.

And he tells this to God why have you forgotten me?

Why must I go about in sorrow because of the enemy's oppression?

He's just expressing his emotions to God.

This is how I feel he's pouring out his soul.

He says in verse 10, my adversaries taunt me, as if crushing my bones, while all day long they say to me where is your God?

Why, my soul?

Are you so dejected?

Why are you in such turmoil?

You can feel it as he's talking through this and he tells himself again put your hope in God, for I will still praise him, my Savior and my God.

He makes a choice in the midst of overwhelming feelings, and here's what we see in this text and I wish this wasn't the case, but it's just the truth, guys, and we're just real.

Here Is following Jesus does not mean you'll have a perfect life.

It just doesn't, Despite what the prosperity gospel preachers will tell you In this text.

Look what it says.

He says his adversaries taunt me, crushing my bones, His enemies are around him and while following Jesus will give you a purposeful, meaningful, fulfilled life that you cannot find in anything else, it will not give you a perfect life.

In fact, in some ways, life can be harder because you follow Jesus and the psalmist in the midst of circumstances, and the psalmist in the midst of painful times.

He says he's going to put his hope in God, but the times are still hard for him.

Reminds me of a lady named Joni Erickson Tada.

Has anybody ever heard of Joni Errikson Tada?

I'm curious.

Okay, let me have.

When she was a teenager, she was super athletic, super popular, brilliant.

She had it all going on.

She could go to any college she wanted to, and she had a terrible diving accident that left her as a quadriplegic, and it was that accident that brought her to God and since then she spent her life, the last 50 plus years, teaching scripture, helping people understand the gospel, the death, the burial, the resurrection of Jesus Christ.

And you would think, man, she's done all those things.

God has miraculously healed her.

She's no longer in a wheelchair, she's a dancer.

No, she's still in a wheelchair and while she's seen progress in her life, she can't walk up on a stage like I just did a few minutes ago.

She can't walk to the store, she can't go take a hike Walking, she is in a wheelchair.

And you think God, like, don't you love her?

Like, well, she's done these things for you.

We don't have all the answers, and following Jesus doesn't mean that we're going to have a perfect life.

We live in a broken world that causes pain and suffering and, even though a lot of us understand that, it still doesn't make those times feel any less hard.

When we experience the brokenness of the world.

In fact, in James 1, it says Consider it great joy, my brothers and sisters, Whenever you experience what are those two words?

Whenever you experience what are those two words?

Whenever you experience various trials.

Now, whenever you experience those things, that life is filled with trials and difficulties and there's something in all of us that is groaning for a place where there will be no trials and there will be no brokenness and there will be no pain.

There's something in us Romans talks about, and that place is in heaven with the Lord.

When Jesus is going to come and he's going to fix all this jacked upness we call our world, he's going to change all these things.

We're not going to have to experience this and you might be in a place in your life where you're not yet a Jesus follower and you walked in the room and you see things happening in the Middle East and you see the hurricanes and like terrible things happening in the world and there's something groaning in you that you know there's something else out there.

You know this is not how it was meant to be and I just say that God is calling you to his son, Jesus Christ.

So you will know Jesus and you will know his fullness and you will put your faith and trust in the death, the burial and the resurrection of Jesus Christ and one day you will be with the Lord if you do that and one day you will be in heaven with him.

And while our home, ultimately, is in heaven, for the time being we're here on this earth and there are trials, and they're hard, and these trials produce painful emotion sometimes, and how we deal with these things is so important.

And what the psalmist did in Psalm 42 is he noticed, he named and he redirected.

Number two he says I'm deeply depressed.

In verse five of the text, he says he redirected.

He says my hope is in God.

Now, sometimes, when we have emotions, our tendency can be we suppress them or we can medicate ourselves so we don't have to feel them.

Right, Drugs, alcohol, food, Netflix those things work pretty well.

Right, we can medicate ourselves because they feel hard.

And on top of that, when we sometimes look inside and we see our emotions and we feel them, they can be really ugly at times, can't they?

Somebody does us wrong.

Naturally, we have the emotion of revenge or we have the emotion of I just wish ill will on them and I hope bad things happen to them, and that's just the PG version of our emotions.

Sometimes we have negative emotions towards God.

God, I don't think you're actually faithful, God.

I'm mad at you.

God, I don't think you love me because this happened.

Sometimes we have painful emotions towards ourselves.

We feel like we're a failure, we feel like we never measure up, we feel like we're not good enough.

We feel these things and because we have these different types of emotions, they're very uncomfortable and we don't want to feel them.

And what we have a tendency to do is, when we have these emotions, we judge ourselves because we have them.

But here's what I want to tell you Don't judge yourself for your emotions, Don't judge yourself for how you feel.

No, this is so hard not to do, Because when you're feeling something that isn't cool, you're like I can't believe.

I felt that I can't believe what's going on in me.

I experienced this last night.

Ironically, talking about this this morning, Knowing today we were going to three services, I had something a little unusual for me last night.

I started feeling just some anxiety and my default when I'm feeling some type of way, anxiety or whatever is bro, you're good, Don't worry about it, man, Be tough.

And I was just thinking through just the logistics of today and everything and I'm like is anybody even going to show up for these services and everything.

And I'm like, is anybody even going to show up for these services?

Obviously, some people showed up, right, Thank you.

And I was just feeling like a little bit overwhelmed just with all the internal things happening.

And as I was thinking through it, I'm like, okay, the anxiety that I'm feeling right now is not my enemy, it's just alerting me that something is going on.

What's going on?

A lot's happening this morning.

It's the unknown, it's all these things I don't know what's going on about.

And I said, okay, here's what I have.

And I had to talk to myself because I wasn't feeling this way at all.

I had to, like, logically, talk myself through it.

It's like, okay, this is how you feel, Okay, switch, this is why you're feeling this way.

Anxiety is not my enemy, it's just an alert.

It's telling me some things are going on.

Okay, I need to talk to God about it.

And I need to talked to somebody else.

I went and I exercised and afterwards this anxiety started to fade from me and in the moment it was like hard for me to even admit that I was having anxiety because I'm pastorned, I don't even have this, I don't go through this stuff, I teach on it, Right, but it was real.

And here's why.

Here's why.

Here's why Because I was experiencing something, the unknown, like all this, and it was producing emotion in me of anxiety.

And what happens in our lives because we're humans and not robots is when we experience certain things, they produce certain emotions.

So when you experience the loss of a loved one, certain emotions.

So when you experience the loss of a loved one, you're going to experience the emotion of sadness.

That's normal.

And sometimes we can think that, because we follow Jesus, that we're not going to feel any emotions.

We're always going to be God's in charge.

I know God loves me.

I feel fully loved by God.

I don't feel anything.

But here's the reality.

That's not how life works, because experiences produce emotions.

Sometimes in life you will experience something that's going to cause you to feel sad or lonely, or angry or anxious or fearful.

It is part of the human experience and when we can name these things, it allows us to process these things with God and to process these things with other people.

But until we name them and we realize that we have them Now, some of you in the room you're like, bro, I don't even know how to feel emotions.

You're like I don't like you're talking about all this stuff.

You're like some of you are like I'm really uncomfortable, I don't like this, but I don't know how to feel.

Here's what I invite you to do, but I don't know how to feel.

Here's what I invite you to do Ask God for insight and clarity into what's going on inside of you, Because God knows you and God gave you emotions to draw you to him and to draw you to other people and to actually enjoy some of the greatest gifts of God.

And next Sunday, what we're actually going to do is we're going to talk about how do we specifically process a major loss in life or a major painful event in a biblical way, and we're actually going to talk about how do we biblically lament.

And next Sunday we're going to see how do we lament to God in a very real, raw way.

Because when we are down and out and we experience a major loss or a major difficulty or a major hurt, we have all.

Because when we are down and out and we experience a major loss or a major difficulty or a major hurt, we have all these emotions.

We don't know what to do with them and God provides a way, and his way is through lamenting to God, and next week we're going to talk about how do we lament to God.

And for us to be able to do that, we have to realize that, man, I am feeling some type of way.

And when we're feeling some type of way and we name it, we then have to process it and redirect our hope back to God.

In the verse right here in Psalm 43, verse 5, and then another place, I think it's verse 11.

Psalms 43:5

And then again in chapter 43, what he does is he's lost, he's confused, and he tells himself God is my only hope.

I'm putting my hope in God.

God is the one that's gonna bring me strength, God is the one that's gonna bring me through.

My hope is in God.

And what we have to do when we're feeling some type of way is not suppress our emotions, not to medicate ourselves through emotions, not try to run away from them and escape, Because, can I say this, you can't run away from you.

Wherever you go, you're going to be right with you, but it's Lord.

This is where I'm at, this is how I feel, and I'm going to process this with you.

And even though I'm not feeling it, no matter how I feel, I'm going to put my hope in you.

God, I know you're still faithful, even though you don't feel faithful.

God, I know you're still loving, even though I don't feel loved by you right now.

God, I know your character doesn't change, even though it feels like your character has changed, that God is still the same.

And, friends, rather than being swept away by the tides of our emotions, we must anchor our emotions to truth.

We must say, hey, this is how I feel, this is where I'm at, but I'm going to redirect my emotion and redirect my heart to God and remind myself that my hope is in him, to God, and remind myself that my hope is in him.

Now.

Today really is just one part of a mega long message over the next five weeks.

We're going to be in this mega long message over the next five weeks learning how to be spiritually, emotionally healthy.

So today we'll call it episode one.

Emotionally healthy.

So today we'll call it episode one.

Episode one Today.

Here's what I want to invite you to do.

I want to invite you one to notice and name your feelings and talk to God about them.

Some of you, right now, you're feeling some type of a way and you're like I don't even know if I could even talk about this.

I don't know if I could even feel this.

Can I just say you can, it's okay.

God isn't mad at you.

You've experienced some hard things, so of course you're going to have some emotion.

Would you name it and talk to God about it?

I'm going to invite you to go a little deeper, as we're talking about this over the next few weeks and be a part of a five day series to go a little deeper about this.

The series is through YouVersion Devotional Bible App, and I would love for you to be a part of it.

The next slide up there shows you how you can be a part of it by scanning the QR code and downloading the Bible app, and I would love for you to be a part of it.

The next slide up there shows you how you can be a part of it by scanning the QR code and downloading the Bible app.

I sent out a request to a bunch of you guys that are already my friends on YouVersion, and I think some of you guys have accepted or whatnot.

Here's just what I want you to do.

I just want you to go a little deeper with this, because here's the reality.

You cannot be spiritually mature and emotionally immature and emotions are so hard to deal with and talk about.

And can I just be honest?

I've been in church my entire life.

I was, like, born on Friday.

My parents literally brought me to church on Sunday.

Like I'm not even exaggerating, I've never heard a series like this through the Psalms.

So this is what I want you to do.

Even if you're unsure about this, even if you're like I don't even like talking about this, I invite you to go a little deeper and let's go through this together A little five-day devotional It'll take you five minutes a day.

And then here's the next thing I'm gonna invite you to do I invite you to come next Sunday as we learn how to lament the reality about your life.

Either you're going through something really hard right now you've been through something really hard or you're going to go through something really hard.

Some of you know my story.

I've been through some really hard things and here's what I learned.

I learned that part of healing is lamenting.

Until I learned how to lament, I couldn't experience healing.

And next week is gonna be a week that's gonna be one of the most healing services we've ever done, because we're gonna show you how do you lament those hard things to God.

Name your feelings and talk to God about them.

Be a part of this devotional and come next Sunday so we can learn how to lament.

I want to give you some time right now, your seat to pray.

Let's all bow our heads and close our eyes.

We just talk to God right now about, maybe some emotions that you're currently feeling in your life.

Maybe, like me last night, you're feeling some anxiety, God knows.

Will you talk to him about it?

Maybe you're experiencing pain because you've recently had a loss.

Will you talk to him about it?

Maybe you're experiencing pain because you've recently had a loss.

Will you talk to God about it?

Maybe you're experiencing anger because of something.

Will you tell God about it?

He's safe and take some time right now and talk to the Lord about what's going on in your heart.