Ten Minute Bible Talks Devotional Bible Study - How I Lost My Emotions (and Found Them Again) | My Favorite Verses | Proverbs 20.5

Episode Date: April 19, 2021

Experiencing emotional numbness? Struggling to relate to others or feel your own feelings? Try this practice that helps https://www.thecrossingchurch.com/staff/patrick-miller/ (Pastor Patrick Miller), based on https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Proverbs+20.5&version=ESV (Proverbs 20.5), as we continue our series on My Favorite Verses. Interested in more content like this? Check out https://www.thecrossingchurch.com/podcasts/the-gospel-of-wellness-self-care-or-selfish-2-corinthians-4-16/ (The Gospel of Wellness: Self-Care or Selfish?) and https://www.thecrossingchurch.com/podcasts/how-to-handle-uncertainty-about-the-future/ (How to Handle Uncertainty About the Future). Like this content? Make sure to leave us a rating and share it with others, so others can find it too. Use #asktmbt to connect with us, ask questions, and suggest topics. We'd love to hear from you! To learn more, visit our https://www.thecrossingchurch.com/ (website) and follow us on https://www.facebook.com/TenMinuteBibleTalks (Facebook), https://www.instagram.com/thecrossingcomo/ (Instagram), and https://twitter.com/tmbtpodcast (Twitter) @TheCrossingCOMO and @TenMinuteBibleTalks. Your support makes TMBT possible. Ten Minute Bible Talks is a crowd-funded project. Join the TMBTeam to reach more people with the Bible. Give now.

Welcome to 10-minute Bible talks, where we connect the Bible to your life and the time it takes to get to work. I'm Keith Simon. And I'm Patrick Miller. We are currently exploring some of our favorite Bible verses and how they've changed our lives. Also, if you want to connect with us, follow us on Twitter at TMBT podcast. You can also check out our hashtag, hashtag, AskT, TMBT, where you can ask us anything and we'd love to connect with you. Years ago, before Emily and I had Iris, we had an argument. Okay, not just one argument, there were plenty of them.

But there is one fight in particular that I will not forget. I don't remember what it was about, but I do remember how that fight ended. With Emily absolutely exasperated. She told me that the real reason we were fighting wasn't because of her emotions. I'm sure that's a claim that I made earlier in said argument. She said that we were fighting based on something totally different. The real reason was that I had no idea how. to engage with her emotions. And I was totally unaware of my own. And she said, until I figured out

how to be emotionally healthy, those issues wouldn't stop. The minute she said it, I knew she was right. I knew that I was like a man living in a 16-bedroom house who only used two rooms. I really had no idea what was happening in the other 14, and I pretended that it didn't really matter. I also knew that wasn't always the case. I used to feel deeply, as I think all people do at some point in their life. But those feelings were sometimes painful, sometimes inconvenient, sometimes distracting, and even embarrassing. And so at some point, in the five years before that fight, I found the emotional shutoff valve, and I turned it as tight as I could, and I just went on with my life. But I really wasn't aware of what I had lost. Shutting off the so-called bad feelings had the unexpected. side effect of dampening the good feelings as well. Likewise, becoming disconnected from myself

had the strange effect of disconnecting me with others. No one feels connected to someone who can't empathize, who can't understand feelings, who can't enter into a space with them, whether it's good or bad, fun or sad. When you meet someone who can do that, you love being around them, even if you don't know why. Empathy is, I think in many ways, the opposite of selfishness. Empathy is setting down your own feelings, your own self-interest, to take on someone else's. But empathy is impossible during an emotional lockdown. And maybe that's the thing that my wife was really longing for during that argument. The other, and perhaps the largest problem with my emotions, was that my emotions never actually stopped. Yeah, I'd stuffed them somewhere beneath my conscious experience,

but humans never stop emoting. When you know your emotions, you can actually respond to them. You can coach them. You can be guided by them or you can resist them. And any of those might be a proper response in different situations. But when you don't know your own inner emotional life, you're blind to the way that your emotions control you. What seems to you like a highly rationalization for some emotions you can't see. Back to the house metaphor. It turns out that the 14 rooms that this guy living in this mansion never visits that those 14 rooms are actually the most important 14 rooms in the house. In response to Emily's correction of my emotional state, I decided to go and see a counselor for a year. That was one of the best decisions I've ever made in my life.

That counselor helped me to come into contact with some of those rooms that I had locked off, those parts of my soul that I'd never acknowledged. As the Proverbs say, Proverbs 25, The purpose in a man's heart is like deep water, but a man of understanding will draw it out. That counselor drew out the deep purposes of my heart that I couldn't see. Maybe you know what I mean. If I asked you, how do you feel right now? How do you feel this week? Would you be able to put those feelings into any meaningful words?

Would you find it difficult to answer the question? How do you feel? Would you find it hard to admit that to yourself? Or how about to others? Do you ever find yourself trying to stuff and suppress your feelings? They're no big deal. I'm not going to worry about that. I'm just going to ignore it.

Part of why it's so dangerous to keep these emotions hidden is that they can, without your own awareness, lead you down dark paths, selfishness, pride, lust, idolatry, greed. We often find quick fixes to medicate those feelings, to keep the feelings numb. And that's the reason why we're overworking, over-exercising, over-indulging, over-entertaining, over entertaining, over spending time on our phones and on screens and with video games. And this is why I think it's so important to find someone of understanding who can draw those feelings out. Because it's only once those feelings are out in the open that you can bring those feelings to someone who can heal them. One thing that a great counselor does is a great counselor puts those hurting parts of your heart into contact with God.

See, God is a healer. God is a restorer. He takes us into his hands, and he gently draws even the tiniest spark of life up into a flame. One of my favorite verses says exactly this. Isaiah 42, 3. A bruised read, he, this is God. A bruised read, he will not break. A smoldering wick, he will not snuff out. And faithfulness, he will bring forth justice. Have you put your heart into the hands of your Redeemer? The only way to give him your heart is to be honest, to be vulnerable, to see those parts of your heart that you don't even want to see. If you can't see the deep waters of emotion in your own life, how can you present them to the God who heals, to the God who won't break a bruisery, to the God who won't snuff out a smoldering wick?

I find that when I talk this way, people, or at least myself, they start getting kind of itchy and resistant. We don't like the idea of bringing out our deep emotions. We don't like the idea of being honest or vulnerable, but we don't want to do emotional talk. But then I remember what Psalm 8611 says, teach me your way, O Lord, that I may walk in your truth. Unite my heart to fear your name. As long as my heart is divided up into all of these rooms, rooms that I don't even know what's happening inside of them, as long as I'm divided up that way, I can't unite those parts of my heart to Jesus. I can't unite those parts of my heart to itself. There's no hope of truly knowing God's truth or walking in it. So where's a good place to start? I'm not saying that you need to go see a

counselor today, although I'd honestly doubt that you'd ever regret it. You'd probably think it was a great choice if you gave it a try. But maybe you could start by picking a friend, or maybe a spouse. Maybe it's just someone at church or someone you've known for a long time, but make sure to pick someone who's following Jesus. And once a week or once every other week, sit down and walk through this acronym with that friend, Phanos, F-A-N-O-S. And that stands for feelings, affirmations, needs, owning, and spirituality. So what you do is you sit down with that friend and you hit each one of those things. You ask the question, what is one feeling you felt this week or feel right now? And then you say, what's one way that you can affirm each other? And then you say, what's something that you need right now?

And then you ask, what wrongs and sins do you need to own? And finally, how's your spirituality doing? Feelings, affirmations, needs, owning, spirituality. Once you're done, take all those feelings and needs and owning and bring them to God. See what happens when you live your life with a united heart. See what happens when you take your heart and you put it into the hands of a healing king. Thanks for listening. If you've enjoyed this content, please subscribe and give us a rating. That helps other people find this podcast more easily. Also, ask yourself, who could you share this podcast with?

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