[Faith-talk] FW: [URCTCPrayerGroup2] URCTC Prayer Group 2 Devotional: Excerpts From "What to do with our feelings" by Great Bible Study

[Eric Calhoun]

Original Message: 
From: "BeeJay" <beejayokla at cox.net>
To: <Undisclosed-Recipient:;>
Subject: [URCTCPrayerGroup2] URCTC Prayer Group 2 Devotional: Excerpts
>From "What to do with our feelings" by Great Bible Study
Date: 
Thu, 3 Mar 2011 00:13:12 -0600

What to do with our feelings
Fear, guilt, shame, low self-esteem, etc.

----------------------------------------------------------------------------
----

Feelings do not necessarily speak truth. If you feel guilty, it does not
mean that you are guilty. Many times, feelings merely tell us what is going
on in our thought life (or what we are really believing). If we think we
are guilty, there will be feelings of guilt as the fruit of those thoughts
or beliefs. It's sort of like feeling a hot stove; feelings are meant to
help alert us of something that is wrong. Feelings should not be ignored,
but properly interpreted. For example, if you feel guilty, don't start
thinking "Oh, it must be true. I need to go confess my sins again and go
try to dot every i and cross every t." That is letting feelings tell us
what to do, and feelings can be (and often are) wrong.

When we begin to feel guilty, we need to instead get to the root of the
problem and address it with God's Word. What does God's Word say about our
guilt? It tells us that if we confess our sin and forsake it, we are
forgiven and cleansed of whatever kind of unrighteousness that we've
committed. When we choose to believe that over how we feel, then our
feelings will begin to change because they are merely the fruit of our
thoughts and beliefs. In this case, our feelings were wrong because our
belief was wrong. Remember, feelings are just the fruit of our thoughts and
beliefs. If we feel wrong, then it wouldn't hurt to stop and ask ourselves
what we believe. Do we believe that when a man confesses his sin and
believes upon Christ, that he is forgiven? Or do we, in the back of our
minds, wonder if we've sinned too badly, or if we need to do something
before we can be forgiven? Our feelings can be a great revealer of what we
are really believing under the surface.

It is important to be balanced when dealing with our feelings. I don't
think it's healthy to completely ignore our feelings, but I can assure you
that it is not healthy to go by our feelings either. The key is to learn
how to discern what our feelings are really telling us, and then get to the
root of the problem. Feelings of guilt, for example, do not necessarily
mean that we are indeed guilty, but rather that our beliefs are not rooted
and grounded on God's Word like they ought to be.

A dirty conscience should not be ignored, but rather investigated. False
guilt is an indication of a faulty belief. Is a clean conscience important
according to God's Word? Yes!

How much more shall the blood of Christ, who through the eternal Spirit
offered himself without spot to God, purge your conscience from dead works
to serve the living God?

Hebrews 9:14

So with that said, I believe it is important to have a clean conscience.
But we can only have that clean conscience when we stand firm on God's Word
and believe what it really says about the forgiveness of our sins. When we
truly believe that the Blood of Christ has paid the full price for our
failures, only then can we have a truly clean conscience. As long as we
think that we've messed up too badly, or need to do something before we can
be forgiven, we will live with a dirty conscience. That is because we don't
truly believe we are forgiven, and when we don't believe that we're
forgiven, how on earth can we expect to feel like it? We can't!

Fear is another feeling which is completely unnecessary in the life of a
believer. How do we know this? God's Word tells us that perfect love casts
out all fear. For those who think that fear is a natural and unavoidable
feeling, God's Word tells us that "He who fears has not been made perfect
in love."

There is no fear in love; but perfect love casteth out fear: because fear
hath torment. He that feareth is not made perfect in love.

1 John 4:18

Got fears? Don't believe them, but rather seek to be established and made
perfect in God's great love for you. That will dispel those fears. What
most people do is go by their feelings and believe them, rather than seeing
them as a warning that something isn't right in their beliefs or thought
lives. That is where many well intending Christians go in the ditch.
Another ditch is to completely ignore those feelings (or warning signs),
and do nothing about them. The question I ask you is, what are you doing
about those feelings? Are you going by what you feel as if it were truth?
Or are you asking yourself, "What am I thinking or believing that may not
be aligned with God's Word?"

Fear, like false guilt, is a result of believing something other than
God's Word. False guilt is when we choose to believe an imagination that
has risen itself against the knowledge of God (see 2 Corinthians 10:4-5),
even though God's Word assures us that when we confess our sins, He is
faithful to forgive us of any sort of unrighteousness that we've committed.

Now of course, not all feelings should be interpreted as a fault in our
thoughts or beliefs. There are times when then Holy Spirit will give a
person an uneasy feeling about a situation (discernment), or maybe a burden
to pray over somebody that we normally wouldn't pray over. These types of
feelings are used by God as a means to communicate with our spirits, and
should not be ignored.

However, what I am talking about in this teaching is feelings of low
self-esteem, fear, false guilt, shame, etc. Feelings along these lines are
spelled out clearly in God's Word as being completely unnecessary for the
children of God. What these types of feelings (false guilt, fear, etc.)
have in common is that they are rooted in a belief or imagination that has
risen itself against the knowledge of God (what is spoken clearly in His
Word).

For the weapons of our warfare are not carnal, but mighty through God to
the pulling down of strong holds; Casting down imaginations, and every high
thing that exalteth itself against the knowledge of God, and bringing into
captivity every thought to the obedience of Christ;

2 Corinthians 10:4-5

Come and join us at:
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/URCTCPrayerGroup2