July 19, 2015

Emotional healing in our lives isn’t an act of our will, but it is a work of the Holy Spirit. The Fruit of the Spirit is heavily focused our emotions. Look at this from Galatians 5, the famous “Fruit of the Spirit” passage: Galatians 5:22-23 22 But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, 23 gentleness and self-control. Against such things there is no law.

How does a person experience love? Through our emotional selves, right? We have the capacity to feel love and we have the capacity to feel rejection. We have the capacity to feel joy as well as sadness. The third and fourth parts of this Fruit of the Spirit passage lists peace and patience. What are the opposites of peace and patience? Stress and anxiety? Or perhaps fear and worry? Perhaps goodness and faithfulness are harder to classify as emotions, but gentleness is a settled feeling and self-control is a calm, relaxed and accomplished feeling.
Could it be that the work of Christ was to deal with the redemption of our souls and the work of the Spirit is to deal with the redemption of our emotional selves? When the Fall happened in the Garden, all of who we are got damaged, including our emotions. All of who we are needs redemption; not just our spiritual selves, but our emotional selves as well.

Sin disrupts our relationship with God, but it also has an emotional consequence. What emotion did Adam and Eve feel when they sinned against God in the Garden of Eden? They felt shame. When King David sinned by having an affair with Bathsheba and she got pregnant and after he killed her husband to try cover things up just what did he experience emotionally? He wrote most of the Psalms and they are filled with depression, grief, loneliness, despair, fear, hopelessness, revenge, and abandonment just to name a few of the tough ones. 150 Psalms and most of them are riddled with uncertainty, anxiety, and emotional struggle.

With the Spirit’s help, you CAN overcome being overcome by your feelings.
Let me end with a quick thought about these verses from Psalm 103:2-3: Praise the LORD, O my soul, and forget not all his benefits– who forgives all your sins and heals all your diseases, who redeems your life from the pit and crowns you with love and compassion.
The Psalmist here lists a progression a multi-faceted list of things for which to praise God. Forgiveness from sin is received. Healing of diseases is received. And third in the lineup is redemption from some pit—that is emotional healing. What is the name of your pit? Anger, fear, panic, depression, rejection, bitterness, loneliness, jealousy, low self-esteem? From what pit do you need to be lifted? As you think about God’s offer to redeem your entire life, including your inner being, your emotional self, answer this question, “Do you want to be healed?” and if so, will you let God heal you from the inside out?

Walk in wellness with me this week!
Pastor Melissa