Sunday Service | Emotionally Healthy Spirituality, Week 2: September 27, 2020
This morning, we look forward to announcements coming soon about beginning to meet in person again! We will do so with many precautions in place, starting in a few weeks. Subscribe to our email newsletter on our website to stay up-to-date.
Brian shared a testimony about how the Lord has been speaking to him through Luke 20.24-26, where Jesus speaks to cultural complexities that we still face today. Cultural and political contexts are forcing us to ask the question, “Who are we?”, but Jesus’ dialogue here is different and invites us to listen to him as he exposes the truth that we are God-image-bearers who live in a society where we must give to our governments what is theirs. But how do we do so? It must begin with slowing down and listening to Jesus. Let’s listen and learn from him.
April continued our teaching series on Emotionally Healthy Spirituality by connecting it with our previous teaching on being a good neighbor. In order to be good neighbors, we must be spiritually maturing. But as the author of the book we’re learning from says, “It is impossible to be spiritually mature without being emotionally mature.” Today, we zero in on this theme:
Knowing ourselves so that we may know God.
Brennan Manning says, “The imposter self, in order to gain acceptance and approval, suppresses or camouflages feelings, making emotional honesty impossible. Living out of this false self creates an impulsive desire to create a false image, so that everyone will admire us, yet nobody knows us.”
First of all, we must normalize the fact that we all live in a state of this disconnected, imposter self as we seek to protect ourselves. We’re all in some sort of “survival mode,” in many ways, which hides our true self.
We must acknowledge the masks and layers that hide our true selves, and actively work to dismantle them. In scripture terms, we are told to “put off the old self, and put on the new self.” This isn’t just for us: this is for our relationship with God. Augustine prayed, “Grant that I might know myself, so that I may know Thee.”
We get to know ourselves in order to be in relationship with God, and we miss this when we don’t genuinely feel our feelings.
For many of us, this sounds backwards to what we’ve been taught or grown up experiencing. We’ve been taught to distrust our feelings, that they shouldn’t be a part of our walk with God. But when we deny our feelings, we become less human, and this leads us to no longer knowing ourselves or God.
Because God himself is an emotional being. Part of God’s image is his feelings, and we are made in that same image and therefore must acknowledge and feel our feelings to be wholly who we are intended to be in him.
These scriptures reveal God’s emotions to us, from delight to regret to sorrow and anger:
Genesis 1.25
Genesis 6.6
Exodus 20.5
Isaiah 42.12
Jeremiah 31.3
Mark 3.5
Luke 10.21
We are impacted by this world and we forsake part of our God-likeness when we armor up against those impacts instead of feeling through them. Our body alerts us often even before our mind through muscle tension and headaches.
Ignoring these emotions closes doors of relationship with others. We’ve all been hurt by people who are untrue to themselves and by people who are ignoring their emotions--and that hurt makes feeling a very scary concept.
Sometimes feelings aren’t facts, but they are a part of us, a part of who we are. In light of this, our feelings need to be acknowledged as “part of the way God communicates to us,” not just something to push through, as early church leader Ignatius said. Or as the apostle John put it, “Test the spirits to see if they are from God”--we must do the same with our feelings. God will make clear to us if they are tethered to truths or to our flesh, or if they are simply the way in which he is trying to communicate with us in that moment.
Knowing how we feel increases our ability to know ourselves and God. It increases our connection with ourselves, with him, as well as with others.
1 Samuel 17.32-45
Before David met Goliath, he had to deal with the opinions of Saul. In this story, he’s braver than we give him credit for, not because he fought (and defeated) a giant, but because David had courage rooted in knowing himself and knowing his God as his deliverer.
To paraphrase his words here as he refuses the armor Saul offers, he said:
“I am not afraid; I know who I am. I know my story. God is mightier than any beast or bully.”
David knew who he was and he showed up as himself to the front lines of battle. How?
Because he was really honest in his connection with the Lord. Look at the emotional honesty of the psalms: he put voices to his emotions. David had done the work to know himself and to know God.
It’s tempting for us to take Saul or Goliath’s view here. To feel scared and powerless, and armor up. Or just think we need to be louder, stronger to win. But the convicting part of this scripture is that neither of these views are true. Instead, we want to be like David. No armor, just God. Confident in himself and God’s faithfulness. Only taking the gifts and tools God gave him to the front lines.
Be like David: Lean on the Lord.
To build this equity of trust, you show up as your authentic self to spend time with God.
Ask him how he’s equipped you, what gifts and talents he has given you.
Ask him who he thinks you are, underneath the armor and fears and masks.
Ask him what ill-fitting armor you need to take off?
4 Steps Towards Developing Our Authentic Self
1: Pay attention to your interior in silence and solitude
We are distracted and this takes time and hard work.
But it helps us to slow down and listen.
Escape the noise and get quiet & alone with God.
This is foundational.
2: Find trusted companions
Removing masks is best done with others, not alone.
We need others to reflect truth back to us.
Mentors, friends, etc who are willing to see through our inconsistencies.
We need their support and their nudges.
3: Move out of your comfort zone
Ask this question: “Am I living faithfully to the life God has asked me to live?”
This has to start with us. We cannot effectively love anyone if we do not love ourselves.
4: Pray for courage
Separate yourself from others’ identity. This is called differentiation in psychology:
growth that comes by holding on to who you are and who you are not, despite what
others think.
This will cause conflict, so it requires courage and leaning on the Spirit’s help to
keep going.
God is deeply in love with us, and made us with intention and purpose. But this version of who we are, the version he loves and intentionally interacts with--it is who we are beneath the masks and layers we hide beneath: where we are courageous and brave and gifted and equipped for all he’s called us to.