Know Yourself
Fall Mission Communities • Week of 10/4
The more that I learn about my walk with God, the more I realize how much my emotions play a part in better understanding my relationship with God. Ignatius of Loyola suggested that our emotions indicate to us whether we are walking closely with God or we are far off from God. Emotions can absolutely be blinding and manipulated as you see Satan attempting to do to Jesus in the wilderness. Which is why the first epistle of John tells us to “test the spirits” (I John 1:4). John knew that there is much in life that will try to gratify emotions of acceptedness, of feeling satisfied and safe. However, the ability to sit with our emotions before the Lord is a powerful practice that draws us closer to the Lord, building our security in who he says we are.
Like many of you here at the Mission, we lost childcare in March. My wife is a doctor and still had to go to work through the heat of the pandemic which left me as our only option for daytime childcare for almost a month. My old pastor in Atlanta used to say that “you know what’s inside of you when you’re squeezed.” I was definitely squeezed in this season trying to juggle a one year old, a full-time job and working for the Mission. And, what came out of me had to be tended to and taken seriously.
As I have grown closer to God over the years I have learned that my feelings are good indicators for where I need to focus my prayer life. My feelings often signal to me the areas of my life where I need to lament, repent and celebrate as God draws me closer into God’s image. The Psalms show this vividly as they play with the gamut of human emotions and explore how to construct a doxology or worship out of our emotions. And in a world that is extremely emotionally charged, the practice of bringing our feelings before the Lord and searching out what they mean and how God may be speaking to us through them is a powerful means by which we draw closer and more secure in the Lord.
We see this clearly through the example of David. As a man who practiced sitting before the Lord with his emotions, David had a profound sense of security that seems to come out of his experience alone with God. When faced with armies, giants and kings, David seems to know who God has called him to be in the moment. This security seems to come out of a lifetime of sitting before the Lord with an open heart.
The level of intimacy and security in who God has called you to be comes from the spaces in our lives where we are sitting transparent before the Lord. The more we learn practices which drive us into those spaces where we are honest with our emotions (good or bad) before God, the more I believe we will develop the security and confidence to know and be the people God has called us to be in every situation that we face in life.