Thursday, August 8th, 2024
Recently I was blessed with a full day completely to myself. I’m honestly not sure the last time this happened; it’s been a few years. My first priority for the day was spending quality time with God continuing to pray about emotions that need healing in my life. As I mentioned recently, I read a book titled Emotional Healing by Praying Medic and I wanted to set aside some time to jot down and pray through many different traumas or negative experiences in my life.
I think sometimes we are taught that emotions are bad and that we can’t have them. While I agree that we can’t let our emotions steer our ship, we have to understand that God gave them to us. Let’s look at the emotion of fear. In a natural sense, it’s meant to protect us from doing something that might hurt us. From a spiritual sense, fear may be stirred up because of something we need to deal with, like a past trauma. Its presence could also mean we need to do some battling in the spirit to push back a spirit of fear and declare spirits of power, love and a sound mind (2 Timothy 1:7).
Let’s look at anger. Jesus provides us many examples of righteous anger. God will often use this emotion to stir up in people a passion for a particular ministry He is calling them to. But just like as with fear, it could be a sign of pride that we need to deal with. We may be tempted to agree with anger because something didn’t go our way or because we were hurt. This is where the enemy is wanting us to travel down an unhealthy path. We need to recognize it, repent for any steps we may have taken in that direction and choose instead to agree with love, patience and gentleness.
God wants us to love His creation, including everything He created within us. That includes our emotions. He wants to heal the ones that were abused and controlled. He wants to heal the wounds in our soul that exist because of the negative ways our emotions were used. He wants us to see that He gave us our emotions as a way for Holy Spirit to work in and through us. Let’s look at a few scriptures. Psalm 147:3 says:
3 He heals the brokenhearted; And binds up their wounds.
Hebrews 4:15-16:
15 For we do not have a High Priest who cannot sympathize with our weaknesses, but was in all points tempted as we are, yet without sin. 16 Let us therefore come boldly to the throne of grace, that we may obtain mercy and find grace to help in time of need.
1 Peter 2:24:
24 who Himself bore our sins in His own body on the tree, that we, having died to sins, might live for righteousness—by whose stripes you were healed.
Final Thoughts…
An emotional wound often goes deeper than a physical wound. The shame, fear, anger, abandonment and rejection that accompany the imperfect events in our lives can still inflict pain today just as much as they day they were instilled. But all hope is not lost. These are all the things that Jesus took to the cross on our behalf. These are all the things that Jesus felt in His 33 years on this earth. These are all the things that Jesus wants to heal so that we can be completely free. Spend some time thinking back through the events of your life. If you get to one that stirs up an unwanted emotion, ask God to heal that emotion. You will know when traumas or negative experiences have been fully healed. You will be able to talk about and think about these things without tears or unhealed emotions.