How to Manage Your Feelings as a Christ Follower

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♪ Free ♪ ♪ That kind of daring expectation ♪ ♪ That every prayer I make ♪ ♪ Is on an empty grave ♪ ♪ God's the power of your name ♪ ♪ Just a mention makes a way ♪ ♪ Giant's fall is strong, but faith is healing ♪ ♪ God's the power of your name ♪ ♪ It's the same matter of the grave ♪ ♪ There's no power like the mighty name of Jesus ♪ ♪ There's no power like the mighty name of Jesus ♪ ♪ I know there's no one greater, no one greater ♪ ♪ No one stronger ♪ Come on, I see you taking ground today. ♪ I see you taking ground ♪ ♪ And I see you press ahead ♪ ♪ Your power's dangerous to the enemy's kin ♪ We believe in you. ♪ But you still do miracles ♪ ♪ You will do what you say ♪ ♪ You're the same God now as you've always been ♪ ♪ Your spirit breaking now ♪ ♪ Your kingdom moving in ♪ ♪ Your victory cradles the ground at the end of the earth ♪ ♪ You still do miracles ♪ ♪ You will do what you say ♪ ♪ For you're the same God now as you've always been ♪ ♪ That's the power of your name ♪ ♪ Just a mention makes a way ♪ ♪ God is always on the way ♪

♪ There is healing ♪ ♪ That's the power that I crave ♪ ♪ It's the same that rules the grave ♪ ♪ There's no power like the name of Jesus ♪ ♪ There's no power like the name of Jesus ♪ ♪ There's no power like the name of Jesus ♪ Come on, are you glad you came to church today? Man, it's so good to be together, together as the church. My name is Jamie, if we haven't met before. And I'm so looking forward to what the Lord has in store for us today. We're gonna be receiving communion together here in a little bit, as well as hearing from our lead pastor, Pastor Whit George, as we continue our series on Breakthrough. But right now we're gonna take some time and read scripture together. This is something we love to do every week around here. So today we're gonna be reading from Psalm chapter 27. And it's my hope as we read this together today that no matter what season we find ourselves in right now, that we could be reminded of the confidence we can have as we approach our Heavenly Father in worship today. So can we turn our eyes to the screen and would you say this out loud with me? The Lord is my light and my salvation. Whom shall I fear? The Lord is the stronghold of my life.

Of whom shall I be afraid? When evildoers assail me to eat up my flesh, my adversaries and foes, it is they who stumble and fall. Though an army encamp against me, my heart shall not fear. Though war arise against me, yet I will be confident. One thing have I asked of the Lord, that will I seek after. That I may dwell in the house of the Lord all the days of my life. To gaze upon the beauty of the Lord and to inquire in his temple. I believe that I shall look upon the goodness of the Lord and the land of the living. Wait for the Lord, be strong and let your heart take courage. Wait for the Lord. This is the word of the Lord. And we all say, thanks be to God. Come on, let's keep singing today. ♪ I love you Lord ♪ ♪ For your mercy never fails me ♪ ♪ And all my days I've been held in your hand ♪ ♪ From the moment that I wake up ♪ ♪ Until I lay my head ♪ ♪ Oh, I will sing of the goodness of God ♪ We lift our voices. ♪ Is today ♪

♪ And I love your voice ♪ ♪ You have led me through the fire ♪ ♪ And in darkest nights you are close like no other ♪ ♪ I've known you as a father ♪ ♪ I've known you as a friend ♪ ♪ Oh and I have lived in the goodness of your love ♪ ♪ And I know that you'll be today with me ♪ ♪ Cause all my life you have been faithful ♪ ♪ And all my life you have been so sure of mine ♪ ♪ With her in my breath and I am able ♪ ♪ I will sing of your goodness of God ♪ ♪ Your goodness is running after, is running after me ♪ ♪ Your goodness is running after, is running after me ♪ ♪ With my life on the altar, I surrender it all ♪ ♪ You're giving everything ♪ ♪ Your goodness is running after, is running after me ♪ ♪ Your goodness is running after, is running after me ♪ ♪ Your goodness is running after, is running after me ♪ ♪ When my life lay down to endure ♪ ♪ I give you everything, Lord ♪ ♪ Your goodness is running after, is running after me ♪ I believe, I believe it today, Lord. ♪ And all my life you have been faithful, Jesus ♪ ♪ And all my life you have been so, so good ♪ ♪ With every breath that I am able ♪ ♪ I will sing of the goodness of God, yeah ♪ ♪ I will sing of the goodness of God, yeah ♪ ♪ And all my life you have been faithful, Jesus ♪ ♪ And all my life you have been so, so good ♪ ♪ With every breath that I am able ♪

♪ I will sing of the goodness of God, yeah ♪ ♪ I will sing of the goodness of God, yeah ♪ Praise you, God. Thank you. ♪ Cause all my life you have been faithful ♪ ♪ And all my life you have been so, so good ♪ ♪ With every breath that I am able ♪ ♪ Oh, I will sing of the goodness of God ♪ ♪ Oh, I will sing of the goodness of God, yeah ♪ ♪ Oh, I will sing of the goodness of God, yeah ♪ ♪ And I stand amazed in the presence of Jesus the Nazarene ♪ ♪ And wonder how he could love me like I love him now ♪ Sinner, condemned, unclean He took, He took my sins and my sorrows He made them His very own He bore the burden to Calvary Where He suffered and died alone Come on, would you lift your voice? How marvelous, how wonderful And my song shall ever be How marvelous, how wonderful It's my Savior's love for me Come on, from your heart Sing it How marvelous, how wonderful And my song shall ever be How marvelous, how wonderful It's my Savior's love for me One more time We're singing How marvelous How wonderful

My song shall ever be How marvelous How wonderful My Savior's love for me I think that's the perfect song to lead us into communion this weekend. If you received the elements on your way in, go ahead and grab those. If you did not, just hold up your hand. One of our host team members would love to get you those this weekend. Hebrews chapter 4 says that we do not have a high priest who is unable to sympathize with us in our weakness. You know, simply put, I might say it this way. Jesus knows it's really hard to be you. He knows it's hard to be us. For the passage says He was tempted in every respect. He knows the temptations we face, the battles we face, maybe the financial uphill battle you find yourself in, the relational hurt, confusion, the challenges, the nuance that we deal with. He was tempted in every respect. But of course, the difference between He and us is He did so without sin, as the passage says. And you might think when it says this of Jesus, that doing this without sin, that the writer would say, so then, get your act together. But that's not what he says. He says, so then, let us approach the throne of grace and mercy with confidence, or as some translations say, with boldness. And I was thinking of this concept this weekend. Yesterday I was up in the morning doing some reading. I like to get up early. It was probably a little after 5 a.m. And my four-year-old son, I just see out of the corner of my eye, just kind of peek his head around the corner, kind of testing to see if he can be up yet. He cannot.

It's way too early for him. But he just kind of timidly tiptoes, seeing if I will notice him, approaching his father going, is it okay for me to be up? But this is not how Scripture tells us we have to approach our Father in heaven. While it's appropriate for a son who is not obeying to be a little timid, Scripture tells us we may approach with confidence. And it's confidence not based on our own merit, not even based on your obedience, but based on the work of Christ, who justifies us to, and through him, justifies us before our Father. So this weekend as we take communion, it's good to be reminded. of the work that Christ has done for us, that makes us justified before the throne so that we can approach with confidence the throne of grace and mercy. So take this bread in your hand, peel the top layer back. And as this little cracker is crushed between your teeth this weekend, it's a reminder of Christ's body who is broken for us so that you and I may be made whole. Let's take the bread together. And as we take the cup this weekend, it's a reminder of the blood that was poured out for you and I, for forgiveness of sins so that we may be justified before our heavenly Father. Let's take the cup together. And as we take the cup together, it's a reminder of the blood that was poured out for us so that we may be justified before our heavenly Father. Let's take the cup together. Almighty God, we are reminded of the great work

that you have done in us through your son, Jesus. It's in his name and his name alone that we are reminded of the great work that you have done in us. And it's in your name alone, Lord, that we are reminded of the great work that you have done in us through one man's obedience, that salvation has come to many. Lord, we plead the blood of Christ this weekend and we're reminded and thankful for the work he has done in us. It's in Jesus' name we pray, everybody said, amen. ♪ To a cradle in the dirt ♪ Come on, we all sing it together this morning. ♪ So praise the Father and praise the Son ♪ ♪ Praise the Spirit, three in one ♪ ♪ God of glory, majesty in the highest ♪ ♪ Praise forever to the King of kings ♪ ♪ To reveal the kingdom coming and to reconcile the lost ♪ ♪ To redeem the whole creation ♪ ♪ You did not despise the cross ♪ ♪ For even in your suffering, you sought to the other side ♪ ♪ Knowing this was our salvation, Jesus for our sake you died ♪ ♪ Oh, what amazing love ♪ ♪ So praise the Father and praise the Son ♪ ♪ Praise the Spirit, three in one ♪ ♪ God of glory, majesty ♪ ♪ Praise forever to the King of kings ♪ ♪ To the King of kings ♪ ♪ In the morning that you rose, all of heaven held its breath ♪

♪ Till that stone was moved for good, for the Lamb it conquered death ♪ ♪ And the dead rose from their tombs, and the angels stood in awe ♪ ♪ For the souls of all who call to the Father are restored ♪ ♪ In the church of Christ was born, and in the Spirit lit the flame ♪ ♪ And now this gospel to the world, it shall not kneel, it shall not faint ♪ ♪ By His blood and in His name ♪ ♪ With His freedom I am free ♪ ♪ For the love of Jesus Christ has resurrected me ♪ ♪ So praise the Father, praise the Son, praise the Spirit ♪ ♪ Three in one, oh God of glory, majesty ♪ ♪ Praise forever to the King, oh praise Him, oh praise Him ♪ ♪ Oh praise Him, oh praise Him, oh praise Him, oh praise Him ♪ ♪ Three in one, oh God of glory, oh majesty ♪ ♪ Praise forever to the King, oh praise Him, oh praise Him ♪ ♪ Praise forever to the King, oh praise Him, oh praise Him ♪ ♪ Praise forever to the King, oh praise Him, oh praise Him ♪ Glory be to the Father, glory to the Son, and glory to the Holy Spirit as it was at the beginning, is now, and will be forever. We worship you in this place. In Jesus' name, everybody said this morning. Amen, amen. One more time, can you clap your hands? One more time, can you lift your voice? Hallelujah. Amen, what a wonderful time of worship. Why don't you do this before you are seated. Greet the people you're next to. We'll keep things rolling today. Well, church, so good to worship with you

already this morning. Here in just a minute, Pastor Will will be out to pick up part seven of our series called Breakthrough. And man, I hope it's been helpful the last few weeks. And so we'll be diving into that here in just a minute. I've got just a couple of updates for you before we continue on with our service. One of which I do wanna let you know, this 945 service, which nobody can ever seem to remember what time our services start on Sunday mornings right now, that has been just a construction adjustment. Now that that lobby's open, here in the next few weeks, we will be going back to our pre-construction times of 8.30, 10, and 11.30, so you can remember them a lot better. Oh, wow, okay. The 8.15 booed. They would do like a 7.30 service now. But 8.30, 10, 11.30, we'll be coming back. We'll let you know exactly what week here in the next, really in the next week or so. But yes, that's where we'll be headed. We're just a few weeks away from Easter. Pastor Will will be sharing with you just a little bit about what that's gonna look like over the next five or six weeks. I do wanna just welcome, though, before we move on with the rest of our service this morning, welcome any of you that are here for the very first time.

Every weekend around here, we have several people that are coming to church on the move for the first time, or maybe it's been the first time in a very long time. Welcome back. We're glad you're here. Do this for us. Text NEW to 23101. That way we can send you a gift card just to say thank you for spending your weekend with us. And then here's what you can do if you would want to come back and learn a little bit more about what it means to follow Jesus in this community. You can text NEXT to 23101. We'd love to host you for a gathering. We have every single weekend around here called Next Move. So again, if you're new, text NEW. And if you'd like to take that next step, text NEXT to 23101. In fact, we're having Next Move next weekend after the 1130 service. It's on the 22nd. We'd love for you to hang out with us. And then I wanna let you know about something that we're doing around here that's, you know, one of the most important things, I should say, that we think we can do as pastors is to help you know your Bible. So on Thursday, February 26th, we're gonna be hosting a Bible masterclass

with a friend of ours named Scott Lindsey, who represents an organization called Logos, which is a software that you can actually have on your phone to help you study your Bible. It is like your Bible app on steroids. And this used to be a software that was a little inaccessible for just the everyday Bible reader and kind of non-minister who's teaching. And this is now a much more accessible product. I would encourage you, if you are interested, don't download it yet, because we wanna be able to offer it to you for free and so for a couple of months. And so Thursday, February 26th, it's seven o'clock right here. in this room, we're gonna be sharing and kind of giving a tutorial on how to use this. So I wanna encourage you, again, come be a part of that Thursday night, February 26th at 7. You know, finally, as we close out our time of worship, we're gonna take a moment to honor the Lord with our giving. If you would like to partner with us financially, there is a card in the seat back in front of you that outlines the three different ways you can partner with us. Those of you that do this regularly, you know that the easiest way to give is to text GIVE to 23101.

You can also go online to COTM.info. And for those of you that wanna give above and beyond to our compassion offering, which supports our care and outreach initiatives, you can do that by texting CO to 23101. And as always, you can support our expansion campaign by texting EXP. That goes to finishing the project that we have out here, but also to preparing for church on the move in the future, as Pastor Witt talked about last week, potentially a fourth church. So we're really excited to be able to continue to see that funded. Thank you for all of your support. I'm gonna pray over the rest of our service this weekend, and then we'll get into the message. Dear Lord, thank you. Thank you for what you're doing in us. Thank you for the opportunity we have to hear the word you've prepared for us this weekend. Thank you that we've just been able to come together this morning, gather, worship, and proclaim your name, Lord Jesus. Thank you again for what you're doing in this community and in us as people. It's in Jesus' name we pray, amen. Good morning. Good to see everybody this weekend. If you're new around here, my name is Witt, and I'm the pastor here,

and we're glad that you're with us this weekend. I also wanna welcome anybody that maybe couldn't join us in person this weekend. We always have people maybe who are traveling, or some folks who are just unable to leave the house right now, or maybe you're in a hospital room, and you're joining us this morning. Welcome to you as well. And then we have two churches in prisons, one in a men's prison, one in a women's prison, and they are part of our church family as well. Can we put our hands together and just say welcome to everybody joining from all over the place? Glad to have you. I'm excited to jump in where we're gonna go this weekend, but before we do, I wanna kinda give you a little bit of a picture of where we're gonna go over the next few weeks. We're really, believe it or not, not that far away from Easter, and I wanna kinda tell you how we're gonna get there. We're gonna spend, really, the next several weeks in this series, because we feel like we have still yet much more to talk about. I've been hearing from so many of you, by the way, that this Breakthrough series has been helpful to you. It's been practical. I've heard stories and testimonies of what God is doing. In fact, just last week, I was standing out

in front of our new front door, which is awesome, by the way, and a young man came in. He kinda made eye contact with me. I could see he wanted to talk to me. Just, you know, you do this long enough, you can tell that guy wants to talk to me. So he came up to me and just began sharing how impactful this series had been. He said, Pastor Whit, this series has been so helpful to me. And then he goes on to tell me that for the first time in 13 years, he hasn't looked at porn since January 1st, and God is doing something in him. Yeah, give him a big hug. I honestly was overwhelmed with emotion because I know what that feels like, and to see hope in his eyes and freedom, it was just awesome. And so I'm hearing stories like that. We're hearing stories like that of just what God is doing right now. Really, really exciting stuff. So we're gonna continue with this series for the next several weeks. Next week, we're gonna talk about friendships because a huge part of who you are is the friends that you hang around with, the people that you surround yourself with

shape you in pretty significant ways. So if you're gonna experience breakthrough or spiritual maturity, that's really what we're talking about formation, becoming like Christ, the people that you spend time with really matter. After that, we're gonna take two weeks and we're gonna talk about fear of the future and regrets in the past. A lot of us get hung up there. These are huge areas for a lot of people. Worry, if you deal with worry, anxiety, worrying about what could be the future, unknown, that kind of stuff. We're gonna talk about that. And then we're gonna talk about regret in the past. A lot of people, we've made decisions, stuff that we wish we wouldn't have, and we carry that regret around like a burden. How do I deal with that properly? And then we're gonna take a week to talk about the Holy Spirit. We really feel like that you can't do a series like this justice if you're not gonna talk about the role that the Holy Spirit plays, because of course, all of this that's happening, this transformation or becoming more like Christ happens by and as a work of the Spirit. And then to kind of close this series out, we're gonna take a week,

and if you remember how we closed out the James series, where we had more of kind of a quieter, contemplative service where we prayed over one another, took communion together, confessed sin, that kind of thing. I heard from so many of you that that was so life-giving and you were asking, can we please sort of build that into our regular ongoing worship practice? We're going to, and so we're gonna do that to kind of close out this series. We'll have a time where we'll just sort of minister to one another and let the Lord minister to us. So that'll be the way we'll end this series. And then the. following week, and you don't have to remember all of this, just kind of give a general road map in your mind. The following weekend will be Palm Sunday, which is the week before Easter, and then it's Easter. Hard to believe, but we are moving rapidly toward Easter weekend. So anyways, that's kind of where we're going. All right, if you have a Bible, grab it. We're gonna be looking at Psalm chapter 42, just one verse. Our text is this weekend, Psalm 42, five. And actually, I'm gonna invite the guys to put it up on the screen, because I want us to say it out loud together. You may have a Bible there in your hands, and maybe it's a different translation.

We're gonna take it from the NIV translation, which is up on the screen, and I would love if you would join me in saying God's word out loud together, so here we go. Why, my soul, are you downcast? Why so disturbed within me? Put your hope in God, for I will yet praise Him, my Savior and my God. This is the word of the Lord, and we all said, thanks be to God. So last couple of weeks, we've been talking about practices, and I especially like Pastor Blake's sermon last weekend, where he was talking about that the choices that you make with your body have a really big spiritual impact. If you haven't heard, or you didn't hear last weekend's sermon, I would strongly encourage you, go back and listen to it. These things are so practical. And he talked about spiritual disciplines that are physical, that have a big spiritual impact. I would love it for you to listen to that. So we talked about physical practices last weekend. This weekend, we're gonna talk about our feelings. How do we appropriately manage and regulate our feelings? Here's the principle that we're basing this off of. You cannot be spiritually mature while remaining emotionally immature. I'm gonna say this again.

You cannot be spiritually mature. Don't tell me that you're a spiritually mature believer if you are also emotionally immature. The two go hand in hand. Spiritual maturity means that you have a good handle on your emotions. And let's be honest. Much of the dysfunction that we all deal with, much of the pain, much of the hurt, much of the brokenness, particularly in relationships, is the result of our inability to properly regulate and handle our own feelings and emotions. So if we're going to become like Christ, we're going to have to learn how to, in a healthy way, process our feelings and emotions. So that's what we're gonna talk about today. Now, before we kind of dive in to the deep end of where we're gonna go this weekend, let's just get a couple of sort of core, key principles out of the way from the beginning. And the first is this, that your feelings are a gift from God. I don't know how you were raised. Some of us have maybe a different relationship to our feelings depending on how we were raised or maybe the faith tradition or the church background that we came from. Some of us, feelings were kind of a no-no. Our feelings were buried in our home or our family culture. They weren't really welcome there.

We didn't know how to process them. Others of us, we come from homes where we wear our feelings on our sleeves or maybe our church tradition was kind of like we haven't sort of had church unless we felt God, right, with our feelings. And so we have maybe different ways of understanding our feelings. What I wanna just affirm from the beginning is that your feelings, all of the emotions, the positive and the negative ones, are a gift from God. They're a part of our image-bearing. We were made in God's image. And believe it or not, or maybe this is a surprise to you, but God is described over and over again through both the Old Testament and the New as having emotions. Let me show you. Genesis 6 puts it like this. And the Lord regretted that he had made man on the earth and it grieved him to his heart. What I want you to see is that the Lord experiences emotions and what we're gonna see is that he experiences the full range and spectrum of emotions. Here, he's described as experiencing grief and sorrow. It grieved him in his heart. Judges chapter two, that the Lord was moved to pity over the suffering of his people. Of course, in the New Testament,

we see that Jesus is often described as being filled with or moved with compassion, right, at the suffering of other people. Well, here we see that the Lord is described that way in the Old Testament as well. Zephaniah chapter three says that the Lord will rejoice over you with gladness. Now we're getting kind of the positive range of emotions. Here, God is said to be rejoicing and glad. If we move into the New Testament, we see Jesus. In this way, he looks around with anger and grieved at their hardness of heart. I don't know if you've ever thought about Jesus as angry before. Maybe in the home that you grew up in, anger wasn't welcome. You couldn't express anger in any real way. All you could do is just kind of stuff it down. But Jesus here is said to experience and feel anger, grieved at the hardness of heart of the people around him. Of course, in John 11, 35, the shortest verse in all the scriptures, we read that Jesus wept. Now there are kind of some different theories as to why Jesus wept. The context around this verse, right, is that Jesus is at the tomb of Lazarus, his dear friend. And Lazarus has died. In fact, he's been dead for several days now. And his sisters, Mary and Martha, are there. And they're grieving. And here it says that Jesus wept.

Why does he cry, knowing, even before he went, that he was going to raise Lazarus from the dead? And I think the answer is that our Lord is so present with us that he is willing, even though he knows what he's going to do, to be present with us in our pain. By the way, this is often the remedy for the negative emotions that we feel. Maybe you've experienced this before. When we have negative emotions, sadness or grief, when we feel negative emotions, what we don't need is someone to come along and fix it. What we need is someone to be with us in the midst of our pain. Often that's really hard, by the way, for husbands and wives. When our wives' husbands share with us negative emotions, what we want to do is just fix it, rather than just saying, I see that. I feel that. I hear that. That must be tough. Jesus is present with us, even though he knows that he's going to raise Lazarus from the dead. We'll talk more about that as we dive a little deeper into this, but I think that's fascinating that he's present with us in the depths of our negative emotions. In Matthew 26, this is in the Garden of Gethsemane. On the night before he is to be crucified, Jesus says to his disciples, my soul. Notice the emotion and the feeling in this verse.

My soul is very sorrowful, even to death. Remain here and watch with me. And then, of course, in the very next chapter, as he's hanging on the cross, he cries out with a loud voice, my God, my God, why have you forsaken me? This is the language of emotion, and the scriptures are filled with it. Our God has emotions, and we were made in his image. The positive ones and the negative ones, we were created with the capacity to feel these things. So emotions in and of themselves are neutral. Now, we're gonna talk a little bit about this and how we ought to process these, but I think first thing we have to kind of get out of the way is that our emotions are a gift from God. Yes, the good ones, but also the negative ones. Now, let's go a little deeper into this. The second thing that I would affirm to you is this, that our feelings have a mind of their own. Now, what do I mean by this? I mean that you have no control over what you feel and when you feel it. Now, I wanna pause here because I know some of you are immediately pushing back on this because what you think you hear me saying is that you have no control over your feelings. I am not saying that. I'm saying that you can't control what feelings come to you and when they come to you. In fact, the whole premise of my sermon

is that you have to take control of your feelings or else your feelings will control you. But what you don't have control over is what feelings come to you and when. Your feelings are not like a light switch. How many of you have found that you can't just snap your fingers and make yourself happy? You can fake happiness, you can fake sadness, but you can't manufacture it. Now, certainly, your actions have something to do with your emotions, but you can't control your emotions at will. It's not like a light switch that you can turn on and off. The way I kinda like to think about my emotions is a bit like Cousin Eddie from Christmas Vacation. You know who I'm talking about here? The crazy cousin who shows up uninvited and unexpected with all of his baggage. This is how our feelings often work. It's like you're just sort of going through your life and all of a sudden, whoa, emotions show up and you don't even know where they came from or why they're there. Give an example of kinda how this played out in my life several years ago. It was after our wedding ceremony. Heather and I were making our way through the lobby, greeting all the people that came to our wedding and as we're kinda passing through and giving hugs and people are offering their congratulations

and all the things that you do at a wedding reception, I see my brother Gabe. Now, let me just tell you, he was my best man, so it's not like I hadn't seen him in years. He was on the stage with me only moments before, but as I'm making my way through the lobby, I see Gabe and when I see him, I am just overwhelmed with emotion. We hug each other and I just lose it and I lose it like big time for a long time. I didn't even know what was going on. I'm just. Hugging my brother, weeping after my wedding in the lobby of the church. It took me a while to figure out what am I feeling? What just happened? And later I would realize that what happened, what I was feeling was both joy and sorrow mixed together. Because while it was the beginning of a new season, it was also the end of a long one. We had grown up together, we'd shared a room together for as long as I could remember. We had spent so much time together and now it was like we knew emotionally that all of that was coming to an end and my emotions could feel it even if my head didn't know what was going on. I was grieving the end of a season. That's how emotions work. They show up when you're not exactly looking for them. You ever wake up in a bad mood and it's like, why?

You ever realize I feel numb, I just don't feel much of anything and you're not sure why, it's just how you feel but you're not sure what to attribute that to? Our feelings are affected by so many different things and we don't get to control exactly when and how they show up. We can manage them but they come and go as they please. This is really important because you're gonna feel some things in your life already. You know that this is true of your own experience. You feel things. It's not wrong to feel it, hear me. It's not wrong to feel it. What's important is what you do with the feeling when it shows up. Now that brings me to the third point and that's this, that your feelings must be managed. If you hear nothing else that I'm gonna say to you today, this is kind of the main point that as the sermon hinges on this idea right here. Your feelings have to be managed. Let me just tell you something. Your feelings make a terrible leader in your life. If you live your life following your feelings, I can promise you you're going to live a life that is miserable and filled with pain and dysfunction. You are not meant to follow your feelings. Feelings are a gift from God, yes, but neither are you made to follow your feelings.

Your feelings have to be managed and I wanna show you from the text that we just read, Psalm 42, how this happens. It's actually really simple, but it's a very helpful framework for how to deal with emotions and this is really what we're gonna spend our time talking about today. So let's look again at Psalm 42, verse five. Look at what the psalmist writes. Why, my soul, are you so downcast? Why so disturbed within me? There's two things going on in this passage. The first is that he's taking the time to recognize what's happening on the inside of him. Now this is huge. So many people don't know how to do this. We just feel something and we react in accordance with that feeling. Our feelings are the leader. We're following our feelings. Not good. Leads to a lot of dysfunction and a lot of brokenness in relationships particularly. We'll see how that works in just a little bit. The first step into properly managing your feelings is to recognize or you might say to acknowledge them. I want you to notice how the psalmist does this. Look at the language again. Why, my soul.

Notice how he's kind of stepping outside of himself and talking to himself. This is called differentiation. It's a psychological concept. The idea is that you can remain you even in the midst of a lot of intense emotion and maybe in the midst of an intense sort of exchange in a relationship. Often that's when emotions get heated. That's when they kind of rise up is in tense exchanges in relationships. Here the psalmist, this is so key, hear this, is able to step outside of himself in the midst of intense emotion and examine himself. Why are you feeling like this? If you could learn to pause when you're feeling things intensely and to begin to ask yourself this question. Why, my soul, are you so angry? Why, my soul, am I feeling such frustration right now? Why, why am I feeling this lingering strange sadness right now? It takes a little bit of time to process these things and to recognize even what is it that I'm feeling. So many of us, we just react rather than taking the time to recognize and acknowledge. Let me give you another story of kind of how this happened in my life. This was several years ago after the passing of my grandfather, my mom's dad.

And I'd grown up going out to West Texas where my grandparents lived. They had a house on a lot of land out there. I was actually born in Canadian Texas, a little small town in the Panhandle. Maybe a few of you know where Canadian is. We would go out there in the summers. We would go out there at Thanksgiving. We would roam this, just all of this acreage, me and my siblings and my cousins. And I had such fond memories of growing up and spending time out there. When my grandfather died, he died of Alzheimer's. He had kind of gone downhill for several years. In fact, in the last few years of his life, he didn't know who any of us were. And if you've kind of walked through that with anybody in your family, maybe had dementia or Alzheimer's, you kind of know what that's like. By the time that he passed, it was like I hadn't been around him as him in quite some time. And so we were out in Texas and Canadian, which is where the service was and where the burial was. And Heather and I are driving back and I'm feeling all of this emotion. And I'm feeling these feelings of sadness. And you might say, well, of course you're feeling sad. Your grandfather had died.

But honestly, I hadn't been terribly close to my grandfather. He was a good man. I loved him. I respected him. But he wasn't the kind of guy you could get like relationally terribly close to. He just came from a generation that didn't allow for much of that. And so while I loved him and respected him, I wasn't close to him. And quite frankly, the loss of relationship wasn't really that much because we didn't spend much time together. So I found myself as I'm driving back, I'm feeling all of this sadness and I'm asking myself the question, what am I feeling? What is it that I'm grieving? I mean, I know I miss my grandfather, but there's something more going on here. And as I started to process it and think about it and to do exactly what the psalmist is doing here, why am I feeling so sad? What is it that's going on on the inside of me? What I recognized was that I was grieving the loss or the ending of a period of my life where we would go out and spend family gatherings together, where my cousins would be, that I was never gonna go back to Texas.

And it was illogical because he hadn't lived there for years. They were living in Tulsa at the time that he died. And yet I'm feeling all of this grief. I'm grieving the end of some really happy memories knowing that I'll probably never go back to that house. And I long to go back there. I'm processing sadness and grief. This is the beginning of learning to handle your emotions. Let me just tell you, you try to ignore your emotions, they will dominate you. You cannot ignore them. They will not go away. It's like a kind of a horror film. You ever seen one where they kind of keep trying to kill the killer and he just keeps coming back to life and they can never get rid of him or maybe like the shark in Jaws, no matter how many times they blow him up, there's a Jaws one and a two and a three and a four. It's illogical how the shark keeps showing up, chasing down the same family. And yet this is how horror movies go, right? That's kind of how your feelings are. You can try to stuff them down. You can try to kill it. You can try to get rid of them. It will keep coming back and it comes back bigger and worse. You have to recognize and acknowledge them. I'm feeling sad.

Even if your feelings are illogical, we'll talk a little bit more about that in a second, but that's the first step, is you just have to recognize them. What are you feeling? Number two, what we wanna see is that he is going to direct his feelings. And let's go back to the text. Look at what he does. Why, my soul, are you downcast? This is recognition and acknowledgement. Why so disturbed within me? Notice the next line. Put your hope in God. He's directing his feelings. He's leading himself. How many of you know that you're going to have to lead yourself? If you wanna be spiritually mature and emotionally mature, you can't just let your feelings run wild. You're going to have to lead yourself. That's what the psalmist is doing. He's giving himself directions. Put your hope in God. He's leading himself. And this is how emotional maturity works. You recognize the feeling, and then you direct that feeling to kind of its appropriate end, where it should go.

Now, I wanna break this down in detail and kind of give you some food for thought around this. It quite frankly is gonna be probably a little bit overwhelming. It's not important that you understand all of this, but I wanna show you a chart that kind of walks us through feelings and how we should or where we put them. And this is, like I said, it's gonna be a lot to take in. And some of this is you're gonna look at and be like, I don't even know what some of that means. It's okay, I don't need you to memorize. And by the way, Pastor Casey Shirley and I, he's part of our spiritual formation team, and she's getting a doctorate in all of this right now. We're gonna talk about this in depth tomorrow on my podcast, it'll drop on Tuesday. So if you want more about all of this, we're gonna talk about it in depth. But I wanna just kind of right now, high level, walk you through this. This is a chart that comes from a guy named Chip Dodd, and in his chart there are eight feelings. I've just reduced it down to four that are common, I think all of us can sort of relate to and understand, but helps us understand that we have to direct our feelings in one direction or the other. So I want you to notice here in the middle, we have all the feelings, fear, hurt, anger, sadness.

I say all the feelings, it's not all the feelings, but it's a good starting point, right? We have our feelings. Our feelings can move in one direction or the other, and I want you to notice at the top, what's important is the direction that they go. When you take your feelings, when your feelings lead you into isolation, and this is often how we process our feelings, in fact, always, when we process our feelings in an unhealthy way, this is where they always lead, isolation, doing it by yourself, taking it inward. And I want you to notice the outcome, these yellow words over here are the outcomes, both negative and positive. And I want you to see the negative outcomes, rage, revenge, destructive behavior, demands, right? This is how feelings, when they're turned inward, and only inward, this is where this leads, to these kinds of destructive, negative outcomes. Conversely, over here, what we find is that when we turn our feelings back toward, and this is really the key principle, back into relationship, it's what we see here. When we turn them back into relationship, look at what we wind up with, faith and wisdom, healing and courage, passion, acceptance, right? These are all good outcomes. We're going to feel things, that's not in question. Feelings are going to come where you direct them.

And I want you to notice what the psalmist is doing, interestingly, is turning his feelings, his sadness, his despair, back into relationship with God. And when you process your feelings in an unhealthy way, here's what happens, you isolate them, they turn inward. It's interesting to me, Martin Luther kind of framed sin like this, he said, sin is humanity curved in on itself. It's humanity, your human nature, turned inward. Well, this is how we process our feelings in an unhealthy way, we turn them inward. Our fear becomes control and anxiety. Our hurt becomes resentment. Our anger gets depressed and stuffed down. That doesn't mean like clinical depression, that means just ignore it, I'm not angry, I'm not mad about anything. Sadness becomes self-pity, it turns inward. I want you to notice that on the other side of this, we have an opportunity to take our feelings back into relationship. So let's look at a couple of these. Fear, for example, I'm feeling afraid of something. What do I do with that? I can let that anxiety overtake me, I can let it result in kind of my need to sort of control everything. By the way, I find myself doing this in my life throughout the years by trying to kind of control my environment, when I feel like I can't control

my inner life, I try to control my outer life. You ever find yourself just cleaning feverishly and you don't know why? They're just trying to organize your world, trying to clean everything up. I remember I was about to have a tense conversation with my dad and he was coming over to my house and I was really nervous about it and I was waiting for him to get there and I just found myself like manically going around just straightening everything up and getting everything clean. I recognized in that moment, wait a minute, this is like not good. I'm trying to sort of organize my outer world so I can feel good about my inner life and I'm like you know what, no, I'm not doing this, I'm sitting in the mess, there's a hose in the yard, it's messy around here, who cares, this is who I am, come on in, dad. This is what our feelings do, they drive us to these behaviors when we don't know what to do with what we're feeling inside. Take hurt, for example. Some of us are more wired up maybe relationally, emotionally to experience hurt more than others. Your temperament has a lot to do with the way you experience emotions. In other words, some of us are more in touch with our feelings than others.

I'll just hold my hand up right here and now and tell you I am not that in touch with my feelings. I'm more of a detached personality. You probably gathered that about me by now. My feelings kind of show up like I don't know exactly how to handle them, I feel very strange. Some of you are very comfortable with your emotions, you're used to them, you're much closer to them. My wife would be one of these people. She's got a stronger, more, I don't know, attuned sense to what she's feeling. But that also results in the possibility of more pain, feeling hurt. When that hurt turns inward, and you don't know how to process it in relationship, in other words, it moves away from relationship and back toward isolation, here's what it winds up with, resentment. You begin resenting the person that's hurt you, and then that turns into sort of relational, sort of we're acting out in relationship. We're maybe freezing you out, right, which is to kind of cut you off relationally, to cut off feelings, to cut off warmth so that you can kind of sense or feel that something's not right here. This is not a healthy way, by the way, to deal with your hurt, and yet we do this all the time because we don't know where to take our feelings. What should we do? Well, instead of taking our hurt inward and trying to process it by ourself, what needs to happen when you're hurt? You need to call attention to it, ouch, that hurt me. So many, I'm blown away by how many of us grown adults have no capacity to sit down with another human being and say, that hurt, and just to process it. We don't even know how to do it. You want to know why?

Because we didn't experience it growing up. No one showed us how to do it. Even though we have verses that say, when your brother is sinned against you, go to him. Sit down with him. We're terrible at this. We violate the scriptures all the time. We talk to everybody else but the person that we have a beef with. What are we supposed to do? Sit down and call attention to it. If you don't, it winds up in bitterness, resentment, unforgiveness, and by the way, the scriptures have some really harsh things to say about going down that road. So what do you do? You call attention to it so that out of that conversation can come healing and courage. Now, some of you are like, wait a minute. The person that hurt me is dead or I can't sit down with them. They don't want to sit down with me. What then do I do? Well, the Psalms are filled with the Psalms of someone who's been hurt bringing their pain before the Lord. Some of you think God doesn't want to hear your negative emotions. In fact, some of you, the reason that your prayer life is so weak and thin and quite frankly meaningless is that you hold back your real feelings from God. You think he can't handle your anger. You think he can't handle your bitterness and frustration. In fact, I'm convinced that there are many of God's people who their real problem and their real anger is at God but they won't admit it because they feel like that would be wrong. Can I tell you the whole book of Job is a book about a guy who's mad at God and God doesn't get mad at him for it. God can handle your questions, your emotions, your anger. It is not a lack of faith to say, what's up, God?

Why did you allow this? Do you know God can handle the raw, unfiltered emotions that you feel? Take them back into relationship instead of trying to bury it in your heart and then watching it come out in bitterness and unforgiveness and resentment. It doesn't work when you try to deal with it on your own. So what we do is we need to direct our feelings back toward relationship instead of into isolation. That's how we're to handle these things. Now, let me kind of walk this out for you. How? What relationships? Where do I take these feelings to? I want to give you three allies that the Lord has brought in his grace and mercy alongside of us where we can take our feelings, the good, the bad, the ugly. Where do we direct our feelings back and how do we do it into relationship? Three places. Number one is this, we go to his word. Now, why do we need to turn to the word of God with our feelings? Let me tell you why. Because your feelings do not always give you the clearest picture of reality. How many of you have found that your feelings tend to exaggerate things a little bit? You ever found in a heated argument how you use absolute terms? Well, you never or you always. You ever found that in an argument with your spouse? You tend to resort to absolutes when it's not true, but that's how it feels. And that's how your feelings work. They work in absolutes. They move to extremes and they go there really easily. So what we need is truth to balance out the kind of false view that our feelings sometimes give us. Our feelings alert us to things. And sometimes what they alert us to is genuine.

There's genuine. There's a genuine pain there. There's something that needs to be addressed. Sometimes we're just flat out wrong, and we need the truth of Scripture to correct us. So I'm reminded of this story from 1 Kings 19. If you were here last week, Pastor Blake mentioned it as well. It's the story of Elijah. Elijah was a prophet, and he just had this showdown with the prophets of Baal, these prophets who worshiped a false god, and basically they had this big showdown. Whoever's god shows up and brings fire down from heaven onto this sacrifice, he is God, and the others are gonna die. Of course, Yahweh is the one that wins the battle of the gods, and all of the prophets of Baal are killed. Well, Jezebel, the evil queen, is angry about this, and she puts a bounty on Elijah's head. If he's not dead by this time tomorrow, right? That kind of thing. And so Elijah is on the run, and it must have been a really exhausting season for Elijah. He's kind of coming to the end of his sort of physical stamina, his emotional stamina. He's just really feeling it. In fact, his first prayer and words to God when he sort of shows up in the wilderness in this cave

is just kill me now. My life is over. It's not worth living anymore. He's just, he's at the end of himself, and in the midst of this whole kind of dialogue that he has back and forth with the Lord twice, he says this. He says, I have been very zealous for the Lord God Almighty. I want you to notice kind of the extreme language of emotion going on here, because I think we can all relate to this. I've been so zealous. I've given everything to you, Lord, and the Israelites, they have rejected your covenant. They've torn down your altars. They've put your prophets to death with the sword, and I, some translations say, even I, am the only one left. As if woe is me, there's nobody else. I'm the last faithful man standing. Everybody else has turned to this false God. Well, it's kind of funny, because you read just a couple verses later in verse 17 that the Lord's like, yeah, actually, there's 7,000 that haven't bowed the knee to Baal. Yet for Elijah, it feels like he's the only one. By the way, husbands, wives, and friends as well, can I just tell you, oftentimes, when your friends or your spouse

wants to share negative emotion with you, it's gonna come out flawed. Some of you who are more kind of logically oriented, you're gonna hear the complaints of your spouse. Well, it feels like you never, whatever, feeling like you always this, and you're gonna be like, actually, and you're gonna bring out your evidence. You ever tried this? How many of you found that doesn't work? How many of you found your evidence, you can't logic away your spouse's feelings? They don't go away just because you present to them what you think is clear evidence to the contrary. So what do we need to do? We share that with them. They hear and acknowledge, but here, what needs to happen is a word needs to happen in our heart, and this is really something that only the Lord can do. So I turn to scripture in the midst of kind of overwhelming emotion, because my emotions don't always tell me the truth. The emotion or the feeling, hear this, is honest. I'm honestly feeling sad, or I'm honestly feeling hurt, but that doesn't mean that your view of this situation is 100% accurate. So what do I need? I need a little truth. I need to go to the scriptures and hear what the Lord says.

I often turn to him, and this happens a lot for believers, where we feel bad about ourselves, maybe there's regret that we feel, or decisions that we've made that make us feel unworthy in the presence of God, and so we kind of retreat. It's funny, we do the same thing that Adam and Eve did. We hide from the Lord. Rather than returning to relationship, we wanna move into hiding and into isolation. That's what we do. But what we need to do is return to the Lord, and how do we do that? Through hearing the truth of the scriptures, realizing that I am not righteous before the Lord because I've been really good this week. I'm righteous, and I stand welcomed in his presence, not because I've been good, but because Jesus was perfect. I am the righteousness of God and Christ, and this is a gift of grace that I receive by faith. You know you have to remind yourself of that. You have to remind yourself that you're forgiven. You have to remind yourself that your relationship with God is on the basis of grace. We have to preach the gospel to ourselves because our feelings have a tendency to lie to us, to not give us the whole story, so we need the truth of scripture to balance out our feelings. Number two, we go to his church. Now, that's what this is all around you.

Right now, you are surrounded by brothers and sisters in Christ, and Galatians 6 puts it like this, that we are to carry each other's burdens. Stop and think about this. This is a command, to carry one another's burdens. Now, how many of you have found? that it is easier to give help than it is to ask for it. We're fine helping others, but it's really hard for us to ask for help. So many of us have been shaped by kind of our culture's obsession with self-sufficiency. We sort of have a John Wayne Christianity where basically we wanna be completely self-sufficient, not needing anybody else's help, but we can come to someone else's rescue if necessary. But it's weak. It's weak if we need help, not so. The scriptures describe a community in the New Testament that is interdependent, where they depend on one another. That means being vulnerable enough to share your need with someone that you're in relationship with. Now, this isn't everybody in the church. Not everybody needs to know the deepest things that are going on in your life, but there ought to be a few people that do. And by the way, there ought to be a few people that don't. Some of you, you're sharing your anxieties and your fears and your worries with your kids. Your kids don't need to hear that stuff.

Your kids don't need to be the ones that you are processing your deep emotions with. They are not able to handle the hard things that you're facing. You need brothers and sisters in Christ that are in a place where they can bear the things that you wanna share with them. Jesus himself said to his disciples, I got a lot to tell you, you're not able to handle it right now. So our kids don't need to be the place where we're processing this. Husbands, men, your wife doesn't need to be the place where you're processing your battle with lust. It's not gonna help her in her self-image. You need a brother in Christ that can stand beside you. By the way, we make space for that at Church on the Move. We have a whole group called Catheros, a bunch of brothers united, trying to walk out of lust and pornography addiction. But your wife isn't the place to kind of process all of that. So we need people in the appropriate relationships to be able to share what it is that we're going through. I have guys in the congregation that I sit down with, and I talk about things that I'm going through, things that I'm feeling, the aspects of our marriage, stuff that's so helpful just to process with another person, because this is what we're made to do,

to return to relationship, rather than allowing that anger or that hurt to turn or to calcify into bitterness and resentment. I share it with a friend who's able to help me to process it in a healthy and God-honoring kind of way. And then lastly, he's given us his very spirit. Now we're gonna take a whole week and talk about the role of the Holy Spirit in this kind of spiritual formation that we're journeying towards, becoming more like Christ. But for now, I just wanna touch on it in this way. Jesus said this in John 16. He said, nevertheless, I tell you the truth, it is to your advantage that I go away. That's a staggering statement to think that it would be better for us, better for the disciples if Jesus were not physically present. And yet, that's what he said. For if I don't go away, the helper, here he's referring to the Holy Spirit, that's who the helper is. The helper will not come to you, but if I go, I will send him to you. I like the way the King James Version puts it. He is the comforter here. There are times in your life where emotions are going to hit you and they're going to hit you suddenly.

You're gonna be overwhelmed by a moment and you're going to need someone to turn to. Maybe you won't have access to a friend in that moment. Maybe a verse doesn't come exactly to mind. Maybe you need to turn and talk to someone that will never leave you or forsake you, a friend who sticks closer than a brother. That's who the Holy Spirit can be. The very presence of God residing on the inside of you. Let me share with you a story about how this played out in my life just last Saturday. So last weekend, many of you guys know, was our Forming Men men's conference, and it was incredible. I really didn't have much to do with putting the whole thing together. I was aware of it. Pastor Lee, really, and the Brotherhood team were the ones that put the conference together. And we had a couple of guests from out of town, Jefferson Bethke and John Tyson, who were coming in to speak. I'd never really heard Jeff Bethke speak before, and it was great to get to meet him, but John Tyson, I knew. At least I knew of. I'd met him once before, but I'd listened to plenty of sermons. And he had spoken at my Wheaton,

one of my graduate courses. He came in and did a session for the group of us on revival. It was phenomenal. And so I kind of knew him from a distance, and I had a lot of respect for him. So I was planning my sermon, and quite frankly, I felt pretty good about it. I was taking what I'd taught the week before and just adapting it for this men's conference. I had embellished a few things. Tweaked a few bits of the sermon, but largely I'd preached it the weekend before, so I felt pretty good about it coming in. But when it came time for me to speak, on Saturday, I'm standing over here, and all of a sudden, just kind of out of nowhere, uninvited, I wasn't looking forward, I just began to feel all of these nerves. Now, I don't really get nervous to speak anymore. Like, I've been doing this for a long time, and I don't get butterflies every week when I come out here to speak. But that day, I was nervous, because there was someone in the room who I really respected, and if I'm being honest, I wanted to impress him. I know that's kind of like a petty thing, but I'm human, and nothing will kind of reveal, by the way, your insecurities, like standing up in front of a large crowd of your peers in a spotlight, and you're supposed to have something important and meaningful to say. And so here I am, feeling all of these butterflies and these nerves, this nervous energy, like I can actually feel it in my body. It doesn't happen often, but I'm standing over here feeling it, and I know what this leads to, because I've been down this road so many times before, especially early on when I would speak. You have no idea how vulnerable it is to stand up here, especially when you feel like you're not doing good. How many times have I had what I would just call like an out-of-body experience, where I'm standing up here talking to you, words are coming out of my mouth, but my mind is over here in Simon Cowell mode, and I'm looking at myself going, this is the stupidest sermon that anyone has ever preached. Look at them. That guy's asleep. You're boring them to tears. Why did you think this was going to be good or interesting? Oh my gosh, you should have prepared so much more. I know what that feels like. I'm preaching to you, but I'm criticizing myself, and I know that when I'm doing that, I'm not able to serve you, because really, if I'm trying to please you or please a well-known pastor or speaker that happens to be in the room, I'm not actually serving you. I'm serving me, and it is so easy to do when you're preaching, because it puts you in such a vulnerable and insecure position. So here I am, about to speak, and I'm feeling all of this, and I don't have time to sit down for a counseling session with one of my brothers who's just over on the next row. I gotta figure out how to deal with this, so I just turn right there in the moment to the only one that I could turn to, and that is the Lord. Lord, I need you.

Here's how my prayer went. I said, Lord, I'm feeling nervous right now. I'm scared to get up there. I can feel all of this churning in me. I wanna please John Tyson, and I know where that leads. I know that that is not the best that you have for these men. I'm here, actually, to serve them and to honor you, and yet my feelings are leading me here, and I don't wanna do that. Would you go up there with me? Would you just, literally, I asked him, would you walk onto the stage with me? And can I tell you, he did. I walked up here, and there were so many men in the room that were gracious enough to give me a standing ovation. That didn't hurt. I felt so much better, and from the moment I began to speak, all of that nervous energy was gone, and I was able to love and serve the men who were there that morning and preach what the Lord put on my heart to preach. Turning to the comforter. There are gonna be moments where emotions are going to hit you, and you're not gonna have time for a counseling session, can I tell you? You have the counselor on the inside of you. You can turn and say, Lord, I need you right now. I'm feeling whatever it is, and I don't know what to do with it. Would you help me? Would you be present with me? And I can tell you, he will. You have access to the living God on the inside of you, the Holy Spirit. So what are you gonna do this week? Here's my advice to you, my homework for all of us, two easy things. Recognize and direct. What feelings are you feeling? You're gonna feel feelings, and you're not gonna get to control what feelings come and when they come. You will have a choice in how you'll handle them. Recognize them, pause. Some of you, maybe for the first time in your life, you're going to try to step outside of yourself.

It'll be uncomfortable. You've not done this before. You've lived a life where you've just responded to your feelings so readily that you're even gonna find yourself slipping into that same old pattern of behavior. But remember what I'm saying. Recognize what you're feeling. Step outside and ask God for help. yourself, hang on a second, why am I feeling frustrated right now? Why am I feeling angry right now? Why am I feeling sad right now? Ask yourself these questions and then direct them back into relationship. Do you need to make things right with somebody? Do you need to sit down and have an honest conversation when you can do so without your emotions taking over? Do you need to come before the Lord and say, Lord I need help with this? You recognize and you direct and which direction do you direct? Back into relationship. You may fumble your way through this. It may be messy at first but if you're moving back toward relationship, you're moving toward health and processing the emotions that God has given you in a God-honoring way that leads to life and connection instead of destruction and breakdown. Let's pray. Father, thank you so much for such a practical word. I love that you care about even these so subtle and practical nuances of our lives. You formed us. You knit us together. You're the one that gave us these feelings. Thank you for giving us the roadmap into how to deal with them. I pray Lord that as we walk out of here today and go about our week that you would help us begin to recognize the emotions and feelings that maybe for so long we've buried inside, that we've tried to deal with on our own. Help us to recognize what they are by your Holy Spirit. Give us discernment but also Lord help us to direct them back to truth where that's needed, to community and relationship where maybe things need to be made right or we just need some counsel or encouragement and we can sit down with a brother or sister or Lord you would be so present with us to meet us in the midst of our emotional entanglement and to meet us there with your presence to

walk us through in a way that honors you and glorifies you. In Jesus name we pray and everybody said amen. Well as we close today our prayer team's gonna be down front lining the front of the stage if you have a need. I know that so many of us when we come to church we're carrying all sorts of different burdens. We just talked about it. Carry one another's burdens. Part of the way we do that as a church is we have a prayer team down front. We would love to be able to pray with you about whatever it is that you may be going through and hear me maybe you're processing kind of where you're at in your faith journey. Am I a Christian? Have I just recently become a Christian or what would it look like for me to become a real God-honoring Jesus-pursuing Christian? Can I tell you our prayer team wants to help you figure out what that looks like as well. We're not here to sign you up for anything or to get all of your information and harass you. We want to give you actually a resource that tells you what it looks like to become a follower of Jesus and what your next steps are. So if that's you at the close of the service super easy you come forward and just say hey I'm sort of processing where I'm at in my walk with Christ and they will walk you through that. We would love the opportunity to do that. Stand to your feet. We're gonna close with this blessing out of Numbers chapter 6 and we like to say it out loud together so it's on the screen and you can join with me as we close. Here we go. The Lord bless you and keep you. The Lord make his face to shine upon you and be gracious to you. The Lord lift up his countenance upon you and give you peace. God bless you. I love you. You're dismissed. We'll see you next week. ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪