Do your emotions ever get the better of you? Grab them by the scruff of the neck and lead them to the Psalms!
I’m Joni Eareckson Tada with a strong word about your emotions.
And I will speak from experience here because I live with suffering; every morning, I wake up to afflictions. And I mean, every morning. I don’t know the last time when I did not feel pain. Hard pain. It’s always with me. And it can wear me down. It can erode my joy and eat away at my contentment. Like acid, pain can corrode my peace of mind. So easily, it can do this. So easily, I can turn inward, I can feel my soul shrivel and become small and sullen. And if I don’t watch it, my emotions quickly go south and I find myself heading down the dark, grim road to depression. And not just depression, my feelings so easily deflate my faith. Oh, friend. That’s what happens if, for a minute, I allow my emotions to rule the day.
And maybe I’m describing you. Maybe you find yourself caving in emotionally, allowing yourself to be led down the road to discouragement and into a miry pit of sadness and self-pity. Well, if so, let me tell you what I do with those unruly emotions that keep insisting that they know the truth. You know, those emotions that think they know better than God, so quick to doubt and fall into discouragement, they are. Well, here’s what I do – and I picture this in my mind’s eye, okay – I grab those emotions by the scruff of the neck and I stop them from wandering down that dark path. I picture myself turning my feelings around – I gotta herd them back up the path toward Gospel hope. I lead my feelings to God, not away from him. I push my feelings into the pages of Scripture to give them a good dose of the truth.
Like Psalm 22: here, the psalmist says: "But you, [O] Lord, do not be far from me. You are my strength; come quickly to help me. Deliver me from the sword… rescue me… save me… For you have not despised or scorned the suffering of the afflicted ones; you have not hidden your face from [me], but have listened to his cry for help." And I lead my feelings to consider Psalm 86. I muster my emotions and I say to the Lord, "There is no one like you among the gods, O Lord, nor are there any works like yours." I tell my emotions to join me in reciting Psalm 18, "I love you, O Lord, my strength. The Lord is my rock, my fortress and my deliverer; my God is my rock in whom I take refuge. He is my shield and the horn of my salvation, [he’s] my stronghold." And then I show my emotions a lot of other Psalms as well.
You know, it was Akshay Rajkumar who stated that, “our feelings are not a problem to be fixed, a sound to be silenced… lights to follow, voices to trust, or thrones we must lay our crowns before. [Emotions] are quite simply a power to be harnessed… When our emotions get the best of us, God may get the worst of us.” And I could not agree more. Our emotions are a power to be harnessed, so let’s not allow our feelings to get the best of us, no. Our emotions will try to master us and say, “I know the truth about this, I know the truth here,” but don’t you believe them. Master those emotions by going to the Psalms. And remember that the Psalms are not simply the prayer book of the Bible. They are the prayer book of Jesus. He quoted from them more than any other book, praying them in his hour of need. So, friend, let’s you and I join our Savior and pray the Psalms in every hour of need. Let’s not allow our feelings to lead us into doubt and despair; instead, let’s lead those feelings back to the Word, more specifically, to the Bible’s prayer book: the book of Psalms.
© Joni and Friends