[Transcript of “A 5 minute cuppa” published by Horley Baptist Church on YouTube[1], April 2021]
Hi everyone, welcome to ‘a five minute cuppa’. This is the place that you can come any time of day, just for five minutes, to relax, put your feet up, have a cuppa and listen to a few words to help you grow in your relationship with God.
Today we’re going to have a think about our emotions and the importance of these in helping us in our relationship with God and in our two-way communication with him. We are made in God’s image, naturally built with the capacity to feel a whole range of emotions yet so often we do not allow ourselves to feel these or, if we do, we don’t allow ourselves to show these to others.
If we give ourselves time to think about this, it’s pretty easy to see where this comes from. Particularly in the UK, it is very much part of our culture to refrain from showing emotion; the stiff upper lip is seen as a strength and to show emotion a sign of weakness.
We can bring this into our church culture too where we are especially resistant to showing negative emotions. We can think that we should always be joyful because of what Jesus has done for us and that somehow showing we are down or miserable shows a lack of faith. We worry that people may think that having Christ in us doesn’t really make a difference to the way we manage life. The result of this is that we hide our feelings from ourselves and from others and from God.
This can lead to a lack of real honesty in our relationships and also disrupts our prayer life as often our motivation to bring people and situations before God comes from a deep-seated emotional place.
It’s always good to look at the life of Jesus when we’re trying to get to grips with something the Holy Spirit may be talking to us about. We don’t have to look far to see some amazing examples of Jesus showing deep, strong and heartfelt emotion. In the garden of Gethsemane just before Jesus was arrested and crucified he was plunged into agonizing sorrow, so much so that his sweat became as great drops of blood falling down to the ground. A few weeks earlier, just before he raised his friend Lazarus from the dead, he wept openly at the situation before him.
One thing we can be sure about is that Jesus fully understands deep anguish and sadness. That’s good to know because it’s part of our human condition that we will face deep sorrow at some time in our lives. The loss of a loved one, a parent, maybe even a child or there might be a breakdown of an important relationship, the effect on a person or family of a devastating illness, a disability or a mental health problem. We can’t escape at least some of these things. We can however prepare for them.
I found a way to do this is to be aware of how much God sees and knows and cares for us in our saddest times. In the Psalms it tells us that God keeps track of our sorrows, that he collects our tears in a bottle and records each one in a book. What an amazing picture to bring to mind whenever we find ourselves in an overwhelming situation. Even when those around us are unaware or do not understand the situation we are in, we can be sure that our heavenly Father knows the complete picture and is right with us in it.
You may be listening to this and find yourself facing such a situation. I would encourage you to open up your heart to the Holy Spirit. You may find that you have no words and you can’t even open your mouth to talk to the Father. That’s okay. In these times our feelings and the tears we shed act as our prayers; no explanation is needed, He knows. When I’ve been in this place I’ve found an amazing thing happens. In that place of openness the Father holds me and somehow I find I’m aware of his presence and I’m given a strength beyond my own resources.
I’m convinced that this is available for all of us and over and over again whenever we need it. Please don’t harden yourself as a survival mechanism, throw that stiff upper lip out of the window where it belongs and allow God to show you his Father heart.
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[1] YouTube link: Sit Well with Emotion
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Contributed by Sandy Turner; © the Author
