Untangle Your Emotions预览

“The Power of the Truth”

Everything that God has placed inside us is for the purpose of drawing us near to Him, to trust Him. Take away the childlike fear and we lose our childlike inclination to pull close and ask Him for help. Take away excitement at an incredible meal and we lose our awe and wonder at the gifts of God. Take away hope and we never look to heaven. Take away peace and we never rest in God.

Jesus said, “If you abide in my word, you are truly my disciples, and you will know the truth, and the truth will set you free. . . . So if the Son sets you free, you will be free indeed” (John 8:31, 36).

Certainly, Jesus is speaking of Himself here: the truth of who He is as the means and the way of salvation. The ultimate freedom we need is to be freed from the eternal consequences of our sin. And right now, that is available to you if you trust Jesus as the only means for salvation.

But it doesn’t stop there. The Bible is filled with stories of peo­ple who worked out that hope and truth and freedom with their emotions, with how they felt. The truth that sets us free begins with the truth that we are sad or hurting and desperately and urgently need help.

Paul hated Christians, was murdering them, until Christ met him and rescued him. That extreme emotion turned to impas­sioned grace and fervor to reach the world with the hope of Jesus.

King David poured out his guts throughout the book of Psalms. The beauty of David and the Psalms is the permission to feel it all. David had full confidence that God could handle all his emo­tions, even the ones that caused him to doubt that God is good and that God still loves him. He saw injustice go unpunished and he was ticked!

He felt safe enough with God to wrestle it all out. Do you?

It’s freeing when we tell the truth!

If you were to share your most powerful emotions with God in prayer today, what would those emotions be?