Feelings can really wear you out! An emotion such as anxiety can create sensory sensitivity or muscle tension. Anger can cause wear-and-tear on your jaws, heart, and spine. Sadness can lead to physical, social, and relational apathy. Even having a lot of feelings about your faith can produce a type of “holy restlessness” or confusion. And of course experiencing trauma can leave you stunned or panicked by your feelings. The world wants you to believe that your feelings are always significant, that your feelings dictate your identity, or that you have to acquiesce to your feelings. A most helpful way to recover rest when your feelings are yanking you all over the place is to surrender and exchange them for sanctified emotions, moods, and actions with the help of your Lord.

Decide Who’s in Charge

Truth

You can be a very self-aware person and still miss the mark on fully understanding, interpreting, or managing your feelings. Only God is a very present help because He is more present in your feelings than even you can be. (Psalms 27, 29, 46, 68)

Practical Application Ideas

• Feelings were created by your heavenly Father as a way to be in communion with His heart. Take your feelings to Him and His Word with the expectation that He will console you and guide you towards Christ-like feeling and behaving.
• Settle into your proper place as His child and let Him teach you about you. Psalm 131 provides a perfect structure for this humble posture.
• Read this article (click here) on emotional intelligence and ask someone to hold you accountable for having emotional self-control.
• Practice commanding your feelings to line up to truth and reason, ordering your heart and mind toward what is right and good. You can do this by:
  • Knowing what the Word says
  • Preparing in advance for delicate situations
  • Having a strategy in place for healing and for rebounding when you get hurt, angry, or stressed
  • Learning how to grieve and accept hardship
  • Attending to your emotions in controlled settings and not letting them control you in uncontrolled settings

Don’t Compare or You’ll Despair

Truth

Comparing yourself to others, even envying non-Christians can break your heart and eventually turn you into a fool. (Psalm 73)

Practical Application Ideas

• Be brutally honest with yourself to determine if social media is causing you to “compare and despair.” Consider unfollowing certain accounts, fasting from social media, or having someone keep you accountable with your thought-life and mood state after you’ve spent time on social media.
• Spend time in Psalm 73 so that the Lord can show you where you are sinning against Him by comparing yourself to others. The psalmist sees how his steps nearly slipped due to envy. He was so confused and distressed he couldn’t make any sense out of anything until he met with God about it. He was desperate for God’s counsel and restoration. He needed to trust that God is responsible for how everyone lives. The more he drew near, the more he received strength, peace, and a renewed ability to praise Him.

Practice the Art of Concentration

Truth

Your feelings are going to want to brood upon all the hurt and terror you can imagine, but you can fix your gaze toward heaven and see the majestic Lord is there for you and will save you. (Isaiah 33:17-22, Hebrews 12:2)

Practical Application Ideas

• Make a chart where you can give each of your concerns its own column. Under each heading, list out solutions you are working toward and how you see God’s faithfulness. Each time the problem comes to mind, determine to think on the progress you see written in the column instead of the concern itself, and your feelings will fall into line with those productive, grateful thoughts. You can take a logical approach even to irrational emotions!
• Determine to focus on a personal growth area rather than letting your feelings cause you to have a disjointed, earthly-minded, or selfish mindset. This could include memorizing Scripture, learning something new in Scripture that has always confused you, or writing out prayers for someone you’re concerned about.
• Click here to review last week’s article on Finding Rest For Your Mind.
• Choose reading that takes up your entire brain. Make selections such as Puritan prayers or the King James translation of the Bible, classics like Shakespeare, or a mystery series when you need to retrain your brain to concentrate on one valuable, productive thing at a time.
• Practice ordering and organizing each day so that you and the Holy Spirit (not just your feelings) decide when you will work, rest, feel, recover, grow, serve, etc.

Commit to His Grace in the Present

Truth

It is not fitting for a Christian – in beliefs, thoughts, and feelings – to be undiscerning and lack awareness. (Romans 1:28, 31a, Ephesians 4:14-16)

Practical Application Ideas

• Don’t fall for the lie that your loved ones have to understand you and all your feelings for you to be emotionally strong. This prioritization of feelings is a trap that tends to create even more troubling thoughts and feelings. Sharing with one another what God is doing to protect and teach you and how He is changing you will be far more satisfying than only discussing feelings, and will actually draw you closer to others. Think about growing in character and Christ-likeness more than being understood in all of your feelings.
• Don’t be schemed by false philosophies that recommend distracting yourself from your troubles by spending endless amounts of time dreaming, fantasizing, and escaping. Facing your feelings with the Lord will lead to true rest and freedom to keep moving forward.
• Feeling numb is just as much of a feeling as sadness or anger. Tend to your numbness in the same way you do any other emotion. This category of numbness also applies to self-protecting and being overly private about your feelings when accountability is more appropriate.

Summary

Keep practicing resting your feelings in Jesus using the ideas from this article, from this series on rest, and from other ideas that He provides for you. Before you know it, you’ll realize you’ve left behind the old, distracted, frazzled version of yourself and you’ll find more times of being able to be restored, productive, and glorious to all those around you. And even when you’re worn out, you’ll have God’s “go-to’s” that are actually restful and restorative.

More to Come about Rest

The next article in this series on Rest will present how to have rest in your relationships.

Prayer & Blessing

My life is consumed by anguish…my strength fails…I am the utter contempt of my neighbors and an object of dread to my closest friends. Those who see me on the street flee from me. I am forgotten…I have become like broken pottery…For I hear many whispering…they conspire against me…But I trust in You, Lord. I say, “You are my God, my times are in Your hands.” (Psalm 31:10-15)