Bringing Our Feelings to God with Courtney Reissig
On today’s episode, we’re chatting with Courtney Reissig about bringing our feelings to God. This conversation will help you bring your emotions to the Lord as an act of faith, trust, and ultimately, worship. Courtney Reissig is a writer and bible teacher living in Little Rock, Arkansas. She is the proud mom of four sons, happy wife to Daniel, and author of three books: The Accidental Feminist, Glory in the Ordinary, and Teach Me to Feel: Worshiping Through the Psalms in Every Season of Life. Her writing has also appeared on The Gospel Coalition, Christianity Today, and The Washington Post. When she is not writing or wrangling kids, she enjoys running and a relaxing Friday night.
Can you tell us a little about who you are and what you do?
Most of the listeners are probably experiencing a range of feelings right now as they commute to work, push a stroller, wash dishes, or whatever they're up to. And yet, so many Christian women struggle to relate to the feelings they're experiencing. Why is it important for us to learn to do that?
Does God really care about our feelings? How do we know he cares?
I think a lot of us have seen the danger in allowing our feelings to inform our faith, but we know that the heart is deceitful above all else. What would it look like for us to "feel Christianity" in a way that's Biblically grounded?
How does the Bible inform our feelings?
How does growing in our understanding of who God is move us to trust him? How about to worship?
On the flip side, how does God use the feelings we experience to shape us into the image of Christ?
How does God use our feelings to help us relate to others?
How can we sympathize with others in a way that points them to the gospel?
How can we help others learn to relate to and express their emotions, whether it be someone we are discipling, our children, or our friends?
NOTEWORTHY QUOTES
“We are finite and mortal and living in a broken world. As Christians we have hope.”
“Death is the enemy. It is the final enemy.”
“The angst we feel over death is a tangible reminder for us that this is not how God intended the world to be, and it’s ok to feel that.”
“We all will one day have to face our own mortality.”
“God created us in his image, as feeling beings. God gave us emotions.”
“People either feel like they can’t control their emotions because ‘that’s just who they are,’ or people think that to feel anything is to not trust the Lord. Both of those are in error and need to come under the instruction of the Word of God. You are created to feel, so you are not living fully as an image-bearer if you don’t feel.”
“The Psalms are filled with ‘feelers’ who are expressing their emotions to the Lord. God has put in the Scriptures inspired by him the feelings of others.”
“You can trust that he does care about how you feel. He cares. He is present. He hears.”
“We can talk about how we feel all day long to our friends, but they can’t do a thing about it. But the Lord can. He’s the one we should be going to first and foremost with our feelings.”
“The danger is that we’d let our feelings dictate truth and what is real.”
“We don’t have fully sanctified feelings. We are in the process of sanctification and growing and becoming more like Christ, but we are not going to be fully like Christ.”
“Acknowledge that we are going to get it wrong and think untrue things about the Lord. We might feel that he has forgotten us, but he has not forgotten us.”
“Don’t stop reading the Word.”
“The natural overflow of our hearts will be worship as we spend time in the Word.”
“The end result of our lives is worship.”
“We think we have no time. We have time, we just fill it with other things.”
“You see throughout the gospels, that Jesus feels things.”
“To be shaped into the image of Christ, is to be shaped by God’s Word - to be shaped to feel rightly, to feel as Christ felt. He took and directed his feelings back to God the Father. Jesus prayed the Psalms to the Father on the cross. We have words to say back to God in our distress and anguish.”
“Because we are in-dwelt by the Holy Spirit, God is constantly making us new, shaping our feelings more into his image.”
“We are never delivered from suffering for ourselves in isolation. We are delivered so we can tell everyone else what God has done.”
“If the Holy Spirit is working in you as believers, suffering should force you outward. It’s always so God can get the glory.”
“God uses suffering in our lives to bind us to other people.”
“As we listen to people’s difficulties and sufferings, we can help them see they are not alone.”
“If we want to be better ministers of the Word, it’s not going to come unless we are in the Word.”
RESOURCES
Praying the Psalms
Teach Me to Feel by Courtney Reissig
Spiritual Disciplines for the Christian Life by Dr. Don Whitney
SCRIPTURE REFERENCES
DISCUSSION QUESTIONS
How were we created? Where do our emotions come from?
Can you relate to feeling like you can’t control your emotions, or to feeling like you need to stuff your emotions and try to not feel? What does this look like?
What is a verse or passage of Scripture that has encouraged you this week?
How have you seen suffering be an encouragement in the lives of others?
How does knowing God change who you are and how you interact with the world around you?
IMPORTANT NOTE
Journeywomen interviews are intended to serve as a springboard for continued study in the context of your local church. While we carefully select guests each week, interviews do not imply Journeywomen's endorsement of all writings and positions of the interviewee or any other resources mentioned.
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