Faith over feelings: Overcoming Emotional Strongholds

Topic: Faith Over Feelings: Overcoming emotional strongholds 

(Spiritual maturity will not occur without emotional maturity)

Genesis 22

Personal story on how an emotional stronghold held me down:

Anxiety

Tension: what do I do with my feelings?

Whether you accept it or not - you have feelings and they affect your life. Feelings are difficult to understand and place correctly.

Are you the person who is controlled by your feelings? If you angry, everyone knows it. If you’re sad the world should be sad too.

The neutrality and irresponsibility of Feelings:

Where are you putting your Faith?

Genesis 22- the perfect articulation of how God eliminates strongholds 

The process God often allows to go through:

Patience- the second an issue begins he gives us opportunities to change and grow

Confrontation 1- there will be a moment God brings you face to face with your issue

Confrontation 2- when you run from it he’ll bring you back to it

Submission- allow God in and surrender to him what he wants to do

Freedom- we now see a new future 

How do I cultivate a life of emotional maturity?

Reflection (journaling, processing) 

Genesis Incorporation- Was Abraham aware of how much he idolized his son? The text indicates that he was idolizing him, but he was unaware. 

When we get to heaven will we be able to read out story and see that God tested our faith. How he tested us when that job fell through, when that massive bill came in out of nowhere, when that relationship randomly ended. 

TBH- why does God have to do it like that? 

I use to get infected toe nails all the time. It made it hard to walk. No one could it. I remember bumping into things and the pain killed me. When I finally got to see a doctor he told me it was bad. They needed to remove the entire toe nail. I’m fine with that. I thought I could handle it until I someone else could see it and fix it. Had I even reflected for a moment, googled it I would have known, this is nasty but it needs to be taken care of. 

Emotionally, this is how a lot of us look. There’s part of us that are infected, and God often is trying to get our attention about it, and we can discover this through reflecting with him

3 steps to journaling: Feelings wheel, 

Spiritual Component- Psalms, selah, etc. 

Forgiveness / Confession 

Genesis incorporation- the chapter before this is really messed up. Abraham’s wife had told him to sleep with her servant because they weren’t sure if he they could have kids. They wanted to be obedient to God, and they had this other kid. And then after Isaac is born drama ensues and Abraham is told by his wife to send the servant and his other son away. Abraham is upset, obviously. What kind of emotions would you have? Shame. Guilt. Bitterness towards your wife. 

Forgiveness - Internal decision

This is such an underrated spiritual practice. Psychology didn’t come up with idea. Definition: you have authority to drop offenses. 

Abraham couldn’t love Isaac correctly because I believe he didn’t forgive himself for what he did to his other son. For him, this was almost reliving the trauma, he emotionally put his other son to death in heart, now he has to do it again. 

The testing was

Confession- exposure to holiness 

Replacement- Believing for something new

Genesis Incorporation-

Spiritual Component-