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I need to confess something: traffic tests every ounce of Jesus in me. I can be worshipping in the car, hands lifted, in the spirit, and then someone cuts me off with no blinker, and suddenly I am tempted not to be the woman I claim to be on Sunday morning. If you know, you know.
You’ve probably also seen the meme going around social media. Meme’s like, “Don’t do too much. Try Jesus. Don’t try me.” We laugh because it’s true because most of us have said or atleast though some version of it. Underneath the humor is something a lot of us have never actually dealt with. What do you do with your feelings as a Christian?
We all have real feelings. Anger, sadness, fear, joy…all of it. The Bible tells us how to manage our feelings such as anger and fear, which tells me God already knew this would be a struggle. So the question isn’t whether you’re going to feel things. You are. The real question is: how do you submit those emotions to God without just suppressing them?
Truths About Feelings
Your feelings are not your enemy. Let me start by saying your feelings are not bad. They’re not your enemy. They’re actually part of your design, an important piece of your human biology, not a flaw in it.
Your feelings are not always true. You can feel like nobody loves you, and that doesn’t mean nobody loves you. You can feel afraid, paranoid, convinced something terrible is about to happen, and that doesn’t make it true. Your feelings are real, but they were never meant to be the measuring stick for what’s actually true.
You don’t have to act on everything you feel. Just because you feel something doesn’t mean you’re required to act on it. I can feel angry and still not put my hands on somebody (no matter how tempted that may be). I can feel like I don’t want to forgive someone and still choose to forgive them anyway. As believers, we’re called to a higher standard, not to suppress what we feel, but not to let it drive us.
That’s actually where one of my favorite sayings came from, something I started telling myself early in my walk with God when my feelings would attempt to take the drivers seat:
“I don’t serve my feelings. I serve Jesus Christ.”
To serve something means you submit to it and my feelings were never meant to be my master. They’re part of being human. They just don’t get the final word. (I talk a lot more about what it means to actually submit to Christ, not just your feelings, but your whole life, in Deep Roots, if you want to go deeper on this.)
So How Do You Actually Submit Your Emotions To God?
A few years ago, I didn’t know the answer to that. I went through an extremely tough season, and numbing became my defense. I stopped addressing what I was actually feeling, because somewhere along the way I’d picked up the idea that “good Christians” don’t struggle like that. That habit landed me straight in a therapist’s office. And honestly? That season taught me more about my own emotions than years of just pushing through and numbing ever did.
I want to be upfront. I’m not a licensed therapist, and I fully believe in good, trained Christian therapists who understand emotion and psychology on a level I don’t. What I’m sharing here is simply what has worked for me as I’ve learned to walk through my own feelings instead of around them.
Step 1: Identify What You’re Actually Feeling
This sounds obvious until you realize how many of us have numbed ourselves out from trauma or just years of surviving instead of processing. That was me. My therapist introduced me to something called the Feelings Wheel, created by therapist Gloria Willcox, which breaks emotion down into six core feelings and branches outward from there into more specific ones. It sounds simple, but I promise you it’s not. Did you know humiliation is technically a form of anger? When I feel overwhelmed now, I stop and ask myself what’s actually underneath it, instead of just reacting to whatever’s on the surface.
Step 2: Trace It To The Root
Feelings almost never start where they show up. Jealousy is often rooted in insecurity. That insecurity might trace all the way back to a childhood where your sister got the attention and you learned to feel like less. You have to trace it back. Once you understand the root, you’re in a position to navigate the feeling instead of the feeling navigating you.
Step 3: Bring It To God
God, I feel humiliated. I feel angry. I feel tired. What do I do with this? Part of that is spiritual. There’s an exchange that happens in prayer I don’t fully have language for and probably never will. And part of it is practical: maybe it’s a conversation with a licensed therapist, reading a book like Boundaries by Dr. Henry Cloud and Dr. John Townsend, or a trusted friend, or just writing it out.
Step 4: Surrender It
Not pretend it away, surrender it. “Yes, God, I’m sad right now, but I’m still going to pray. I’m still going to read my Bible. I surrender this to You until healing comes.” “Yes, God, I’m angry, but I’m going to forgive anyway. I submit this to You, and I choose to serve You instead of my feelings.”
Bonus
Find Scripture that speaks to exactly what you’re feeling, and let it hold the truth until your feelings catch up. When fear creeps in, 2 Timothy 1:7 reminds me that God didn’t give me a spirit of fear, but of power, love, and a sound mind. S
Your feelings are valid. They’re real. They’re part of being human, and God isn’t asking you to shut that off. He’s just asking you not to hand them the keys. Feel it. Process it. Bring it to Him. Let Him teach you how to walk through it in a way that actually grows you, instead of just getting you through the moment.
Until next time,
Be strong. Be Courageous. Serve God Wholeheartedly.
P.S. This is exactly the kind of thing I go deeper on in Deep Roots. I dot not just talk about what to do with your feelings in the moment, but how to build a foundation for your walk with God that can actually hold up when life gets hard. If any of this is resonating with you, there’s more where this came from.
