Renovation of the Heart
Transforming the Mind, Part 2 (1|5)
Pages 119-124
• Spiritual Formation and Our Feelings
• No Head-On Mastery of Feeling
• My Identity Beyond My Feelings
• The Vision of Oneslef as Really Different
• Feelings Move Our Lives - Well, or Badly
TOGETHER read the devotional and the scripture.
INDIVIDUALLY take notes in your journal on what stands out.
Philippians 3:17-21 (NIV) Join together in following my example, brothers and sisters, and just as you have us as a model, keep your eyes on those who live as we do. For, as I have often told you before and now tell you again even with tears, many live as enemies of the cross of Christ. Their destiny is destruction, their god is their stomach, and their glory is in their shame. Their mind is set on earthly things. But our citizenship is in heaven. And we eagerly await a Savior from there, the Lord Jesus Christ, who, by the power that enables him to bring everything under his control, will transform our lowly bodies so that they will be like his glorious body.
John 8:34-28 (NIV) Jesus replied, “Very truly I tell you, everyone who sins is a slave to sin. Now a slave has no permanent place in the family, but a son belongs to it forever. So if the Son sets you free, you will be free indeed. I know that you are Abraham’s descendants. Yet you are looking for a way to kill me, because you have no room for my word. I am telling you what I have seen in the Father’s presence, and you are doing what you have heard from your father.”
TOGETHER pray for one another.
INDIVIDUALLY answer the questions in your journal - process your devotional notes and pray.
Spiritual Formation and Our Feelings
”The term feeling indicates a kind of ‘contact,’ a ‘touch’ that is at once blind and powerful - in allure as well as in revulsion. A ‘touching’ scene is one that evokes feelings, that ‘touches’ us. In feelings we really know that something is ‘there,’ and solidly so. But what it is and why it is remains obscure - though hauntingly present. This aspect of ‘blind power’ has famously led to the description of emotions as ‘human bondage.’”
Think of the great and direct power (sensation, emotion) over human life. How do you see this at work in daily life? For good? For evil? In others?
No Head-On Mastery of Feeling
“When you think about the power of feeling - no one can succeed in mastering feelings in his or her life who tries to simply take them head-on and resist or redirect them by ‘willpower’ in the moment of choice. To adopt that strategy is to radically misunderstand how life and the human will work, or - more likely - it is to have actually decided, deep down, to lose the battle and give in.”
What does this mean? What is your response?
“People who happily let God be God do have a place to stand in dealing with feelings - even in extreme cases such as despair over loved ones or excruciating pain or voluptuous pleasure. They have the resources to do what they don’t want to do and to not do what they want. They know and deeply accept the fact that their feelings, of whatever kind, do NOT have to be fulfilled. - Those who let God be God get off the conveyor belt of emotion and desire when it first starts to move toward the buzz saw of sin. They do not wait until it is moving so fast that they cannot get off of it. Their aim is not to avoid sin but to avoid temptation - the inclination to sin. They plan their path accordingly.”
What has been your experience with controlling feeling directly or ‘head-on’? Can it reliably be done? What have you seen with respect to this in lives near you? Say, with anger, lust, or addiction?
My Identity Beyond My Feelings
“The viewpoint of one still at an early stage of spiritual formation, it is a major step forward just to sincerely desire not to not sin but to have different feelings - feelings that lead away from sin. At that early stage, one has to strongly want to NOT want what one NOW wants, and to WANT to want what one does not NOW want. One has to feel strong revulsion toward the wrong feeling one now has or is likely to have and at the same time strong attraction to the good feeling that one does not NOW feel. This proves to be absolutely necessary in order to ‘put off the old person’ (involving the wrong feeling) and ‘put on the new person’ (involving the good feeling) - Colossians 3:9-10.”
In this statement, Willard does his wordplay tongue twister with want to - not want - and want now and not want - it is easy to get lost. If you were to paraphrase this statement what would you say?
The Vision of Oneslef as Really Different
“Achieving a new vision of oneself - of who one would be - must not be presumed to be a mere snap of the fingers. It will require genuine openness to radical change in oneself, careful and creative instruction, and abundant supplies of divine grace. For most people all of this only comes to them after they ‘hit bottom’ and discover the total hopelessness of being who they are. Most people cannot envision who they would be without the fears, angers, lusts, ploys, and woundedness with which they have lived so long. They identify with their habit-worn feelings.”
Who would I be if I had different feelings structuring my life? Is this question one that strikes you as hard to answer? Why?
Feelings Move Our Lives - Well, or Badly
“Feeling is essential to life. We must accept this and work with it. And you can be sure that harmful feelings, feelings associated with evil - arising from it or producing it - will eventually be taken by a human being as better than no feeling at all. Healthy feelings, properly ordered among themselves, are essential to a good life. So if we are to be formed in Christlikeness, we must take good care of our feelings and not just let them ‘happen.’”
In what ways do you let feelings just happen? How do you take inventory of your feelings - or do you not? If not what would it look like for you to start?
EXTRA READING:
“To speak a true word is to transform the world. To speak a true word about ourselves can transform our heart.”
- From Pedagogy of the Oppressed
by Paulo Freire (1921 - 1997)