Renovation of the Heart
Transforming the Mind, Part 2 (2|5)
Pages 124-128
• Destructive Feelings
• Denial and Repression of Feeling Are Not the Answer
• Feelings and Their Underlying Condition
• Feelings Spread
• The Secret Addiction
TOGETHER read the devotional and the scripture.
INDIVIDUALLY take notes in your journal on what stands out.
Hebrews 12:14-15 (NIV) Make every effort to live in peace with everyone and to be holy; without holiness no one will see the Lord. See to it that no one falls short of the grace of God and that no bitter root grows up to cause trouble and defile many.
James 3:16 (NIV) Who is wise and understanding among you? Let them show it by their good life, by deeds done in the humility that comes from wisdom. But if you harbor bitter envy and selfish ambition in your hearts, do not boast about it or deny the truth. Such “wisdom” does not come down from heaven but is earthly, unspiritual, demonic. For where you have envy and selfish ambition, there you find disorder and every evil practice. But the wisdom that comes from heaven is first of all pure; then peace-loving, considerate, submissive, full of mercy and good fruit, impartial and sincere. Peacemakers who sow in peace reap a harvest of righteousness.
James 4:1-6 (NIV) What causes fights and quarrels among you? Don’t they come from your desires that battle within you? You desire but do not have, so you kill. You covet but you cannot get what you want, so you quarrel and fight. You do not have because you do not ask God. When you ask, you do not receive, because you ask with wrong motives, that you may spend what you get on your pleasures. You adulterous people, don’t you know that friendship with the world means enmity against God? Therefore, anyone who chooses to be a friend of the world becomes an enemy of God. Or do you think Scripture says without reason that he jealously longs for the spirit he has caused to dwell in us? But he gives us more grace. That is why Scripture says: “God opposes the proud but shows favor to the humble.”
TOGETHER pray for one another.
INDIVIDUALLY answer the questions in your journal - process your devotional notes and pray.
Destructive Feelings
”Many of the feelings that animate us are destructive of others and ourselves. - The need is to remove the cause (the underlying feelings) and not just the effect (the conflict), which if denied or suppressed without removal of the feelings, will only break out again. - It is part of diving and human wisdom to realize that feelings are central to our existence and to make sure they are good feelings. And indeed they can be strong, healthy ones. We do not have to be victimized by destructive feelings.”
When you need to resist a feeling (sensation, emotion), upon what do you stand to do so? What are your available resources? Example: Consider irritation at an interruption, or anger at another driver.
Denial and Repression of Feeling Are Not the Answer
“When we have destructive feelings we should not deny that we have them or try to repress them - though we also should not, normally dump them on others by acting them out. The proper course of action is to replace destructive feelings with others that are good or to subordinate them in a way that makes them constructive and transforms their effects. The process of spiritual formation in Christ will do this by grace - effectively and intelligently received, and put into constant practice. ”
What is your response to this statement? Do you somewhat agree, mostly agree, or not really agree?
Feelings and Their Underlying Condition
“Most of the conditions we commonly speak of as feelings are really not feelings at all; but the feeling tones or sensations that accompany those conditions are so powerful that the conditions themselves become identified with the associated sensations. When we confuse the condition with the accompanying feeling we very likely will try to manage the feelings and disregard or deny the reality of the conditions. - For spiritual formation, we must choose and act with regard to the condition, good or bad, and allow the feelings to take care of themselves, as they certainly will.”
Did it make any sense to you that love, hatred, and so on are not just feelings but conditions of the will, body, and so on, which have feelings linked to them? Do you see any problems with trying to manage feelings directly, without changing the underlying condition?
Feelings Spread
“Much of the great power of feelings over life derives not just from the fact that they touch us, move us, but from the fact that they creep over into other areas of our lives; they pervade, they change the overall tone of our lives and our world. - This explains why it is so hard to reason with some people. Their very minds have been taken over by one or more feelings and are made to defend and serve those feelings at all costs.”
What is your experience with feelings spreading? Over different parts of your life and activity? Over groups?
“Feelings can be successfully ‘reasoned with,’ can be corrected by reality, only in those (whether oneself or others) who have the habit and are given the grace of listening to reason even when they are expressing violent feelings or are in the grip of them. A feeling of sufficient strength may blot out all else and will invariably do so in those who have not trained themselves, or been trained, to identify, to be critical of, and to have some distance from their own feelings. Combined with a sense of righteousness, strong feelings become impervious to fact and reason. ”
How have you experienced this in your relationships? From both sides of the disagreement/argument/conflict?
The Secret Addiction
“Abandonment to feeling, allowing oneself to be ‘carried away’ by feeling, is actually sought by many, and on a regular basis. That is a testimony to our epidemic deadness of soul. People want to feel and to feel strongly, and in the very nature of life, they need to do so. - Addiction is a feeling phenomenon. The addict is one who, in one way or another, has given in to feelings of one kind or another and has placed it in the position of ultimate value in his or her life. - They have inwardly conceded the final word to some feeling It may be that they have come to fear or even hate that feeling and that in their present condition, their minds are blinded and they see no way out.”
What are ways you have been affected by addiction - either an addiction you struggle/struggled with or an addiction a loved one struggles/struggled with? If it is past tense (meaning the addiction has been broken) what was that process like?
EXTRA READING:
“Adoration inevitably leads us on to self-offering. Charity is the live wire along which the power of God, indwelling or finite spirits, can and does act on other souls and other things, rescuing, healing, giving support and light. Such secret intercessory prayer ought to penetrate and accompany all our active work. It is the supreme expression of the spiritual life on earth. It moves from God to others through us, because we have ceased to be self-centered units, but are woven into the great fabric of praying souls through which the work of Christ on earth goes on being done.”
- Evelyn Underhill (1875 -1941)