emotions Archives - Colin Dye

How to Master your Emotions

Colin Dye — Wed, 05 Dec 2012 13:43:02 +0000

Emotions are vitally important to us as human beings. They are a God-given part of our personality, providing a richness, colour and depth to our life experience that can be a source of great pleasure. But of course, things can go wrong with our emotions. Negative emotions can be alarming at times and if we are dominated by them it can lead to a miserable existence. Emotional pain is very real and can be extremely severe. Sometimes, emotional pain is even more unbearable than physical pain because there is no evident cause for it. With physical pain you can pinpoint a problem and seek the appropriate treatment, as with a wound or a broken bone, but it is vastly more difficult to pinpoint the cause of emotional pain.

With physical pain you can pinpoint a problem and seek the appropriate treatment, as with a wound or a broken bone, but it is vastly more difficult to pinpoint the cause of emotional pain.

Most people, to a greater or lesser degree, suffer from fear or anxiety. They experience unexplained feelings of melancholy at times, uncontrolled feelings of anger, hurt, resentment, or, in extreme cases, hatred. Sometimes our emotions can be so turned in on ourselves that we are filled with feelings of dread, of self-loathing, guilt and condemnation. One of the greatest obstacles to overcoming negative emotions like these is the problem of denial. We commonly ignore negative emotions because society has told us we are not supposed to feel that way. This is a double-edged problem for Christians because the Church has been effective in teaching believers that we are supposed to feel happy, blessed and full of joy all of the time; it is how we are meant to feel, they say, because we are Christians! Therefore, if a believer is not feeling happy and blessed, they tend to hide their negative emotions. If there is something else going on inside of us we tend to deny it, push it down and say it doesn’t exist. We come to church on Sunday, we smile, we’re nice to people, we tell everybody we’re fine and we go home feeling as miserable as when we came. That’s not reality! We need to be honest, open with our feelings, and understand that at times, even as Christians, things can go wrong with our emotions.
Charismatic Christians are often castigated for being over-emotional, yet God has made us with a personality that comprises three major elements – the mind, the will and the emotions. We should live before God whole and complete in each of these dimensions, utilizing each aspect in our worship of Him. Our thoughts should be renewed; our emotions should be in line with and reflect the spiritual realm; our choices should be in line with God’s will.

It is interesting to me that, even though we live in a feeling orientated world, many people still find it extremely difficult to identify and express their emotions. Sometimes we are not really aware of what we are feeling, or indeed the strength of the emotions that lie just under the surface of our personality. Often we have no clue as to why we are feeling what we are feeling or where these emotions originated from.
Have you ever been in a situation where you feel something strange and you don’t know why? Maybe you are feeling very angry or frustrated, or perhaps you’re feeling very low and you can’t put your finger on why? Often it is because we are simply “out of touch” with our emotions, but deeper than that, we have no idea what it is that actually triggers those emotions. Fundamentally, many of us don’t know how our emotions operate and so we have no means of controlling them.
Our education system, especially in the west, teaches us how to think, but it doesn’t teach us how to feel. Education is mainly concerned with pumping the intellect full of ideas, but it does not address our emotional development at all. I imagine there are few, if any, who can say that at school they were taught to feel. Rather we are taught to think, to focus on ideas and concepts, to evaluate and process information.We are not taught to appreciate what is going on inside ourselves.

Just because you are a Christian, it doesn’t mean to say that your emotions are perfectly in line with what God intended for you. Believers are just as prone as anyone to carry all kinds of emotional baggage around with them. But we must learn, with the Holy Spirit’s help, to be aware of those things and ask God to deal with them.
Something that feels good at the time isn’t necessarily good for us and won’t carry on producing feelings of wellbeing for very long. But as long we believe our needs are going to be met by a certain activity, no matter how short-lived the good feelings are, we will keep on doing it. If you believe that your needs are going to be met in a certain direction, you will be motivated to go in that direction, even if your needs are not fully met.
We are motivated to go in the direction where we believe our needs will be met. In other words, the direction that makes us feel good. Sometimes as Christians we have to admit that the feel good factor is a little elusive. I remember an evangelist who came to our church many years ago and was leading a young girl to Christ. At one point the girl informed him: “I want to keep sleeping with my boyfriend because it feels good. Your kind of Christianity that says you can’t do that kind of stuff, and that makes me feel bad!” I thought the evangelist would immediately get on his high horse and lay the law down to her, but instead he said, “You know, you’re right. Going God’s way feels miserable at times! But it’s still the right way to go.”

You can discover my full teaching on this topic in my book ‘Mastering Your emotions’, just click on the image on the left for US and Worldwide and on the right for UK and Europe.

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Emotional Problems and Mental Health

Colin Dye — Fri, 06 Jul 2012 09:22:18 +0000

In life and ministry we have to recognise and accept that some of the challenges people face are very serious ones.

Depression, anxiety, loss of hope. These issues are real and need to be addressed.

In many situations individuals who come for counselling (and indeed we may recognise this in ourselves) may be suffering from mental health problems and need medical attention. Prayer and scriptural verses alone will not be enough. If they are suffering from acute anxiety or depression, usually they are unable to concentrate sufficiently to read the Bible or pray and they need to be referred to a doctor or hospital.
As cell members, leaders or counsellors we should not feel we have failed them if we refer people with such needs to medical professionals. We can go on supporting them and praying for them alongside their medical care or treatment.
Some of the challenges, which come up in counselling, could be extreme fear or anxiety; they usually go hand in hand ? fear producing worry and worry, anxiety which can also develop into depression.

Anxiety

Anxiety is a symptom, a response to a potentially challenging or threatening experience. When the threat is not acute or sudden and we have to think about it beforehand, worry and nervousness can produce anxiety. Anxiety is closely linked to fear which is a primary emotion that helps us deal with danger.
Not all anxiety is negative. It can be very positive. Some form of anxiety is unavoidable living in our present hectic society and it is the body?s way of telling us to pay attention, especially in dangerous situations, otherwise the consequences could be disastrous. But sometimes, anxiety seems to spiral out of control and it becomes a serious issue which begins to take over a person?s life. Desperate feelings of anxiety, which are not related to obvious external circumstances, seem to dominate a person?s thoughts. They are filled with a sense of dread and negative foreboding. Severe problems of anxiety like this, which can often be linked to depression, need medical input.

Depression

There are many different forms of depression ? from discouragement to severe depression and everything in between.
Life issues often get people down and usually ministry and support will bring this individual back to a place of trust and confidence in God to bring them through. But a person, who has prolonged sadness with unrelenting symptoms, becomes unable to enjoy life and loses interest in everything. This results in a pervading sense of hopelessness, feelings of dread and a general lack of ability to concentrate or to control thoughts. This is a disabling condition and needs urgent medical help.
People suffering from depression will usually have a chemical imbalance in their body, which is why they are prescribed some form of medication. When that is corrected they can enter fully into the counselling process.
For a Christian to accept he/she is depressed can be very difficult. And so they need a lot of encouragement and support to seek medical attention and indeed to take the medication prescribed (if there is a prescription).
In John 5:2-9, we read the story of the man by the pool with no one to put him in when the waters were troubled. When Jesus came along he was totally healed. There is emotional healing as well as physical healing in the cross. Healing is available for fear, rejection, poor self image, past hurts and every other symptom of damaged emotions. When we release forgiveness to the individuals who have hurt us we step into the pool. And that pool is big enough for all of us.

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What we feel and how we think- Mastering your emotions

Colin Dye — Thu, 14 Jun 2012 12:20:15 +0000

In order to begin to unravel and identify the distinctions between what we feel, how we think, and how we express ourselves to others we really have to learn a new emotional vocabulary. So many of the phrases that we readily use are extremely unhelpful in communicating to others what we are feeling. Take the examples below; the language is very familiar ? we have all used such phrases at one time or another ? but let?s look at why they are misleading and unhelpful.

?I feel misunderstood.? ?Misunderstood? is not a feeling, it is a judgement. It indicates our assessment of another person?s level of understanding of us.

? ?I feel misunderstood.?
?Misunderstood? is not a feeling, it is a judgement. It indicates our assessment of another person?s level of understanding of us. If, for instance, we are unsure of their attitude towards us (and so are not certain whether our need for self-worth will be met through this relationship) then we may feel anxious or perhaps annoyed, but we cannot feel misunderstood.
? ?I feel ignored.?
Again, ?ignored? is not a feeling, it is a judgement or a perception we have about how others are treating us. What we are actually doing is interpreting the actions of others and guessing at what those actions might mean, instead of clearly expressing our own emotions and finding out the truth. In actual fact our self-esteem need is not being met and we are feeling hurt because we want to be included.
? ?I?m not happy at work, they make me feel unimportant.?
The word ?unimportant? describes how we think other people are evaluating us, it is not an actual feeling. There are feelings associated with being treated as though you are not important, of course. But in such a situation one might feel sad or discouraged.
In this and many other situations what we really need to express is much more complex than the words we actually say are describing. In the above situation what we should express is that others are ?behaving in such a way as to regard me as unimportant,? but who ever talks like that? Because it is too much of a mouthful we shortcut it and say, ?I feel unimportant,? but in so doing we confuse our true emotions and make a mistake. We have used a shortcut in our speech, but we have effectively also made a shortcut in our evaluation of our emotions.
The moment we make a judgement, criticism, diagnosis or interpretation we are not expressing our emotions correctly. And if we express ourselves in a misleading way it will almost certainly result in producing friction with the person we are trying to communicate with, as our ?expressions? are heard as accusations. We will appear to be judging the behaviour of others as if we know their inner thoughts and intentions ? and, of course, we know nothing of the sort.
Next time you are tempted to say that you ?feel misunderstood?, stop for a moment and think. You are about to make an unqualified evaluation based on your perception of others. Really what you are saying is, ?I don?t think those people understand me? and therefore your need for understanding and affirmation is not being met. Some emotions will be stirred as a result of that unmet need. You could be annoyed, anxious, disappointed etc, but your feelings are purely the result of your perception.
We can see from this that we need to significantly upgrade our emotional vocabulary if we are to express ourselves clearly. We must avoid using words that direct blame towards others and makes the assumption that they are guilty of mistreating us.
All of us have been in situations where we have wanted to express our feelings to someone else and they have ?heard? something very different than that which we were trying to express. You tell them how you are feeling and their first reaction is, ?Well, it?s not my fault!? Typically, we then respond, ?But, I never said it was your fault!?
How is it that when we share our feelings with others they so often interpret our words as being judgmental or accusatory? Why do they think we are blaming them? It is because we tend to use ?shortcut? language to describe our feelings (similar to the statements above) and it is this that gives the wrong impression. How can one respond to the statement, ?I feel ignored,? except to say, ?Well, I?m not ignoring you!?
What happens in such situations is that the person you are speaking to begins to feel annoyed because they perceive that you are misunderstanding them! They think you are trying to project blame onto them for something that they haven?t done. Naturally, they want to defend themselves, because when you are under attack it is the most natural reaction ? either that or you launch a counter attack. The person might counter by saying, ?You say you feel ignored, but don?t you realise how stand-offish you can be. You?re not that great at communication!?
At this point, as the discussion becomes more heated and can degenerate into an argument. We often begin to use exaggerated language like, ?You always do this ? you never explain yourself properly ?? etc. The reality is, statements like ?always? and ?never? are hardly ever true!
Marshall Rosenberg, a professor of clinical psychology, pioneered a means of communication he called ?Nonviolent Communication?. Rosenberg was renowned for his mediation skills and worked with a number of organisations from all spheres of life to help people understand one another and communicate better. As part of his efforts to educate people and develop their emotional vocabulary he complied various lists of words. The list I include below is a compilation of phrases that people typically use that are actually ?interpretations? or ?judgements? of other people based on perceptions ? they are not and never can be feelings. It will help to read through the list and think about how often we use words like this to describe how we are feeling, when they are not feelings at all. I hope it will help you to redefine your emotional vocabulary and guide you towards expressing your emotions more accurately. Whenever you are tempted to use language like this to describe your feelings, stop and think again, because you are mis-communicating your needs.
? Abandoned
? Abused
? Attacked
? Betrayed
? Boxed-in
? Bullied
? Cheated
? Coerced
? Co-opted
? Cornered
? Diminished
? Disrupted
? Interrupted
? Intimidated
? Let down
? Manipulated
? Misunderstood
? Neglected
? Overworked
? Patronized
? Pressured
? Provoked
? Put down
? Rejected
? ?Taken for granted?
? Threatened
? Unappreciated
? Unheard
? Unseen
? Unsupported
? Unwanted
? Used
I want to stress that I am not suggesting we should ever be in denial about things that have actually happened to us. Other people may have abused us; they may have abandoned us. We cannot disregard these actions. But when we make statements such as, ?I feel abused,? what we are really expressing is that through being abused, certain basic needs are going unmet and feelings associated with that have risen to the surface. What we must do is to separate our emotions from the situations we find ourselves in, firstly by owning our emotions, and secondly by carefully checking out the facts.

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Women and men are equal, but different

Colin Dye — Wed, 11 Apr 2012 13:54:46 +0000

I am sure you don’t need to read this post in order to learn that men and women are different! Nevertheless, a biblical examination of those differences is valuable, because so often we overlook them or find them to be stumbling blocks to maintaining successful relationships.

God created ‘people’, made in His own image, male and female, and these two are equal but different.

One of the most wonderful aspects of God?s diverse creation is that He created a number of differences between the sexes, yet we are one humanity. In Genesis 1:27-28 we read,
?So God created man in His own image; in the image of God He created him; male and female He created them. Then God blessed them, and God said to them, ?Be fruitful and multiply; fill the earth and subdue it; have dominion over the fish of the sea, over the birds of the air, and over every living thing that moves on the earth.?”
Equal but different
Notice that when God created man (as it?s translated in the NKJV), He created man male and female. A better translation might be, ?So God created humanity? or ?human beings? because the word ?man? in this verse doesn?t mean male as opposed to female; it means ?human?. God created ?people?, made in His own image, male and female, and these two are equal but different.
Equal in dignity and worth
Men and women are totally equal in their dignity and worth. Both were made in the image of God. Some Bible scholars used to teach that it was the man who carried the image of God. I want to suggest that no greater liberation has ever come to the female species on this earth than through the Word of God, which reveals the true equality of men and women!
The truth is that all of us, men and women alike, bear the image of God, and what is important is that each of us reflects that image. As distinct yet complimentary sexes, we are ultimately to reflect the heart and purpose of God within the covenant of marriage. The only exception are those to whom God has given the gift of singleness ? a unique gift of God that blesses an individual with an extraordinary ability to reflect the glory of God and the completion of God as a single person. It?s beautiful when it happens and it?s tragic when people miss it.
Equal in call and commission
Men and women were also created equal in call and commission. Both have been called to be fruitful and have dominion in the earth, especially together in partnership. God?s command was, ?Be fruitful and multiply.? Try and do that on your own if you?re a man!
Different in gender and role
So men and women are equal in their standing before God, but different in their gender. The first difference that is obvious about gender is that men and women have distinct anatomical and physiological differences. God designed the bodies of men and women to be compatible. It is obvious that sexual intercourse between a man and a woman is a natural joining together of two complimentary bodies; and that sex between two men or two women is therefore unnatural. While members of the same sex can engage in sexual activity, surely no-one would argue that homosexual activity is anatomically or physiologically compatible.
The fact that God designed sexual intercourse to function as it does, is, I believe an amazing picture of the call upon the lives of men and women. God designed sex so that the male must penetrate the female. It is a picture of the male and female roles in life: the man has been called to lead and take initiative and the woman has been called to be a receptive helper.
Sex goes far beyond a mere function designed to perpetuate the human race, enticing us to continue reproducing. God has blessed us as men and women to be equal, but to have different roles ? different roles in producing children; different roles in life, which are an extension of what we discover about ourselves anatomically and physiologically.
Men and women are also very different emotionally ? we have very different needs which need fulfilling and different emotions which need to be expressed. And I believe that there is also a spiritual difference between men and women. Some might find that a controversial statement, but I simply mean that each has a distinct spiritual role and function. Men are called to be loving leaders and women are called to be submissive helpers.

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What Men want from Women, What Women want from Men

Colin Dye — Tue, 10 Apr 2012 08:48:28 +0000

A couple in love. Romantic clich??

I asked the members of our Church, Kensington Temple, to take part in a survey of the emotional needs of both men and women and I present the results here. I simply asked that each person write down the one thing that they most looked for in the opposite sex. The responses were then gathered into groups and the results can be seen below, ranked in order of popularity.
The results reveal that what a man most wants from a woman is love, support and respect. What a woman most wants from a man is love, communication and friendship. And you, what do you most want from a man/woman?

What men want from women
1. Love

Love in all its aspects (friendship, romance and sex)
Someone to be the object of their affection
Someone who loves them for who they are
Love, love and more love!

2. Support

To support even when their career is not going well
To support their chosen career and to say, ?I believe in you.?
To give support, encouragement and affirmation

3. Respect

Mutual respect and honour
Respect despite circumstances
Respect, especially in public

4. Sharing

Someone to share God?s purposes and plans for their life with
Someone to share interests with
Someone to share secrets with

5. Communication

Someone to listen to them
Someone to understand their needs, concerns and challenges

6. Sex

Someone to be fulfilled with sexually

7. Submission

Someone to acknowledge their leadership within the home

8. Companionship

To be a special friend throughout life?s highs and lows
Someone to feel comfortable with
Someone to trust

What women want from men
1. Love

Someone to love them for who they are
Someone to love and care for them/their children
Someone who will love, honour and cherish them

2. Communication

Someone who will listen to them and take them seriously
Someone to talk to about their feelings
Someone whom they can talk to about anything
Someone to talk over issues and problems with

3. Friendship

Someone who is their best friend
Someone who is their soulmate
A friend who will encourage them and help them achieve their potential

4. Honesty/Loyalty/Integrity

Someone who keeps his word
Honesty and openness
Faithfulness
Someone whom they can trust

5. Romance

Someone to share romantic times with, not just ?quick? sex
Someone who is romantic or willing to learn how to be

6. Care/Respect/Understanding

Someone who is caring and considers their needs
Someone who respects their opinions
Someone who understands their feelings

7. Help

Someone who helps them around the home
Someone who cares for and looks after the children
Someone who will help to teach the children about God

8. Leadership

Someone who will lead the family
Someone who takes the initiative in decision making
Someone who will set a godly example

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Mastering your emotions

Colin Dye — Wed, 28 Dec 2011 12:46:52 +0000

Mastering your emotions, a book by Colin Dye, click here to read more!

Emotions are vitally important to us as human beings. They are a God-given part of our personality, providing a richness, colour and depth to our life experience that can be a source of great pleasure. But of course, things can go wrong with our emotions. Negative emotions can be alarming at times and if we are dominated by them it can lead to a miserable existence. Emotional pain is very real and can be extremely severe. Sometimes, emotional pain is even more unbearable than physical pain because there is no evident cause for it. With physical pain you can pinpoint a problem and seek the appropriate treatment, as with a wound or a broken bone, but it is vastly more difficult to pinpoint the cause of emotional pain.

The difficulty of identifying and expressing emotions

It is interesting to me that, even though we live in a feelingorientated world, many people still find it extremely difficult to identify and express their emotions. Sometimes we are not really aware of what we are feeling, or indeed the strength of the emotions that lie just under the surface of our personality. Often we have no clue as to why we are feeling what we are feeling or where these emotions originated from.
Have you ever been in a situation where you feel something strange and you don’t know why? Maybe you are feeling very angry or frustrated, or perhaps you’re feeling very low and you can’t put your finger on why? Often it is because we are simply “out of touch” with our emotions, but deeper than that, we have no idea what it is that actually trigge rs those emotions. Fundamentally, many of us don’t know how our emotions operate and so we have no means of controlling them.
Our education system, especially in the west, teaches us how to think, but it doesn’t teach us how to feel. Education is mainly concerned with pumping the intellect full of ideas, but it does not address our emotional development at all. I imagine there are few, if any, who can say that at school they were taught to feel. Rather we are taught to think, to focus on ideas and concepts, to evaluate and process information.We are not taught to appreciate what is going on inside ourselves.

Wrong teaching about emotions

Just because you are a Christian, it doesn’t mean to say that your emotions are perfectly in line with what God intended for you. Believers are just as prone as anyone to carry all kinds of emotional baggage around with them. But we must learn, with the Holy Spirit’s help, to be aware of those things and ask God to deal with them.
Many Christians have been wrongly taught that emotions are usually negative. We are told to follow facts, not feelings; to do what we should, not what we feel. Although this is true and right in one sense, we must not think that God wants to deny us our emotions. He does not want us to be emotionless, soulless creatures.
We must be careful too that we don’t either ignore or downplay our emotions.As we will discuss in more depth later, emotions are signals that tell us what is going on inside our hearts. If you can work out what you are feeling at any given moment, pretty soon you will have access to what’s going on inside your heart and you will be able to act accordingly.Your emotions point you in the right direction. Emotions are like the “low oil” light on your car dashboard – they tell you that something is happening in the engine – the heart. The little light is not the cause of the oil being low, but the oil being low is the cause of the light! Similarly, our emotions are only indicators of what is taking place in our heart.

Emotional health and relationships

There is a heavy price to pay for unexpressed feelings that will take a toll on our relationships.When we suppress our emotions we are denying what is going on inside of us. Inevitably that affects us and it affects the way we interact with the people around us. But when we share and express our emotions with others in a Godhonouring way, allowing ourselves to be vulnerable with them, it helps us to better connect with people, to resolve conflict and build genuine relationships.
It’s not that relationships should be founded on emotions alone, but often the expression of our emotions will strike a chord in somebody else’s heart and that’s how relationships can build and develop. Emotional bonds between people are very important, so long as there are other factors in the relationship that bring stability. Feelings are important, but they must never dominate us. We must learn how to bring them under control.
Each of us needs to develop the skill of identifying and then owning our emotions. All of us will, from time to time, experience the effects of negative or destructive emotions. But if we realise – like the oil light on the dashboard – that these emotions are merely signals to tell us something is happening in our heart – if we could arrive at that level of self-understanding – then we would be able to deal with the issues beneath the surface of our lives.

Emotions point to needs

Emotions are signals that point to needs on the inside of us. This is a vital principle to grasp and a major key to mastering your emotions. Simply put, if your needs are being met then you tend to feel good. If your needs are not being met then you tend to feel bad. It really is that simple. The state of your emotions tells you whether your needs are fulfilled or unfulfilled. If your needs are being met you will feel happy, pleased, satisfied, peaceful, but if your needs are not being met then you might experience worry, anxiety, anger, sadness.
So far, so good, but there is another important principle to grasp at this point: your feelings are not always truthful! In other words, although you may be feeling a certain emotion – anger perhaps – and you have to take responsibility for how you are feeling – that doesn’t mean to say your emotion lines up with God’s truth! We may have no right to feel angry at all, but we are experiencing that emotion because someone has hurt our feelings. So here is another important key to mastering our emotions: as followers of Jesus we need to learn how to bring our emotions in line with God’s truth and God’s revelation.
All kinds of things are designed by Satan and society to make us feel good, but lead us away from God. If you feel a little low you can take a little drink, you’ll feel a little better. But you can have another and another little drink until you feel so bad that you’ve forgotten why you had a little drink in the first place! Many in society are promoting the smoking of marijuana so that we can all “chill out”. But marijuana is a mood-altering drug that, despite what people claim, can be highly dangerous. There is evidence to show that people who are predisposed to psychological problems will have such illnesses triggered by smoking marijuana. Yet, despite its dangers, society is shouting, “It doesn’t matter! It feels good! Come on, take a little bit!” If you are a Christian, you don’t need any mood-altering drug to make you feel good about yourself and enjoy life. You need to know how to be switched on to Jesus!
Something that feels good at the time isn’t necessarily good for us and won’t carry on producing feelings of wellbeing for very long. But as long we believe our needs are going to be met by a certain activity, no matter how short-lived the good feelings are, we will keep on doing it. If you believe that your needs are going to be met in a certain direction, you will be motivated to go in that direction, even if your needs are not fully met.
We are motivated to go in the direction where we believe our needs will be met. In other words, the direction that makes us feel good. Sometimes as Christians we have to admit that the feel good factor is a little elusive. I remember an evangelist who came to our church many years ago and was leading a young girl to Christ. At one point the girl informed him: “I want to keep sleeping with my boyfriend because it feels good. Your kind of Christianity that says you can’t do that kind of stuff, and that makes me feel bad!” I thought the evangelist would immediately get on his high horse and lay the law down to her, but instead he said, “You know, you’re right. Going God’s way feels miserable at times! But it’s still the right way to go.”

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Dealing with emotional pain

Colin Dye — Sun, 02 Oct 2011 08:39:44 +0000

Who can bear a broken spirit?

There is dangerous traffic on life?s highway and much that can harm us, leaving us by the side of the road broken, bleeding and hurting. We are all casualties in something, whether broken relationships, abuse in our childhood, parental failures, personal sins or tragic happenings.
Pain caused by other people
God has made us dependent on other people. We need companionship, acceptance, approval, recognition and many other things that God provides through relationships with people. Whenever these needs are violated in some way, we can suffer great personal pain.
Bad relationships in marriage and the family can result in the most severe forms of emotional damage. Pain caused in childhood by bad parenting can leave behind a lifetime of misery. Divorce is notoriously painful, no matter what circumstances surround it.
There are so many people who suffer the pain of loneliness or rejection. They open up to another person, get rejected and then recoil behind a hard protective barrier, hurting and afraid to ever come out again.
Separation can come through the death or unfaithfulness of another. Intense pain can be the result of some gross sin committed against you, such as verbal, physical or sexual abuse.
Casualties lie fallen everywhere. Selfish ambition and greed lead to all kinds of hurts inflicted upon people who are trampled down by others in their clamour for personal advantage. Violence overtakes a society of individuals who deny others their value or worth, seeing them either as obstacles to be removed or objects to be used and then discarded.
Pain caused by events that happen to you
Life is full of uncertainties and we are surrounded by many tragic circumstances. Traumatic experiences can leave you shattered and in deep shock. Slowly the true extent of the painful damage becomes apparent, making way for fear, mistrust, loneliness and depression. Somehow the pieces never seem to come back together.
At other times, the events are just as tragic but not so sudden or dramatic. Your boyfriend marries another woman. Your brother excels leaving you to bear the pain of your parents? disappointment and their constant negative comparisons between you and him. You miss the opportunity of a lifetime in your career. You fail an exam, which alters the course of your life. Your teenage son walks out on you and your Christian faith. You make a wrong choice in a major area of your life and deep disappointment sets in.
Pain caused by your own personal sin
It is unhelpful to suppose that all suffering is due to personal sin. It is not that simple. The Bible gives us many examples of righteous people suffering. The best-known example is Job who suffered the accusation of his friends, adding to his already extremely painful circumstances. They could not understand Job?s sufferings apart from the narrow view that said he was suffering because he was a sinner.
Biblical writers also record the fact that many unrighteous people seem to flourish. Psalm 73 records what Asaph observed on this matter and how he came to terms with the whole question. God showed him that he would never forsake the righteous and, even though the wicked may appear to flourish for a season, their time is short.
My flesh and my heart fail; but God is the strength of my heart and my portion forever. For indeed, those who are far from you shall perish; you have destroyed all those who desert you for harlotry.
Psalm 73:26-27

Sometimes the pain is just too much

Some of our pain, however, is our own fault. We disobey God?s word and refuse the things that bring wellbeing into our life. The consequences can be both physical and emotional.
Can a man take fire to his bosom and his clothes not be burned? Can one walk on hot coals and his feet not be seared?
Proverbs 6:27-28
Behold, the wicked brings forth iniquity. Yes, he conceives trouble and brings forth falsehood. He made a pit and dug it out, and has fallen into the ditch which he made. His trouble shall return upon his own head, and his violent dealing shall come down on his own crown.
Psalm 7:14-16
Psalms 32 and 38 describe the physical, emotional and spiritual pain caused by sin. But the answer is always near: forgiveness and restoration through Christ.

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