emotions on Wholeness

Ralph Waldo Emerson describes a true friend as a person with whom I can think aloud. This absence of the need to put on a façade is an essential and foundational aspect of all genuine friendships. He ...

Pastor: Let us pray for the whole Church of God in Christ Jesus and for all people according to their needs.   Almighty God, You have enriched Your Church with the proclamation of the Gospel [...

The spiritual discipline of honoring the body helps us find our way between the excesses of a culture that glorifies and objectifies the body and the excesses of Christian tradition that have often de...

All profound things, and emotions of things are preceded and attended by Silence. . . . Silence is the general consecration of the universe.

O Holy One, we call to you and name you as eternal, ever-present, and boundless in love. Yet there are times, O God, when we fail to recognize you in the dailyness of our lives. Sometimes shame clench...

But when the cross is working deeply a believer comes to know himself. He realizes how undependable are his ideas, feelings and desires.

What is the shape of your pain? Is your pain a gaping wound? Is it stuffed into the back corner of a closet, or is it neatly categorized and filed away with annotations that no one but you understand?...

May you refuse to do battle against the parts of yourself that need love the most. Set down your sword. Say hello to every shard. Hello, grief. Hello, sadness. Hello, anger. Hello, madness. ...

Let us love the Lord God with all our heart, all our soul, all our mind, and all our strength. Let us love Him with all our understanding, powers, and fortitude. Let us offer to Him our every effort, ...

I want to feel what I feel. What’s mine. Even if it’s not happiness, whatever that means. Because you’re all you’ve got.

Too often we are given a choice—emotions or faith and belief. Yet as Dan Allender and Tremper Longman observe,  Emotion links our internal and external worlds. To be aware of what we feel can open ...

Descend upon our hearts, Spirit of God, For our wills are weak, and we need your power. Our spirits are dry, and we need your refreshment. Our minds cannot comprehend, and we need your enlightenment....

No physical appearance is worth not eating pasta for.

Father–nothing escapes your notice, is beyond your care or too hard for you to take on, whether it concerns nations or individuals. You have a heart for all the world–not just our little piece of it. ...

But it’s not so simple, that sort of “quiet hour”. It has to be learned. A lot of unimportant inner litter and bits and pieces have to be swept out first. Even a small head can be piled high inside wi...

Many of us assume that our spiritual heroes do not have to experience the same inner-wrestling that we do. Mother Teresa, beloved across the world is one such figure we might “assume” didn’t have to d...

Awareness of what I’m feeling generally brings the awareness that I am not my feelings. And then I can begin to see you more clearly and relate to you more intimately. It’s a little like shifting my f...

Dear Lord, Today I thought of the words of Vincent Van Gogh. It is true that there is an ebb and flow but the sea remains the sea. You, oh God, are the sea. Although I experience many ups and downs i...

Lord Jesus, We come to you today convicted of our own sin. When we read your call for the church to be united, we have to admit that we have fallen short. We have gossiped against your body, we have ...

David Seamands (1922-2006) was an author, scholar, evangelical renewal leader and counselor. In an article for Christianity Today , he shares his earnest experience of many of his patients who we...

We can rest knowing the Lord’s presence transcends what we feel. Just like the flow of the air, he is moving even if his movements cannot be perceived. And where God is not just felt but known, faith ...

I know a spiritual director who begins each of her sessions with five to ten minutes of silence. Sitting in silence is a new experience for many, and she told me that during these few minutes nearly e...

The more I use stuff to fill up my hungers, the more distance I put between God and myself. And as I continue to fill up my infinite hungers with finite things (when I run through the Starbucks drive-...

In navigation, the term reckoning, as in dead reckoning, is the process of calculating where you are. To do that, you have to know where you’ve been and what factors influenced how you got to where yo...

By Bill Gaultiere Many Christians are stunted in their spiritual growth because they don’t understand or express their deep emotions and desires. As pastors, ministry leaders, caregivers, or parents...

To you, O LORD, I lift up my soul. (Psalm 25:1 NRSV) When I’ve read this line previously, I’ve sometimes assumed that the main way I would lift up my soul was in personal prayer or corporate worship. ...

I began to see a pattern at work in many of us. Our emotions were leading us to thoughts, and those thoughts were dictating our decisions, and our decisions were determining behaviors, and then the be...

The desire to feel loved is the last illusion: let it go and you will be free

The best and most beautiful things in the world cannot be seen or even touched. They must be felt with the heart”

We don’t know what we are doing, and I think this is especially true about the way our society deals with mental health. In just the past fifteen years, I have witnessed a massive shift in how evangel...