For as he thinks within himself, so he is. (Proverbs 23:7)
Who made us emotional beings? Who made us with the ability to feel? Why do we feel? If we have a man-centric worldview, our emotions are the feelings we happen to be born with. In other words, they are part of what defines us as humans. What we have is what we get. This is just the way we are wired. We live in a world and a culture in which how a person feels defines who we are. As of this writing, there are currently fifty-eight different gender identities to choose from.2
According to Miley Cyrus, she is gender fluid based on her feelings. She is quoted as saying, “It's literally just how I feel.”3 Gender fluidity means a person’s gender can fluctuate depending upon how they feel alone, regardless of their chromosome count! I find it interesting that a person’s feelings about themselves can change even in a man-centric society. That fact alone should tell us something—namely that changing the way one feels is completely possible!
When I was a boy, I felt so opposite of what I thought a boy should feel like that I would not even allow myself to put my hands in my pockets—because that’s what real boys do—and I just simply did not feel like a boy! The way we think affects the way we feel. The way we feel affects our attitudes and our behaviors. Wrong thinking, when left unchecked, results in bad habits. My warped way of thinking led me to all manners of unhealthy behavior: promiscuity, suicidal tendencies, angry outbursts, and utter self-focus.
A great example of what I am talking about grew out of my wrong thinking about my anger. Because I was such an artistic, touchy feely, and outside-of-the-normal-way-of-thinking kind of a guy, I would have moments of anger in which I lost control. I did not understand myself, my gifts, or my emotional tendencies, nor did I understand what it meant to be introverted. My parents did not understand me either. This lack of understanding—and wrong thinking on my part—led to such frustration that I would blow up in anger if one of my brothers crossed me in some innocent way, or if I did not win at a competition when playing with my cousins, or when my parents would ask me to do something I thought was beneath me to do.
On more than one such occasion, my mom would respond to my anger—often while disciplining me—with, “You come by your anger naturally. Your great-grandparents were angry people. This is just the way you are.” Even though I always felt remorse after realizing that my anger had just hurt whomever I was unleashing my wrath upon, the words I believed about myself always assuaged the guilt to some degree. If this was just the way I was, then people will just have to get over it when I vomit out my vitriol. The only problem was that no one wants to be around an angry person! The way we think affects the way we feel. The way we feel affects how we respond to life and reality. The way we respond to others will also have an affect upon them. Wrong thinking leads us to self-winding, and hurt people hurt people.
One of the first things the Lord began to deal with me about after He changed my identity was to face my anger. He simply asked me by way of my thoughts, in that silent voice I have come to understand as the voice of God to me, “Who told you you were an angry man?”
My response? “My family.”
Without missing a beat, my Father God asked me, “Who made you, son?”
“You did, Lord.”
“Then be the man of peace I say you are. That old way of thinking about yourself was never from Me, son. Let us rip that old way of thinking away from your mind. See what’s exposed there? That is the heart of peace I planted in you when you were first born again. Just be that.”
In that moment, everything about the way I thought about myself took yet another amazing turn toward freedom and made me re-evaluate everything I believed about myself and about who God says He is. It led me to ask these questions: Does God feel anything? Is He an emotional God?
When Jesus went ashore, He saw a large crowd, and He felt compassion for them because they were like sheep without a shepherd; and He began to teach them many things. (Mark 6:34)
Jesus and the Father are One. Jesus felt compassion. God feels compassion. Jesus once burst into anger at the way people were using the house of God in an unholy manner. God can feel anger; He can feel peace; He can weep with sorrow; He can feel joy! He is the One who made our emotions. So why would He make us emotional beings?
Though not exhaustive by any means, I believe God made us emotional beings for several reasons. Emotions help us sense God and feel His presence. During some of my most depraved moments, I have felt God’s presence. What I have come to realize in looking back at such moments is that God was actually presenting me with His thoughts, and the feeling of His presence with me was triggered by some Truth He was presenting me—like the many moments I contemplated suicide and felt that God was there asking me to reconsider. In looking back, I know now that He was there simply saying, “I am here, son...and I love you.”
Another purpose of emotions is to help us pinpoint pain and aids in the dealing with and healing of that pain. Let’s say we have a pain in our side and it does not subside after several days, only increases in intensity. What do we do? We head for the doctor. The first thing the doctor says is something like, “Show me where it hurts.” Our response is to show him and allow him to do the work necessary to bring about our healing. The only drawback would be if we were to respond to the doctor with, “What will people think of me if I show you?” What if we walked out of that encounter and the pain grew into death? That would be foolish, would it not? Yet that is exactly what we do with our feelings and our wrong thoughts when faced with honesty before God. Why is that? Could it be because of our wrong worldview? Unless we view God as our Maker, we will never have our emotional needs met in a lasting way by an imperfect world.
Emotions are like rivers of the soul that transport us to the deep places of God’s presence. Feelings of sorrow lead me to cry out to God for comfort. Feelings of depravity lead me to seek Him for cleansing. Feelings of need lead me to cry out to Him for provision. Feelings of emotional wounding cause me to cry out to Him for healing. Even when I feel nothing—numbness—such non-feeling causes me to cry out to Him for emotional wholeness and filling. And when I am honest about those feelings, they were always attached to some thought I have had that has led me to that feeling. Feelings are not bad. They are necessary to help us function as human beings in need of a holy God. Feelings help us discern our God in ways that transcend what our eyes can see. Our goal, as new creations, should be to feel what our Father feels. In order to do that, we must think as He thinks! And I have wonderful news! As a new creation, you have been given the mind of Christ! You can think His thoughts. And to think like Christ is to have one’s mind set free to operate in the way it was intended all along!
For WHO HAS KNOWN THE MIND OF THE LORD, THAT HE WILL INSTRUCT HIM? But we have the mind of Christ. (1 Corinthians 2:16)
Should feelings define a person—give them their identity? Who wants to be defined by their feelings? I feel anger at times, but I do not want to be identified as an angry man. I want to be identified as a new creation who is slow to anger. Who wants to be defined by their appetites? I want my appetites to be used for the King and for the kingdom of God!
Would you be willing to explore the possibility that your self-thought processes may have been compromised by wrong-thinking or by a wrong perception of self? To do so will lead you to a journey of transformation and the renewing of your mind...a renewal of the way you think.
When I first walked out of my homosexual past, I was told I would be back by my still-gay friends. I was told I was faking my way through life to sell music and make a living in the Christian music world. And my favorite? I was told I had been brainwashed. And, you know what? To that one I had to agree. As I began to put off the lies that were opposed to God’s design for me as a man, my thought-life was being washed by the Truth of God’s complete design for my masculine identity!
Therefore I urge you, brethren, by the mercies of God, to present your bodies a living and holy sacrifice, acceptable to God, which is your spiritual service of worship. And do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind, so that you may prove what the will of God is, that which is good and acceptable and perfect. (Romans 12:1-2)
How many other feelings do you have that you know to be wrong but are hard to shake? Habits can be broken as we change the way we think about our identity from God’s point of view. Hunger for food can become hunger for God’s Word. Craving for drugs to alter the way we feel and to cope with life can become craving for God’s Truth and presence to bathe us in His love and acceptance. Lust for the same sex can be seen as the counterfeit it is as we hunger after God’s Truth for His design and purpose for our sexuality.
If feelings are deeply ingrained, does that mean they’re God given? As we have already discussed, Satan is the liar and deceiver opposed to God’s will and way. Since his only power over us is in the lies he plants in our minds, we know where to attack him and how to push him back. It is by the Word of God. A God-centric worldview leads to new thinking and new thinking leads to self- control. Self-control leads to victory over stinkin’ thinkin’.
What does God require of us when our deep feelings take us one way and His will takes us another? We need but look to Jesus who did not feel like going to the cross, yet He chose to go against His feelings. Those feelings were a means of connecting to God and operating in God’s reality...which led to the whole world being given the opportunity to be saved from sin. To be saved from stinkin’ thinkin’.
Are you ready to be free?
Dennis Jernigan
This blog is an excerpt from the book Renewing Your Mind: Identity and the Matter of Choice - https://www.amazon.com/Renewing-Your-Mind-Identity-Matter/dp/1613143737/ref=sr_1_1?crid=3A8BXJKRCSM7T&dib=eyJ2IjoiMSJ9.AzdEHdBTMOTtUENfsWu4UA.iqW1r7w7iwlGizbjnBz1FgM45tDrmRp4AVQvUh0pUPk&dib_tag=se&keywords=Renewing+Your+Mind%3A+Identity+and+the+Matter+of+Choice+dennis+jernigan&qid=1744816434&sprefix=renewing+your+mind+identity+and+the+matter+of+choice+dennis+jernigan%2Caps%2C134&sr=8-1#detailBullets_feature_div
2. Russell Goldman, “Here’s a List of 58 Gender Options for Facebook Users,” (February, 2014). http://abcnews.go.com/blogs/headlines/2014/02/heres-a-list-of-58-gender-options-for-facebook-users/.
3. Colin Stutz, “Miley Cyrus Says She’s Gender Fluid: ‘It Has Nothing to Do with Any Parts of Me,’” (June, 2015). http://www.billboard.com/articles/columns/pop-shop/6598191/miley-cyrus-gender-fluid-nothing-to- do-with-any-parts.