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    Jan 22, 2017

    Feelin' It

    Feelin' It

    Passage: Proverbs 4:23-27

    Speaker: Rev. Vivian McCarthy, Pastor

    Series: Falling in Love is Easy

    Category: Relationships

    Keywords: emotions, past, relationships

    At least as powerful as the expectations that we each bring to a relationship are the internal feelings that are the result of life experiences and disappointments. Prior unhealthy or negative relationships tend to stay deep within us and contribute to our emotional state. Emotions have a powerful impact on the quality of our relationships.

    It has happened to most of us. All of a sudden we find ourselves lashing out, saying things that we know are hurtful and wondering: Where did that come from!?! Or at least I hope that we know that what we said was hurtful and not just our right because our beloved made us mad. How dare he? How could she be so ugly? (You have to understand: that was my grandmother’s word – the height of disapproval – don’t be ugly. Every one of us dreaded that phrase!)

    I’d like to read a passage from the book I’ve been using for inspiration for this series, Staying in Love by Andy Stanley:

    We all bring baggage from relational hurts in our pasts. And that baggage will inescapably influence the way we experience our marriage [and all of our close, long-term relationships]. The emotional residue and repercussions from these difficult experiences in our pasts will inevitably spill out in the present as we hit various “bumps” in our…relationships.

    That’s why we’re given these words of wisdom in the Bible: “Above all else, guard your heart, for everything you do flows from it.” [Or, as we heard today from a little different translation, “Keep your heart with all vigilance, for from it flow the springs of life.”] We guard our hearts by paying careful attention to what’s going on inside us.

    We need a proactive strategy for doing this. We’re good at monitoring [others’] behavior, but we’re horrible at monitoring what’s really happening in our own hearts.

    We learn to monitor [others’] behavior because of a belief that this is what determines our own emotional satisfaction…We fail to realize how much the condition of our own hearts determines that satisfaction. (Quoted from Andy Stanley, Staying in Love.  Copyright © 2010 by North Point Ministries, Inc.  All rights reserved.)

    Verse 23: Guard your heart. Do you pay attention – really pay attention – to what is going on inside of you – in your heart? Last week we talked about re-modeling our lives, our expectations, so that we live as Christ lived. In other words, putting the other first, loving sacrificially, taking on the mind of Christ – or allowing God to shape us so that we become like Jesus. We talked about how our will is important in a long-term relationship.

    Guard your heart, for everything you do flows from it.

    Guarding your heart is related – inextricably connected to God’s shaping and exercising our best thinking, our will, our behavior to be the best we can be. Today’s passage suggests that if we do not pay attention to the condition of our hearts – the seat of our feelings and commitments – we endanger our lives, and I don’t mean from clogged arteries!

    Painful experiences tend to live a long time. I guess you could say that they can clog up your heart. Angry experiences, too. What are you doing to prevent those experiences from affecting how you interact with your beloved? Sometimes the things that your beloved does to make you mad, sad, embarrassed, unlovable, lonely, abandoned, afraid, or any other difficult emotion, may be touching on one of those painful experiences – surprising you with the emotion. It may sound almost nonsensical, but it could be as simple as identifying what you are actually feeling.

    Stanley recommends thinking about what you are feeling before you speak. Can you identify the feeling? When you identify it, say the name of the feeling aloud, and if it’s the right thing to do, let your beloved know how you feel – in a way that does not blame your beloved. In other words, sharing in a kind of self-revelatory way, “I am feeling so sad.” Not: “you make me so sad.”

    As we get better at that, we may begin to realize what is wrong in our hearts rather than what is wrong with our beloved.

    As I read the rest of the Proverbs passage, I believe the writer, probably Solomon, is implying that these other cautions flow from a heart that is not well-shaped, well-guarded, kept with vigilance.

    Verse 24: Put away from you crooked speech, and put devious talk far from you. Last week, we learned from the Christ hymn in the second chapter of Philippians that we were to do nothing from selfish ambition, and I talked about how we often try to manipulate others into doing what we want. We don’t put the other first.

    Devious talk – crooked speech – falls into that category. Twisting the truth. Parsing the truth. False praise. Name-calling. Not speaking to the other. Hiding your feelings or showing your feelings in ways that are damaging. Yelling at the other person. Dredging up the past in every disagreement. Shouting out unreasonable demands or expectations. Crooked speech. Search me, O God, and know my heart. Friends, what is it that is in your heart that is shaping your speech in such hurtful ways? Again, what is it that is inside you that is literally calling out to the person that you love?

    Verse 25: Let your eyes look directly forward, and your gaze be straight before you. I actually think that verses 26 and 27 are directly related – keep straight the path of your feet, don’t swerve to the right or left, turn your foot away from evil.

    There are numerous stories in the Hebrew scriptures that illustrate how looking away or stepping away can affect our most important relationships. When Moses went up the mountain and was gone for longer than the Israelites could tolerate, they began looking around, moving from their path. They began looking toward other gods, toward other people and their practices – of course they were people who did not worship God, who did not put God first – who did not love the Lord their God with all their heart, with all their soul, with all their mind, with all their strength. Looking right, looking left, the baubles and appearances of glitter and strength drew their feet away from the path of the One God.

    Then, after that chapter, much later, they looked right and looked left and found that other people had kings. We want – no, we need to be like the other nations. We need a king! And when you read the chronicles of the kings of the Hebrew people, you see that there were more unfaithful kings than faithful ones, kings who led the people away from the paths of God.

    Friends, when our hearts are unguarded, when we are enticed away from living and loving the way Jesus did, in other words, by not putting the other first and by not loving sacrificially, but instead feelin’ it – you know, feeling those emotions that have stuck around from painful experiences and allowing our inner emotional state to dictate our behavior with our beloved, our relationships are put in jeopardy. Trust is damaged. We are responsible for causing the beloved pain.

    This may be the hardest part. We can talk about how Jesus’ life is so great, how God’s love lives in us, how God saved us, did so much for us. But the rubber hits the road when we begin to examine our behavior, our lives, to see just how well we emulate that love, that care, that saving grace.

    Beloved, guard your heart so that your life can model Christ’s life and both you and your beloved will know the fresh springs of life.