TLP 315: Understand Your Children’s Feelings

So two people get on a roller coaster. The first person doesn't want to be there, the second does. The first person is going to act and speak and feel like they're scared. The second person is going to act and speak and feel like they're exhilarated.

Why is that?

The Show’s Mission and Why This Episode Matters

Welcome to Truth. Love. Parent. Where we use God's Word to become intentional, premeditated parents. Here's your host, A .M. Brewster.

If you're just joining us, I want to welcome you to Truth. Love. Parent. And then I want to kick you out. I'm just kidding. Kind of. Not really. No, I really do want to just kick you out. We're in the middle of a series, so you would really appreciate this episode way much more if you started with episode 313.

And I have no idea what I was just saying when I said way much more because that's not even a thing. You can't speak that way. Anyway, if you are just joining us at Truth. Love. Parent, I do welcome you.

You know, I love parents. I love parents. I love families. I love doing what I do with families, helping them to take the next step in their Christian life and in their relationship with each other. So thank you for being here.

But of course, again, we are in the middle of a series. So if you go back a couple episodes and pick up there, you'll appreciate this one much more. And then I won't kick you out when you finally get back to this one again.

Of course, since our content is grounded in the scriptures, really, it's really evergreen. That means that to the degree that our teaching submits to God's truth, it will never cease to be relevant and practical, which means you can just go all the way back to our pilot season and just start there.

And that would be an awesome way to get to know us because the information does build on itself, even though most of the episodes can stand alone. And that's really what we want. We want not just to have episodes that stand alone.

We want to have episodes that glorify God. We want to make sure they're rooted and grounded in God's truth so that they're practical to you. We're going to discuss why your kids feel what they feel. It's kind of hard to get more relevant than that.

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They work with young families at their church, but they were also the first to host a TLP meetup in their home in Dallas, Texas. And in the new year, they have agreed to join me behind the mic for a super transparent and more valuable than I can say testimony to the awesome redeeming power of God.

And they are just like you. They're just like me. None of us can accomplish anything outside of God's enabling, and most of us will impact just a few people in our lifetimes. But when we band together, we can have a much wider impact than we ever could have had on our own.

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And if you are interested in what part of the move my family is in today, well, we're probably in Indiana with my in-laws, Lord willing. Who knows what awesome time we're probably having. It's amazing.

It's wonderful. Obviously, I recorded this in advance, but the plan is then to leave for North Carolina on Monday after presenting the ministry at their church on Sunday. Okay, let's take another step into understanding why our kids feel what they feel.

Desires, Emotions, and the Fruit on Our Trees

On the last episode, we talked about the fruit of what we say and what we do, and we learned that our fruit grows from our desires. And we finished the show by asking, why do we want what we want? But before we can answer that, we need to talk about the third kind of fruit that grows from our desires.

We've talked in some detail about how Follow Your Heart has become a resounding and deafening anthem of epic proportions in our country. It's basically defined a generation and it's quickly consuming another.

But do we really do what we do because we feel what we feel as Pixar and their movie Inside Out would have us think? What does the Bible say about our emotions? And why did God give us feelings in the first place?

These are important questions, and we're going to answer them today using God's perfect word and his liberating truth. First, let me start by telling you about my favorite workshop from the ACBC conference last week.

To be honest, I was hesitant to even attend this particular class because of the title. It was called Emotions and Counseling. I've researched and studied this topic in great detail from the scriptures, but to be fair, I've encountered very little biblically sound information on the topic.

And most of what I've heard and read really wasn't very good. But knowing that it was ACBC and deeply desiring to have my own conceptions biblically challenged, I entered the class with an open mind and heart.

And let me tell you, it was fantastic. The speaker was Rebecca Hanna. She's on the counseling staff at First Baptist of Jacksonville with Dr. Heath Lambert as co-pastor. Truly, the content was so good that I planned to have Rebecca as a special guest on the show.

Her workshop presented the most biblical, theologically accurate doctrine of emotion that I have ever heard from anyone, pastors and professors included. Now, most of what I'm going to share with you today comes from my own study, but I'm happy to say that my conclusions were very much mirrored by Mrs. Hanna's lecture.

And in addition, my notes have been wonderfully expanded by her presentation. It's very nice when another child of God who is well-educated, proficient, and diligent comes to the same conclusions you have.

I suppose it's just nice knowing that you're not crazy, or at least that you're not alone in your insanity. Seriously though, I look forward to discussing this topic in even greater depth with Rebecca in the future.

But for now, let's continue with the question, why do my children feel what they feel? Well, as my buddy Voltaire once said, if you want to converse with me, first define your terms. So, let's look at our definitions.

And we're going to start basically with just a dictionary definition. Dictionary .com defines emotions as an effective state of consciousness in which joy, sorrow, fear, hate, or the like is experienced as distinguished from cognitive and volitional states of consciousness.

Wow, that was helpful. Basically, they're saying that emotions are not the result of a mental decision. Instead, they're a conscious state where things like joy, sorrow, and the like are experienced. I don't know about you, but I find that definition lacking in so many ways, but it's not a medical textbook, so I guess I can't complain.

However, the Medical Dictionary for Health Professions and Nursing is only slightly more helpful when they say that emotion is a strong feeling, aroused mental state, or intense state of drive or unrest directed toward a definite object and evidence in both behavior and in psychological changes with accompanying autonomic nervous system manifestations.

I find that last part to be enlightening for our study. Emotion is accompanied by autonomic nervous system manifestations. This is key because unlike certain functions of the soul, emotions are decidedly biological in nature, though not an interpretation.

We'll talk a little bit more about that in a later, but for now, let's move past the dictionary definitions and see what pop culture says about our emotions. If you check out our episode notes today at truthloveparent .com, you'll notice that this point is called the Disney definition.

We will talk about Disney, but here I'm using it as kind of a catch-all for the modern cultural understanding of this. First of all, Steve Jobs said this, your time is limited, so don't waste it living someone else's life.

Don't be trapped by dogma, which is living with the results of other people's thinking. Don't let the noise of other opinions drown out your own inner voice. And most importantly, have the courage to follow your heart and intuition.

They somehow already know what you truly want to become. Everything else is secondary. Unquote. A band from the 90s and early 2000s, Nickelback, sang this, this time I wonder what it feels like to find the one in this life, the one we all dream of, but dreams just aren't enough.

So I'll be waiting for the real thing. I'll know it by the feeling. The moment when we're meeting will play out like a scene straight off The Silver Scream. And then another song called Follow Your Heart, written for Disney's Cinderella 2, says this, who's to say the rules must stay the same forevermore?

Whoever made them had to change the rules that came before. So make your own way. Show the beauty within when you follow your heart. There's no heart you can't win. So reach for the sky. It's not as high as it seems.

Just follow your heart. Go as far as your dreams. Dare if you want to. Don't fear the fall. Take a chance. It's better than to never chance at all. There's a world full of changing and you've just begun.

Don't let them tell you it's simply not done. When you follow your heart, you'll shine bright as the sun. Now before we move on, I just have to editorialize for a minute. If it's true that we should follow our hearts regardless of the rules, then people who derive joy from lying and cheating and stealing and driving drunk and shaking drugs and fornicating and committing violence and murdering are all perfectly fine because they're just simply following their hearts.

This is a wonderful example of a failure philosophy that is destroying lives all over the world at this very moment. We need to so vigilantly just guard over what our children are putting into their minds.

Their books and their TV shows and their movies are just filling them with these lies that you just follow your heart. It doesn't matter what people say. It doesn't matter what your parents want. It doesn't matter what your teachers want.

You do what you feel. But ladies and gentlemen, it is so dangerous. It is a massive failure philosophy. And if you'd like to know more about what I mean when I say failure philosophies, and if you're interested to see if there are any in your home, I really suggest you listen to episode 61, Are There Failure Philosophies in Your Home?

But moving past all of this drivel, we just really need to consider God's definition of emotions. Now we also need to do a little bit of review from episode 32 as we see how God understands emotions. So if you've heard that one before, great.

The review will be good for you. Of course, we need to be reminded that the biblical understanding of the emotions and the mind are occasionally combined in one idea. And to be perfectly honest, God knows exactly what he's talking about.

Though emotions may primarily be physical reactions to a stimulus, the interpretation of those feelings occurs in our minds. So some of the verses we're going to look at today may talk about the heart and some the mind.

But let's go ahead and look at them. Jeremiah 17 9 famously proclaims that the heart is deceitful above all things and desperately sick. Who can understand it? Proverbs 28 26 tells us that whoever trusts in his own mind is a fool, but he who walks in wisdom will be delivered.

In the KJV, the word translated mind here is actually translated heart. And I absolutely love the Ecclesiastes 11 9 verse. Solomon says, Rejoice, O young man, in your youth, and let your heart cheer you in the days of your youth.

Walk in the ways of your heart and in the sight of your eyes, but know that for all these things, God will bring you into judgment. Okay, so it's pretty easy to see that the heart is definitely not something we should be following.

It deceives us. It's desperately wicked. And we will be judged for the times we walked in the way of our hearts. But before we continue, I want to point out God's response to the whole follow your heart foolishness.

He has an answer. In Proverbs 3 21 through 24, he says this, My son, do not lose sight of these. Keep sound wisdom and discretion, and they will be life for your soul and adornment for your neck. Then you will walk on your way securely and your foot will not stumble.

If you lie down, you will not be afraid. When you lie down, your sleep will be sweet. Instead of following your heart, you need to follow wisdom and discretion. Then we will truly be successful. We'll have life, adornments, we'll be secure and we'll sleep sweetly with no need to fear.

Wisdom and discernment actually overcome our emotions. Okay, so we've seen some definitions and understandings about emotion. Let's cap this part of the discussion off with a review of the doctrine of emotion.

Emotions as Gift, Tool, and Alarm

Emotions have three God-ordained purposes in our lives. First of all, emotions are a gift. They're a gift, number one, to the individual. They're created to give humans a dynamic, passionate experience in this life and the life to come.

Ecclesiastes 3 .4 tells us that there is a time to laugh and a time to weep. Romans 12 .15 tells us to rejoice with those who rejoice and weep with those who weep. Both these quote-unquote positive and quote-unquote negative emotions were created by God for a purpose.

Christ's honoring emotions are to be enjoyed and we can revel in emotions like happiness but also in God-pleasing grief. Number two, emotions are also a gift to the body of Christ. Galatians 6 .2 tells us to bear one another's burdens and as we saw from Romans 12 .15, we're commanded that we need to rejoice with those who rejoice and weep with those who weep.

We see Jesus doing the exact same thing with Mary and Martha. It was a beautiful picture. And then thirdly, emotions are also a gift to the spouses, the parents, the pastors, and the counselors, and the other spiritual authorities in your life.

Let me focus in just on the familiar relationships. In the same way our children's emotional responses can help us determine the best way to parent them, a spouse's emotional response can help the other spouse know how to best minister to them.

Now we're gonna look at this shortly and try to illustrate it for you but really basically these emotions are a gift to the parents in many ways because as I see my children's emotions, I can actually know better how to parent them and that's a wonderful thing.

So the first reason we have emotions is that they're a gift to us, the body of Christ, and our spiritual authorities. But second, our emotions are a tool. Just like everything else in our lives, God wants us to glorify Him with our feelings.

First Corinthians 10 31 says, whether you eat or drink or whatsoever you do, I could say or feel, do all to the glory of God. Do your feelings cause other people to think more highly about your God? Well, they should.

God's given them to you as a tool to help glorify Him. And lastly, I like to call emotions our feelings alarm. Rebecca Hanna says that emotions are a gauge, not a guide. It's the same idea. In the same way that a smoke detector in your house is there to warn you of a problem, your emotions can help you see that there's a spiritual issue in your life.

If you're experiencing strong emotion in line with God's will, all is well. I mean, do you enjoy what God says is good? Are you angry about sin? Are you jealous for God's glory? But see, if you're experiencing strong emotion out of sync with God's will, then there's a problem.

Do you enjoy your sin? Are you angry about what God has brought into your life? Are you jealous for your own way? I'm hoping that all the observations we've made can help us see that emotions are, in fact, the third fruit on our trees.

Why We Feel What We Feel

In much the same way that we do what we do and say what we say because we want what we want, we also feel what we feel because we want what we want. Let's illustrate this. So, two people get on a roller coaster.

The first person doesn't want to be there. The second does. Both of them have adrenaline coursing through their bodies during the whole ride. The first person is going to act and speak and feel like they're scared.

The second person is going to act and speak and feel like they're exhilarated. It's the exact same experience. They're both having the same physiological effect, but the outcome is very different. Why is that?

Well, unlike our actions and words that are simply motivated by our desires, our emotions are motivated in part by our desires, but also our interpretation of the physiological changes in our bodies. I felt my son move through the same maturation process that I had to move through when I was younger.

He's gone from utter terror of roller coasters to absolutely loving them in just two short years. Part of that process involved me teaching him that the tingling feelings and the butterflies are not fear, dread, or anxiety.

It's just adrenaline. It's a chemical tool God's given us to help us work through high-pressure situations. The key isn't the tool that God has given us. The key is how we interpret that tool. Now, interestingly enough, the same process that leads us to want what we want also affects our emotions, but it's also important to acknowledge that our fruit is cyclical.

This is what I mean. If you had an apple tree and you never picked the apples and no animals ever got to it, the leaves and the fruit would fall to the ground each year. After falling to the ground, they'd spend the entire autumn, winter, and spring being transformed into fertilizer for the tree.

Much of the nutrients the tree will use next summer would come from its own fruit. Now, in the same way, though, our fruit is not the same as our root. Repeatedly growing the same fruit every year makes it easier to grow more of the same fruit.

If the fruit I grow is diseased and that disease is passed back into the tree's root system, then there's really no hope for my tree to be healthy next year either. So, yes, our repeated actions and words make it easier to continue making the same choices.

In the same way, our sinful emotions can feed our negative deeds and speech and even perpetuate more negative emotions, but as we continue our study, I believe you'll come to see that it's not true that our emotions cause us to do what we do.

We do what we do and say what we say and feel what we feel because we want what we want. Let's finish off our time together looking back at Proverbs 3, 21 -24. My son, do not lose sight of these. Keep sound wisdom and discretion and they will be life for your soul and adornment for your neck.

Then you will walk on your way securely and your foot will not stumble. If you lie down, you will not be afraid. When you lie down, your sleep will be sweet. According to this verse, how can we avoid fear?

How can we change from feeling fear to feeling peace? Well, we need wisdom and discretion. Basically, we need to think right. What's really interesting is the relationship between what we think and what we want.

Just as Eve allowed her thoughts to imagine how wonderful the forbidden fruit would be, the more we think about something, the more we want it. Depending on whether or not you've just eaten, if I start talking about the glories of my favorite pizza, I bet I could have you seriously desiring a slice.

It's just like me at the ACBC conference. The more I dwelt on the magnificence of God, the more I wanted to live for Him. So, how do we change how we feel? I mean, can I just think right now and all of a sudden just change the way I feel just by saying, okay, it's okay.

It's okay. Be at peace. Be at peace. Don't be mad. Don't be mad. No, but when we activate our minds, when we think right, that will guide our desires and bring forth actions, words, and feelings in line with what we want.

If I'm sitting on the roller coaster and I'm starting to get afraid, telling myself to not be afraid isn't going to help. But if I'm sitting on the roller coaster and I'm telling myself that, you know what, my dad really wants me to be on this roller coaster, and he says it's safe, and he says I'll like it, and he says that it's really great, and he says that I just need to trust him, and so on and so forth.

And as I started thinking about that, I'm going to want to do things in line with those thoughts, which will then breed those actions and desires in me that will glorify God. Now, I could give a bunch more examples, but I'd like you to give this some more thought.

And while you're kind of mauling all of this over in your head, if you have any questions, please feel free to email us at counselor at truthloveparent .com. It is imperative that we work through this material and strive to understand it for ourselves.

It's true, your children are emotional, and there's a reason they're emotional. You need to understand why they feel what they feel, and of course, you need to understand that you're not a slave to your emotions either.

They're just a gauge of your spiritual state. They're not a guide. Listen, emotions are a wonderful gift given to us to enjoy, to glorify God, and to warn us when we're walking in darkness. God wants us to do what we do and say what we say based off of our wisdom and discernment, not our feelings.

But He also wants us to feel what we feel because of our wisdom and discernment too. And because we want to obey Him, we're going to act and talk and feel in ways that glorify Him. Again, please enjoy our episode notes and our transcript, which I've linked in the description.

And please join us next time as our next episode will answer the question from episode 96, why do we want what we want? And that's a very important question. And I'd also like to invite you to like us on Facebook and follow us on Twitter for daily encouragement and equipping in this wonderful role that God has given you as parent.

I know that many of the things we've been mining from Scripture lately have been uncomfortable. The world wants us to think that we're victims that are controlled by forces we have no control over. But the reality is that we bear bad fruit because we're bad trees.

However, remember Matthew 1233, either make the tree good and its fruit good, or make the tree bad and its fruit bad, for the tree is known by its fruit. You can make your fruit good by the power of the Holy Spirit.

And by the time we're done with this study, you'll be equipped to bear Christ-honoring fruit and help your kids do the same. Have a great week. Truth. Love. Parents. Is part of the.

Final Encouragement and Next Episode Preview

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