Car Problems (Part 1)
Read Time: 9 mins
At last Job spoke, and he cursed the day of his birth. He said: “Let the day of my birth be erased, and the night I was conceived. Let that day be turned to darkness. Let it be lost even to God on high, and let no light shine on it. If my misery could be weighed and my troubles be put on the scales, they would outweigh all the sands of the sea. That is why I spoke impulsively.
Job 3:1-4;6:2-3 NLT
I remember praying for a car in college. People said it wouldn't be possible to get one before school but I worked, saved, prayed, and then worked saved, and prayed some more. God answered by having my dad receive a random call asking if one of his boys needed a car for school. That call led to me getting a free car as an answer to my prayer. It was more than a blessing to receive this 2001 Toyota that my brother affectionally named “Mariah Camry”. While it was perfect for me, It was what you'd expect from an old car meant to only get you from Tacobell to your dorm and back.
We would bring battery-operated speakers to play music while driving because the car's sound system didn't connect to our phones. We had to drive with a portable battery jumping system because of how often the battery would go out. I am proud to say that I can parallel park without a screen and park backward with just one mirror because I did not have the luxury of having a backup camera. It made every squeak, sound, and ping you could imagine. I still have the mental picture of smoke pouring out from the hood as I barely made it back to my college apartment after picking it up from the mechanic who supposedly had fixed the issue. I'm pretty sure my brother had to park on the side of the highway a few times to give it breaks as he tried to drive to Nashville with it. I didn't care that the passenger door didn't have a handle or that the back window would get stuck in the rain. I didn't care that it cost more to maintain than it would've to buy. I just appreciated the freedom having a car gave me.
Now all of the issues of this car were not experienced to no fault of my own. To be completely honest, many of the car issues we experienced were not with the car before we got our hands on it. Many of the issues escalated because my brothers and I didn't know how to work cars. I remember rolling into an oil change place and seeing mechanics' faces as they called their coworkers over to see how I had literally no oil in the car that I was driving. Some of these issues could have been easily reacted to or prevented if I had been proactive in paying attention to the required maintenance and warning signs the car is designed to give.
The car manufacturers tell you what consistent practices are necessary for the car to function and they design warning indicators to let you know when something needs to be adjusted. On your dashboard, there are some lights that will illuminate when you need to be alerted of a potential problem in the car. A light can go off to let you know something as simple as you having low gas or to indicate something as serious as a battery going bad or oil getting low.
When our warning lights come on, we don't ignore them. We take them seriously for our own safety. When we see a check engine light, we don't ignore it because the potential task could be unknown or scary. We pull over, investigate, and put it in the hands of someone with greater knowledge. We don't ignore check engine lights in our cars because we know that sweeping the warnings under the rug would result in destruction and bigger problems for us and our call. Yet, many of us ignore the warning indicators and check engine lights which are called emotions.
Like cars, We as humans have been designed to need regular maintenance and have been given a warning system that God has designed to help us react and relate to the world around us. That warning light system is our emotions. We aren't controlled by our emotions but our emotions should be used as signs to help us understand what is in our control. Just like with our cars, we cannot ignore the warning lights. Don’t ignore how you feel.
God designed our human experience with emotions so that we would be protected. Our emotions alert us to potential issues and probable interactions. They alert us to areas in which we may need action or adjustment. They push us to point our attention to God. They prompt us to slow down, center in, and focus on what may need to be tended to in order to sustain our total health, yet many of us are ignoring these warning lights. Like a check engine light in a car, if we pull over and check under the hood we will find ourselves better off than if we just ignore the signs. Yet, we suppress, ignore, and punish the presence of emotions and it's just as stupid as not getting gas when your gas light comes on. Many have been taught that maturity, manhood, or deep spirituality are found in the absence of emotion. Many have been taught that an emotionless life is a safe one, but that could not be further from the truth.
Emotions are literally coded into our DNA for the purpose of protecting and prospering us. Our emotions are an invitation to intimacy. Emotions are given so that you can lean in and experience the peace of God, the process of growth God would like you to embark on, and a greater revelation of your purpose on earth. I believe that one of the biggest problems that hold us back from experiencing God in His fullness is that we’re afraid to feel. We’re afraid to dive into the dark depths of the soul and uncover our deepest doubts, desires, terrors, and truths.
Something you’ll notice about every superhero in the faith is that they didn’t deny their feelings with God. They were not afraid to express their full range of emotions with their Creator. They were not afraid to share their unfiltered thoughts and be raw with God. Philip Yancey says it like this, “One bold message in the Book of Job is that you can say anything to God. Throw at Him your grief, your anger, your doubt, your bitterness, your betrayal, your disappointment— He can absorb them all. As often as not, spiritual giants of the Bible are shown contending with God. They prefer to go away limping, like Jacob, rather than to shut God out. In this respect, the Bible prefigured a tenet of modern psychology: you can’t really deny your feelings or make them disappear, so you might as well express them.”
Many of the Biblical characters we are inspired by allow themselves to uncover the deepest wells of emotion. Some of David’s psalms sound borderline bizarre as he freely gifts his complex emotions to his Creator. He was free enough to give his raw emotion to God and it resulted in a deeper experience in God’s presence. Moses argued with God. Moses was so emotional and open with God that God shifted His plan after hearing his concerns. Abraham bartered with God. Peter shared his plans and Paul shared his problems. Even Jesus shed tears and was overwhelmed with grief, experienced anger and distress, was sorrowful and troubled, and moved with compassion. Jesus felt His emotions so freely that fell on His face, sweated blood, and asked if the weight He was carrying could be taken from Him. Now we see Job feeling his very real emotions and describing them as weighing more than the sea.
While many of us have been conditioned to contain and constrict emotion, emotion is the door through which we experience God at a new level. Throughout the Bible, people’s deepest encounters with God come after they’re the most honest. The greatest encounters with God always come after the greatest levels of honesty with Him. Holding back our true feelings is stopping us from receiving all God wants us to experience.
This is why I believe it's important that we stop running. We cannot experience God in His fullness if we don't give Him our full selves. I am not a psychologist or therapist and I don't have the time or expertise to walk you through every trauma, feeling, situation, and emotion you feel or don't feel, but I know enough about the spiritual world to know that an emotional inventory may be what is needed for many of us to walk past a wall of separation that has been between us and God.
Peter Scazerro says that it is impossible to be spiritually mature while remaining emotionally immature. I believe this is for a few reasons. One is that our emotions reveal places in which we need God to show up. By denying our emotions we are denying the thrones of our lives that God wants to sit on. By denying our emotions we are ignoring the check engine lights and hiding them from the master mechanic who wants to get under the hood.
Anger for example is typically a secondary emotion. You don't always feel anger first. You feel fear, shame, or disgust first and react with a feeling of anger. Sometimes anger is the positive secondary reaction to witnessing injustice or abuse. This is why the Bible says to be angry but sin not. It's ok to feel it. The emotion itself isn't bad, but you must know what is under the hood powering your passionate reaction so that your response can be better informed.
Are you responding with anger to fight for good or because your ego was hurt? Are you responding with controlled anger or being controlled by your fear? You can only figure that out if you face the feeling. Instead of reacting immediately to the feeling, the Bible counsels us to be slow to anger. Feel it and ask yourself why you feel it. Do you feel unsafe and desire to protect yourself? Do you feel like something has been taken from you? Do you feel like something isn't right? Leaning into the emotion and asking yourself why you feel the way you feel is opening the door to experience God in a way you may have been reluctant to let Him show up in.
We are told that we can't be spiritually mature while remaining emotionally immature because being able to identify and control our emotions enough to present them in their fullness is the key to experiencing the sanctification God wants to offer. We need to get into a pattern of taking time out to feel and allow the Holy Spirit to reveal. The Bible says that the Spirit leads you to all truth. The Spirit of God will lead you to consider why you feel what you feel and how God wants to take control of it.
It sometimes feels better to hold our emotions back because we may be scared to bring them to the forefront. I'm asking you to schedule genuine and consistent time to sit with God and allow Him to reveal. Allow yourself to be caught by Him. Acknowledge the abuse. Acknowledge the fear. Be honest about the doubts, insecurity, and challenges. The Holy Spirit will lead you to consider items from your past and how they impact your present. And then provide a way of escape in the form of a perspective you may not have considered.
Pay attention to your emotions and how you react to what the Spirit leads you to. If you’re continually led by the Spirit to the same type of action, ask yourself why it’s so difficult to follow. Why are you afraid to ask the person God keeps placing on your heart for help? Ask yourself what you’re afraid of and if those fears are warranted. Ask yourself why you feel what you feel. Lean in. This journey will help you heal by learning why you react and approach things the way you do.
This is important because it's difficult to follow the Spirit's call to renew your mind if you don’t know what is in your mind. It's hard to allow God to change how you view yourself and your world if you cannot identify how your childhood, hurts, dreams and desires have affected you. It’s hard to forgive if you don’t know what you’re forgiving and why it hurts you. It’s hard to let go if you haven't felt what you have been carrying enough to give it to God. Take the time to look under the hood. I've been afraid at times to feel because I didn't know if I could handle what would be unearthed but I want you to know that It’s not as scary as you may think. You are safe with God and He won't allow more than you can bear with Him.
Now, I want to be honest. While this journey leads to peace, the journey itself may be far from peaceful. Surgery is messy and painful in the moment but it is worth it for the rest of your life. Facing the inner pains you may have suppressed for years may feel like reliving them. There are stories of people experiencing forms of PTSD after being made aware of abuses that their minds wiped from their memory as a trauma response. Being made aware of the whys behind your pains may lead to more pain momentarily, but keep going. Keep leaning. Don't allow God to just work on the surface. Allow Him to go into the deepest places of your life and renew you from the inside out.
Our check engine lights may be scary on the surface, but they're just making us aware of a potentially greater problem lurking under the hood. Don't ignore the warning signs. Don't avoid them or else you could experience greater problems later.
We see Job asking that the very day he was born be cursed. He, like so many other Biblical characters, gave his full and seemingly over-the-top emotions to the safety of their Father and was not just met with mercy and open arms, he was met with revelation and greater encounters with God. After Job is honest, God shows up and from chapters 38-42, God and Job have a crazy interaction. God reveals depths of knowledge that many will never come close to. God opens the door to an encounter that many of us will only experience a fraction of, and Job responds by saying “My ears have heard about you but now my eyes have seen you,” essentially saying, “Now I know you for myself, for real.”
Do you want to encounter God on a deeper level? Do you want God to show up in your life and family? Do you want broken familial relationships to heal? Do you want your life to be totally new? Then you have to be totally honest about not just what is going on around you but how you feel about it. You have to face it full on. Don't run from the check engine lights. Bring them to the mechanic. They're invitations to bring His creation back to Him. Cry with Him. Doubt with Him. Worry with Him. Give it all.
God isn’t afraid of your emotions so you shouldn’t be either. Feel what you feel and ask God why you feel it. Ask God to help you understand how what you feel can lead you closer to Him. Sit with God long enough and consistent enough for Him to walk through the unknown factors that affect the way you think and function in this world. What you feel is an invitation to grow and experience more of God and what He has for you. Feel it. Don't ignore the warning lights.
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