Jesus Was Emotional Too: The Bible's Take on Your Feelings

Transcribed from the episode audio and lightly edited for readability. Speaker labels are automated and may occasionally be off.

Rachel: Hey, everyone. Welcome to the Conscious Christian Marriage Podcast. We are your hosts, Rachel and Austin Holt, and we are looking forward to diving into today's podcast topic. And, but before we do that, we're going to do appreciations. So, hmm, Austin. I did not think of this ahead of time.

Austin: Let's go. I have one for you.

Rachel: But Oh, okay.

Austin: You want me to go? Rachel, I really appreciate your spontaneity and like today, just the flexibility of like, "Hey, we're gonna move this around, and now we're gonna go to lunch, and then we're gonna come back and prep this and do that." And, and, yeah, I just appreciate that you, you really do go with the flow in a lot of ways that I just really appreciate. So

Rachel: Hmm. Thank you

Austin: I think, like, a lot of people are super rigid, and it's hard for them to, like, change speed or change what they're doing, and I just appreciate that, you're flexible in a lot of ways. And I just, yeah, it makes work really fun and life really fun, so I just appreciate that about you.

Rachel: Thank you. I appreciate that you have helped me with, as we've gotten settled into the house, not overthinking certain things with packing and just reminding me that this move is different than the last move and the timing of it might be different than the last move, and to just be intentional with what I unpack instead of just rushing to get it all done. And that blesses me to have that reminder/encouragement/pivot mindset shift. So thanks.

Austin: Well, I'm glad to hear that. You're welcome. Yeah, for those of you who don't know, we actually recently just moved. we just finished building a house over the last eight months and, moved into what is our forever home. And so it's like unpacking in the home that you're most likely never gonna move from is just kind of an odd, like

Rachel: It's a different texture

Austin: It's a little different. It's different. Yeah, like un like, and decorating and where stuff goes, it's like, yeah, it's just been cool. So. All right.

Rachel: It's super fun.

Austin: Yes. All right. So today, we're going to continue our series. I think this is the second to the last one in our series on, mutual exclusives, debunking mutual exclusives. And those of you who are just now joining us for this episode, it'd be really helpful for you to pause this episode, go back to, I think, episode 16, and start this series when we started it. But a mutual exclusive basically says these two things can't be true at the same time. Okay? and so what we're doing in this series is we're taking five mutual exclusives that come up all the time, whether in mi marriage specifically or even church specifically, that over the years people have just kind of accepted as like, yeah, that's true. Those two things can't be present or possible at the same time. And we have realized how much those concepts have limited people. One, just they're not true, and two, how much they have limited people, and three, how much those concepts has, have actually come out of, like, either ignorant or really, like, insecure advice kind of designed to help people feel better about themselves by telling other people that and to help other people play small so they don't threaten leadership even.

And so we're going to debunk another mutual exclusive today. So Rachel, what is our mutual exclusive?

Rachel: So how you've maybe heard it Well, this one is emotions and feelings or desire and God speaking to us cannot exist at the same time. So your feelings are bad. That's not God speaking to you. How you've maybe heard it, don't listen to your emotions or your feelings. Just listen to the Holy Spirit. But the new story

Austin: Yeah, which I just wanna say on the surface feels like good advice. You know? It's like, well, don't, don't listen to your emotions or your feelings. Just listen to the Holy Spirit. In an ideal world, that'd be great, if we could ignore all things and just be like, "All right, Holy Spirit, what am I supposed to be feeling, thinking, desiring right now?" Yeah, like, "Wah, wah, wah, wah, wah."

Rachel: Tuning the Holy Spirit.

Austin: Tuning in.

Rachel: Like, and you're all, "Sing."

Austin: That would be awesome, okay? But I do believe God designed us to be these kind of human spiritual hybrids, and so there's an integrative part of our experience with, you know, the Holy Spirit. And so- I could see where someone would say that to someone with good intentions. Yeah.

Rachel: Correct. And as we will discuss soon with using the scripture, the heart is deceitful above all things, like feelings are, you know, feelings can deceive you. Feelings aren't good. You know, just focus on what you know. Listen to the Holy Spirit. Ground yourself in truth, which is the Word. So that's maybe how you've heard it. But the new story that we're gonna be talking about today is God speaks through our emotions, our desires, and the Holy Spirit many times at the same time. Yeah, and the more that we work with people and we learn about Holy Spirit and the conscious, like when you have a conscience, like, oh yeah my conscience was- I just kind of felt like that was the right thing to do, or yeah, my conscience was telling me, "Don't do that," or my conscience was like, "That person needs help," that's the Holy Spirit.

Austin: Yeah, right. Yeah. It, that, that's what always blows my mind, right? It's like, don't ever listen to your inner self, but it's like, but if the Holy Spirit is living in my heart and living in the inner parts of who I am, isn't that oftentimes where He speaks? It's like, "Hey, Holy Spirit, come and live in my heart and live in my life." But yet the heart's deceitful above all things. Like, is God and the Holy Spirit not permeating and changing our heart? Which we'll talk about that. And here's my commitment to all of you. I'm gonna say this, and then we'll, we'll go back to just you and I here. My commitment is Hold on. Yes, my commitment is I will not get in the weeds too many times during this episode. Because this is something that we talk a lot about. We get calls on all the time, emails on all the time. We talk to the couples in our membership program on this all the time.

So if an hour today is not enough for you, hate to tell you this, good news, bad news, you're just gonna have to come and work with us because an hour on this topic is all you're getting today. Because this is

Rachel: It could be a lot more time

Austin: It's so expansive. And it's so life-changing. Like, when people come to us and they're like, "Hey, maybe we have an okay marriage or already a really good marriage. Like, how do we sharpen it and, like, double down?" This is this is deep into that territory of where, like, we will take couples to help them truly understand what little roadblocks and resistances they have. A lot of it comes from this. So, so just kinda kicking this off- This is really the way that God designed us. he reveals himself through what we experience. You know, God re reveals his self through our literal experience, through creation, through relationships, through the communion with with God. And so when we ignore our emotions, that typically just leads to feeling disconnected from God, because we're ignor we're ignoring a part of our experience. We're And it's not just our experience, it's our creation. Right? And so whenever people have good emotions, they never tell you to ignore them. When you feel happy, when you feel joy, you know

Rachel: That's the joy of the Lord.

Austin: Yeah. And sexual in the right context, people are like, "Whoa, never ignore those." But the rest of the time, they tell you to ignore them, you know? And

Rachel: It's usually the angry, the sad, the fearful.

Austin: Yeah. And what people forget is, is that all emotions come from the same faucet. They come from the same part of our brain, the same part of how God created us. And you can't just ignore one and accept the others. When you kink one, you kink all of them at the same time. And so

Rachel: Remember, unkink to get kinky.

Austin: Yes. I forgot what episode that was from, but someone go back and find it and comment it below if you don't mind. So And it, it's kinda obvious when you think about it like this. If you override and ignore your sadness, how do you take your sadness to God? Okay. When people talk about like, you need to just ignore your emotions, they're bad, they'll deceive you, they'll this, they'll that. But it's like, okay, let's just, let's just even dumb the whole episode down into this one idea. If you ignore and override your emotions, which by the way, will make you anxious and depressed. that is a clinical fact, okay? If you ignore and you override your sadness Okay, I just have to say this. This is why it's dangerous when a pastor gets up on stage and says, "Ignore your sadness and your fear and your anger. Like, it's not real. Just go to God and you'll be fine." There's literally endless studies that will tell you, you, you are creating anxious, more worrisome people by doing that.

And I feel, I actually feel kinda angry about that. Because I've, we've had people call us and be like, "Hey, my pastor told me all I had to do was give my anxiety to the foot of the cross, and I'd be healed. I did it, and I'm not. D is God not real? Does he not like me?" And it just creates more dangerous things. That's why we, we gotta be really intentional about what we teach, right? And so if you ignore and override your sadness, how do you take your sadness to God? How do you get to go to God and bring that to him if you ignore it and pretend it doesn't exist?

Rachel: Right. It's like withholding. It's like spiritual withholding. You know, when we talk about, you know, sin separates, withholding separates. If I am not telling you something- I cannot be close to you. If you are not telling God something and being honest about your experience, first telling yourself the truth of what the reality is, and then sharing that with God, then you can't even have the commune with him for him to be able to

Austin: To do anything about it

Rachel: For, for him to heal it, 'cause he wants you to ask and to be talking about it. He's not just gonna be like, "Oh, yeah, I'll take that away," even though you're totally ignoring it, and you don't even know you have it. He's not gonna do that.

Austin: Yeah. It's not like we go to God and say, "Hey, God, I'm ignoring all my sadness, and I wanted to give that to you." Okay? And, and, and think about God as your father. Does your father in heaven not want to delight in you bringing your pain to him? It's like, "Those who are weary and burdened, I will give you rest. Like, come to me. My burden is light. Like, bring this to me." Right? But if we pretend that we're never sad It's like one of the most powerful things when one of our kids comes to us and they're sad. And one of our daughters, you know, will come up to me, and she's sad. She cries, puts her head on my chest, and tells me she's sad. I especially think about Caroline, you know? And then I get to comfort her, and it creates intimacy with us. You know? So if you're overriding your anger or your fear, how do you get to say, "God, I am feeling sad right now.

My heart is overwhelmed with sorrow. Please take this from me. Please heal me. Please comfort me"? So I just want everyone who's listening today to just stop and think. Everything that you pretend doesn't exist is a form of both mental and spiritual avoidance and dissociation, and we're living in the most dissociated world we've ever lived in where people literally think they're living realities they're not living in. And so if God gave you this nervous system, if he gave you this brain that produces emotions to help you understand the contrast of life, to help you understand joy is so powerful when you know sorrow. You know? Joy is so powerful when you, when you know pain, you know? God gave us these contrasting emotions so we could have a, a depth and an experience, right? But if you pretend that those things don't exist, you are not only disassociating from reality, but you're also mentally and spiritually avoiding God, and you're avoiding yourself. And all that's going to do is make you more confused.

Rachel: And anxious.

Austin: And anxious.

Rachel: And depressed.

Austin: And depressed. That's right. That's right. So let's talk about, Rachel I've, we've got just some good context points here. let's just kinda talk about a few different things, ideas around this topic, see what we come up with, 'cause

Rachel: Let's do it.

Austin: Let's do it, 'cause there's just so much we could go through, but let's

Rachel: I know. I'm gonna be honest. I'm like, is this gonna be an hour, or is it gonna be more? Trying to keep it an hour.

Austin: Yeah, we gotta get rolling. So you can tune into your thoughts and emotions and the Holy Spirit at the same time, okay? And like you said earlier, you've probably heard, you know, someone say to you or from a pulpit, "Well, the heart's deceitful above all things, so, you know, don't pay attention to how you feel." Like they're saying the heart is always deceitful, and the heart is always trying to lead you astray. Okay? Yet we've heard so many different scriptures about the heart and the goodness of the heart and how- God designed us to, to be. Because these are two wildly different ideas that are kinda wrapped up in one, I think, kinda twisted piece of advice. Many times in scripture, the heart was referencing really more this all-encompassing idea of everything that you know and you understand and you believe. Because especially in the Old Testament, there really wasn't a concept of the difference between the heart and the mind. That was really a new concept, right?

That Jesus really brought about when he, was quoting the Shema, when he references the Shema in the Gospels. He says, "Heart, soul, mind, and strength." Okay? And so- You and I would agree that everything that we know, think, and believe, okay? Like, because again, in the Old Testament, the heart was like, well, everything you think about, everything you believe. If you

Rachel: That's

Austin: Think really terrible things and you believe really terrible things, and the stories you tell yourself about the world and God are really terrible things, then those things are deceiving you. I believe that. Like, I believe that with all my heart, okay?

Rachel: And that's how they knew to say it in the Old Testament, and that was the context of that. There wasn't this modern psychology where we know all the aspects of how our hearts, whole mind strength all blends together. It was like if you're thinking and believing these things that can be deceitful to you.

Austin: Yeah. If, if you believe that there's other gods to worship besides God, and you choose to worship those gods besides God, well, then yes, your heart, your mind will deceive you into believing something that is false. Okay? And so we agree with that idea, but those things are not your emotions, okay? And in fact, emotions will spur on and trigger your beliefs, okay? And your beliefs Did I say that right? Yeah. I'm sorry. Let me back up. And I'm not even gonna dele- I'm not even gonna delete this. I just meant to say it the other way. The things that you believe and you know and you think are true, those will spur on and trigger your actual emotions, okay? so if you believe that God is good, you will often trigger a feeling of joy, okay? If you believe that the church is bad and you will get hurt there, that will spur on a feeling of fear. It might keep you from going to church, okay?

It's not that the emotion is bad or misleading or deceitful, but wherever you picked up the belief that going to church would be bad that belief is deceiving you, okay? Because it's not rooted in truth. Any belief not rooted in truth is deceitful because there's truth and there's lies, right? So if there is a So we're gonna talk in a little bit about the cognitive brain, about how, how we think, basically how our experiences inform our thoughts and how our thoughts inform our emotions and our emotions inform our behavior. And so if you think things that are false because you learned them somewhere, which w that's the only way we know things is by learning them. You learn them from a false source, so now you have a false belief, and then that causes you to be deceived, okay? But only our beliefs, the things we know, the stories we tell ourselves in our hearts, those things can be deceitful. But the feeling of happy, sad, angry, sexual, or fearful are our five core emotions.

Those things in of themselves cannot deceive you. They can only point you to something you're not paying attention to, okay? So it's just like when in, in Luke when Jesus says, "Out of the abundance of the heart, the mouth speaks," okay? "For both good or evil." Okay? It's not that the heart was inherently slanted towards being terrible. It's what was put in the heart. Okay? It's 'cause we deal with people with this all the time, like how they were raised, what happened in their life developmentally, okay, what traumas did they experience, what wounding did they experience, okay? Did they grow up in a loving, supportive, safe home? Did they grow up in a, a unstable, destructive home? Those things will inform the contents of your heart you know? And so again, our beliefs will spur on emotions. That's why when, when Jesus says that, it's like out of the abundance of your heart, what you believe, that'll, that'll change the way you speak. If you believe people are good, you'll speak well to people.

You'll speak life to people. If you believe all people are inherently evil, you might speak really hateful things. You might speak really

Rachel: You might be a very judgmental person.

Austin: Yeah, you might be a very judgmental person, okay? Because the Bible does not say ignore your emotions. The Bible actually teaches us to understand them, to observe them, to regulate them, and to be careful with them, and the Bible tells us to not sin in them, okay? So Paul in Ephesians 4, he says, "But don't let the passion of your emotions lead you to sin. Don't let anger control you or fuel, be fuel for your revenge, not even for a day." Okay, and I think that's NLT. In the NIV, he says in the second part of that, "In your anger, do not sin." He's not saying don't ever be angry. He's not saying don't let your, y y you know, that your emotions are sinful and evil. He's saying pay close attention to your emotions. Don't let your anger make you do something that you didn't want to do. Don't let your fear make you do something that would be considered sin, okay? He didn't say don't be angry.

He said, "In your anger, do not sin."

Rachel: And even Jesus experienced emotions. You know, we've talked about this before, but, you know, He wept in the garden and, and that was part of His commune with God. Like He wept so bitterly, He, He s you know, He sweat or He wept blood or sweat blood.

Austin: He sweat blood.

Rachel: He sweat I don't know why. At this moment I was like, "Did He cry blood?" No. He sweat blood, but He was feeling that and being present with that, and that was His, He was communing with God in a really, really powerful way. And you know, even Jesus felt angry. You know, in the temple He had anger. And I know we can use this a lot, but it's, it's an example. Like we have these little snapshots into how, like Jesus walked on Earth and if we're Christians, little Christs, like He is the example. He is the way. And so studying how He felt sad, how He, you know, was present with His emotions, like

Austin: And He let the intensity of His emotions spur on powerful things. After He cried from when Lazarus died, what did He do?

Rachel: That's what I was gonna say. He rose Lazarus from the dead. But He was present with that emotion. And that's the, that's the powerful thing, and that's what we help couples, really click the light bulb on with is like through emotion is the insight. Through, like the o you know, the obstacle is the way. It's true with your emotion. You know, if you, if you push it down like a beach ball, if you, if you override it, it will never go away, 'cause every feeling has to be felt. So if you're pushing down these emotions, it takes so much effort to hold the beach ball underwater, right? And it's kinda like w w w you know, you're wobbling, and it's takes so much effort instead of just letting it up and out. And then once it's up and out, it's like it's a toy you can play with, but

Austin: Yeah. That's pretty good.

Rachel: Yeah. But once your feelings are flushed out, there's insight, there's clarity, there's this weight lifted, there's freedom, there's release, there's peace, there's clarity that comes after that. So Jesus knew that. He created our bodies to be that way. And it, we've been given a disservice, many of us have been given a disservice by not knowing how to navigate that, and not seeing the truth and the freedom of pay attention to your feelings because God, that's one of the ways that God communicates to you. If you override that, you're missing the message and you're missing the, the clarity and the insight that could come. But if you lean into it, and you feel it and you're present with it, that's when you learn the lesson. And you don't Guess what? You don't have to keep relearning it if you just learn it the first time.

Austin: Yeah. And, and, and even from a more counseling kind of therapy perspective, it's like a lot of times people don't wanna feel emotions 'cause they don't think it's gonna stop. But one thing we've helped a lot of people through is, like, hey, if you think about being sad, you're not actually feeling sadness. You're creating anxiety. We're in the most anx anxiety-ridden generation we've ever had because no one actually knows how to treat anxiety. It's not by telling people to not feel sad. That's what makes them anxious. 'Cause that, that's the gap between now and when they feel it. It's actually feeling sad. And sometimes it takes 10 seconds. You know, we'll work with people and we'll say, "Hey, notice that you're sad right now. I want you to be with your sadness. Where do you feel it? Oh, your chest. Put your hand on your chest." "Let yourself feel sad for 10 seconds." Sometimes they'll cry, sometimes they don't. They sit there for 10 seconds, and then it's like, "Now what are you thinking about?"

"Oh, like, I'm, I'm realizing now that God is calling me to this," or, "Now I'm realizing, yeah, yeah. And I, and I didn't know that until now." And we'll, we'll talk about why that works that way in a second, but what you said reminded me, and I don't wanna forget it, is, like, this is why worship is so powerful. Because two big things are happening at the same time. Right? One, you're ex you're having intense emotions. Okay? I, I like to say you're having emotions and you're adding intensity to them. Okay? You're, you're in the room. You're lifting your hands in worship. You're expectant that God is gonna meet you, expect that the Holy Spirit's gonna meet you. And then the Holy Spirit meets you. So you've got big emotions and you've got the encountering of the Holy Spirit. So when you're crying, and you're smiling, and you're laughing with joy, you're feeling big emotions. And when you lift your hands and you sing out loud, as loud as you can, you're feeling and expressing huge emotions towards God.

Okay? That's what it is. Like, like, when people sing at the top of their lungs, they're expressing. They're expressing what they're feeling. They're not expressing what they're believing necessarily, they're expressing what they're feeling in that moment. Because if you need to express what you believe, you don't need to do it like that. If you're expressing what you believe, it's just, "God, I believe you. God, I believe you. God, I believe you. God, I believe in you. God, I believe in you." But expressing what you feel is, "Oh, God, I love you. I'm singing to you." That's you, you're expressing joy. You know? You're ex ex expressing this deep, rich emotion. And when we mix that together with the encountering of the Holy Spirit, im super powerful things happen. Okay? We connect with God on a whole new level, you know? And so, you know, we tell everyone when we have good emotions, you know, don't ignore them. When we have negative ones, they say ignore them.

But they all have to be included with us, and that's kind of what we're gonna get to today. So let me actually back up a, a little bit because I wanna clarify, a few terms that most people, they get wrong. And if you've ever said this, I love you, it's all good, no judgment. You just didn't know. I didn't know before I knew, too. Okay? And the more I know, the more I realize I don't know, so we're all in the same boat, right? But even a lot of pastors, even a lot of teachers, they, they they interchangeably use these words, and that's actually dangerous. Okay? You can't interchangeably use terms that sound similar, or you'll end up killing yourself, okay? So, like for example, sodium chloride. Okay, if I say, "give me some so some sodium in my water," it will explode. If I say, "Give me some sodium chloride," they'll give me table salt, okay? So

Rachel: You're so smart.

Austin: Couple things. Feelings. People use feelings, emotions, desires interchangeably, and they don't mean the same thing. So first of all

Rachel: Yeah, this is important

Austin: Feelings. If I say something like, "I feel like lusting after another person," that's not an emotion. That's a desire. Okay? That's a desire, and it's manifesting from a belief, or a need, or a withheld request, et cetera, okay? You are feeling sad, or maybe scared, or maybe even sexual, okay? You have to honor that. You get to honor that. Those are emotions. And again, there's only five emotions: happy, sad, angry, sexual, fearful. And there's about 10 sub-emotions of those big emotions. So, like fear for example, a level one out of 10 might be nervous. A 10 out of 10 might be paralyzed. Okay? That's fear, but it's just different degrees of fear. Okay? And so there are emotions and there are desires, but they're often lumped together into one. So if you say something like, "I feel like lusting after another person," okay, you are feeling emotions, and you're identifying a desire. When you say, "I feel like," that's not an emotion betraying you. That's a desire that's coming forward.

Okay? And it's important to understand that negative desires are often coming from good places, but they manifest as negative because we're too scared to ask for what we want. Okay? If you feel like lusting after another person, that's a desire. It probably means you want more connection. That's a good thing. It probably means you want more intim intimacy in your marriage. That's a good thing. It probably means you want more sex in your life. That's a good thing. But since you're not creating it with your spouse in a healthy, productive way your subconscious is serving it up to you in an unhealthy way to make you pay attention. Okay? So if you've ever said that, if you've ever f if you've ever come to this idea that you feel like lusting after someone, or you feel like cheating on your spouse or you feel like quitting, or you feel like running away, or you feel like fill in the blank you have to understand- What you're actually stating is a desire.

Okay? You don't feel like it, you want it, but there is an emotion that's accompanying it that makes you pay attention to it, whether that's usually anger, sadness, fear or maybe it's sexually driven. Okay? So what you do with these desires is the most important part, because you can bring them to your spouse. You can ask for prayer or support, and do the healing work it takes so that your desires will always match the highest values of your faith and of your marriage. Okay? And that's where the most That that's just the most important thing, right? Because all of us have desires. And sometimes, again, those desires come across in a negative way, but they're all coming from a good place. Okay? You just wanna be loved, you wanna be safe, you wanna survive you wanna thrive, you wanna enjoy life, okay? And if you don't have a really conscious marriage yet, you might find yourself struggling with this idea of, "I feel like quitting, leaving, divorcing, this, that," whatever.

Well, that just means you want something, and you probably want something that's really good. But you're not asking for it in a healthy way. So then your subconscious is like, "I'm gonna make this come out in an ugly way."

Rachel: Yeah. Then you'll really have to deal with it.

Austin: It it's just like, I think I shared a story a long time ago, and I've actually worked through multiple people with this, where someone came to me and they thought they wanted to kill themselves. Well, they didn't literally want to kill themselves, but their subconscious was serving up this desire of wanting to kill themselves 'cause they weren't paying attention to how much they were overworking themselves, overstressing themselves, and not going to God enough. And because that person confronted those in a healthy way, they then turned to God more, they turned to their marriage more, and they were able to heal, and heal very, very quickly. This is the same thing. So one thing, too, that's important to understand is when we say the, like, "I feel like" type statements, right? You might find yourself saying something like, "Well, I feel like you're being a jerk." Okay? That's not an emotion.

Rachel: I feel like you're judging me.

Austin: Yeah, yeah. That's Yeah, that's not an emotion. That's actually just a statement of belief. That's just a

Rachel: Or a story you make up.

Austin: Yeah, that's just a story we make up. That's just an assessment. So another piece of just kinda clarifying some of these terms for everyone is when someone says the, "I feel like," and then they just give a statement, that's not an emotion. If I'm saying, "I feel like you're kinda not being nice," that's not an emotion, you know, that came from your brain stem. That's actually just a statement that you're too scared to actually make, so you call it a feeling. So feelings, desires, emotions, not all the same things, okay? Your em your emotions mean Emotion means evoke motion, okay? It's just electricity and chemicals and hormones in your nervous system.

Rachel: That need to move

Austin: That need to move

Rachel: To get out.

Austin: That's right. That's all that is. And so if you say, "I feel like doing blank," that's not an emotion. That's a desire. And i and when you shift your language to be more precise with how you understand yourself, only then can you figure out what help you actually wanna ask for. This is why when someone says to you, "Don't focus on yourself, just focus on God," God tells you to learn about yourself. If you don't know yourself, you can't change anything. You don't even know what to ask for from God if you don't know.

Rachel: That's, yeah. That's where you have the plank in the eye. It's like I'm not aware that I have this giant log that I'm hitting you with while I'm trying to point out your speck.

Austin: Yeah, yeah, but, but I'm not gonna

Rachel: That is the lack of self-awareness

Austin: Ex exactly. So next time someone tells you, "Don't focus on yourself," be like, "Okay, cool. Well, I'm gonna just leave these planks in my eyes then." And then, and then you move your eyeballs and you knock them over with it. All right. So hopefully that will help people have just a better understanding of actually what's going on, you know, inside their, inside their psyche, inside their heart. So the second thing that I wanna go over, and thanks for being patient. I know I'm kinda talking a lot here. but the

Rachel: No, it's good

Austin: Yeah, I, I think you know that I like to teach this stuff. And I appreciate that you just let me do it.

Rachel: It's been good.

Austin: You're amazing. Thank you. So next I wanna talk about, and we're just gonna call this kind of how your cognitive/behavioral mind works. Okay? so think of four steps here. Think if I was holding up kind of four little gates here almost, four little s stop, spots. So your trauma, your nature, and your nurture, okay? Those are big, maybe negative things that happened to you that were traumatic. Your nature is how you are as just a blanket born human being, and your nurture is the, the people and the environment in which you were raised. Now, there's a lot of debate on nature and how, what our nature actually is. Are we born a blank slate? Are we, are we not born a blank slate? Et cetera, et cetera. We're not gonna talk about that right now, but your trauma, your nature, and your nurture, those are your most formative components of how you're going to be wired, more than likely as an adult, until you take the time to learn about yourself, to heal, to reflect, and to grow and change to actually rewire anything.

So you got your trauma, nature, and your nurture, and those things typically dictate your beliefs, okay? What you believe about yourself about others, about the world, about God, about how everything works, okay? Those are your beliefs, and those are typically where, where you devi derive your values from. Okay. From there, that dictates our emotional responses. Okay? Happy, sad, angry, sexual, fearful. And then from our emotions, typically those dictate our behaviors. Okay? So again, kinda this cognitive behavioral models, kinda how I want you guys to think about this for a second. And so what you believe came from what you experienced, and from your beliefs were those are where your emotions stem from. Okay? If I believe that this, charger is worth $50,000 and you give it to me, okay, so like here, you just give it to me, okay. I'm like

Rachel: There you go

Austin: "Oh my gosh, this is worth $50,000. Ah, I'm so happy!" 'Cause it's worth $50,000. Okay? and then so from there, that's going to dictate my behavior. What am I gonna do? Am I gonna go dance? Am I gonna go roll around on the floor with joy? Am I gonna go buy, a fancy car? Okay. And so your beliefs about things will dictate how your emotions come into play. That's why, like when we said earlier, it's not that you're- Emotions can betray you but your beliefs can deceive you. If you believe things that aren't true- I'm just gonna say this again. If you believe things that aren't true, you've already been deceived. It's not that your heart is deceitful, okay? It's that what was put into your heart can deceive you. Okay? But what was put into your heart will help you feel, okay? This is why people often say insight follows emotions. Okay? Because after Like, so let's go backwards through the model. Behavior, emotions, beliefs, experiences, okay?

So if we go to emotions, and you actually, like we said earlier, allow yourself to cry for 10 seconds, okay, feel sad for 10 seconds, okay? I get through the emotion, and now I'm actually getting to the belief. 'Cause people are like, "Why are you crying?" They're like, "I don't know." Well, actually let them feel it without shaming them. So they cry, and then they're like, "Oh, now I know why I'm upset. I've been thinking about my late grandmother. I've been thinking about this area that I'm out of integrity at work, or I've been thinking about something that I haven't repaired with a friend, or I'm thinking about something I didn't give to God, or I'm thinking about how I crashed my car last year." Like, whatever that looks like. Insight follows emotion, not the other way around. And so once you actually allow yourself to feel, your mind, and, and, and I think it's also the Holy Spirit, will reveal things to you because you're surrendering to your own resistance.

Okay? 'Cause I think God made our brain this way. I think God designed our minds to work this way, so that when we surrender and we actually allow ourselves to experience, okay, what, what, what we're doing, God reveals things to us, okay? This is often why after you cry, you cry your heart out, whether that's in life or in marriage or in worship, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. What do you suddenly have, Ra or I almost said Grease. That's funny. Rachel. Grease is our oldest daughter's name. like Rachel, what do you feel after you've cried for a long time?

Rachel: I feel lighter. I feel peace calm, and clarity.

Austin: Yeah, and clarity, okay? And clarity also matches with insight. Okay? So you did the behavior. So go back to the chart. You did something. You ended up crying. You feel the, your tears. You let yourself cry. You kinda rinse out the brain. Then that, those big emotions are out. They're out of the way. Now I can get to the actual belief. Now I know what's actually going on. And then if I want to actually change the belief, I've got to go back and do some healing work around my trauma, my nature, and my nurture, okay? That's how this cognitive behavioral mind works. And once you understand that that's how your mind works, we can help you reverse engineer any behavior you wanna change, any belief you wanna change, and help you regulate emotions in between those two things, okay? 'Cause again, this is why after you cry, you feel better. You feel lighter. Even, like, if you feel really angry and you go to the punching bag and you hit the punching bag for a minute straight, you're like, "Ah, I feel better."

Or if you go for a long walk, like maybe you're feeling fear so you go for a long walk, you're getting all that energy out of your nervous system.

Rachel: That's another episode we should do.

Austin: Yeah. Crying is also a tonic vagal response. Okay, I'm not gonna go down a bunny trails, but the reason, generally animals can't be traumatized is because they feel their feelings instantly. Okay? Like when a gazelle is chased by a tiger, okay, and they, like, fall down 'cause they're so scared, and then they start shaking, okay? That's that tonic response. That's the nervous system emptying all the fear out so then they can get up and run away. Fainting goats do the same thing. Okay? But for humans, when we get traumatized, we internalize it. We don't feel it. This is why we cannot teach people, not we as in us, the rest of the world cannot teach people, "Your trauma doesn't matter. Your past doesn't matter." Yes, we can give all those things to God, and God can redeem every aspect of who we are. That takes effort between us and God. It's a, that, it, it's a com it's a commune thing. It is a us communing with God to work on those things together.

And yes, God could snap His fingers and delete your past. I've yet to meet someone where He's done that with, though. Okay? I've seen God heal people instantaneously of tough things, and praise God for that. More than often, though, I've seen God equip someone with courage to go back and face the things they never faced so they could process what they never processed, so they could feel freedom like they've never felt before. Okay? And it may not have been Jesus snapping His fingers and doing it for them, but He kinda snapped his fingers and gave them the courage to go back and face it, right? Like, all good things come from God. It's still God. But it's God and our partnership, okay? And we couldn't do it without Him, but we're doing it with Him. So that's just a little bit of how kind of our cognitive behaviorally brain works. and when you understand that, you can collapse time with what you wanna heal or change.

Rachel: So yeah, ignoring our emotions, like we said earlier, ignoring our emotions cause us to not commune with the Holy Spirit. Like, if I'm saying, "I'm not scared, I'm not scared, I'm not gonna be scared," like no fear, right? Like, "Don't be afraid." Like, we can also misuse scripture in that way. Like, "Have no fear." But if I'm not acknowledging that I have fear then I can't take that fear to God. I can't say, "God, I'm scared. Like, help me through this. Show me the way." "Give me peace," you know, whatever it is. If we're not even being aware of that or noticing it in the first place and we're just overriding, overriding, overriding, then we're distancing ourself from God and we're not able to commune with the Holy Spirit to even receive that insight or that word or that encouragement or that, you know, direction.

Austin: Yeah. That's so good, 'cause literally what I, what I was about to say was sometimes that insight, like, "Okay, I'm gonna let myself feel sad for 10 seconds," the insight is, "I should take this to God." You know? And people don't even get the chance to do that because they just ignore, okay? They, th they, they pretend that they're not feeling anything because they think their emotions are bad. They think their emotions are deceitful and evil. So they don't, they don't even, they don't even take them to God, okay?

Rachel: Yeah. And of course, so we're not saying Just have a feeling and just run wild with it and just, like, be run by your feelings. That's not what we're, we're about at the Conscious Christian Marriage. We are about recognizing them and having self-control. but you can't It's So it's, some people like to take it the other way, like, "Oh, well, you know, your emotions are deceitful," and you can just be all willy-nilly with like, "I'm angry, I'm sad. Oh, I'll just feel it." And that is not, you know

Austin: That's not what we teach

Rachel: What we teach. That's not what we help people do. You know, we help people learn to recognize them and then know what to consciously choose to do with them, or how to communicate them with their spouse in a healthy, whole, helpful way. and so that's not what we're saying at all. But here is what we like to live by, and one thing that we say, "Self-controlled and Spirit-led. Don't spiritually override emotions and don't emotionally override the Spirit." Let's say that again.

Austin: Yeah, that is well said. Self-controlled, Spirit-led. Don't spiritually override emotions and don't emotionally override the Spirit. And I think there's two powerful things there. And, and, and I, I love what you said, because we are really big proponents of mastering our mind, okay? mastering our mind and understanding and regulating our emotions, and we can't do any of that until we know it. You can't master your mind till you know it. You can't master your emotions till you know them. Okay? And so, but like you said, don't spiritually override emotions, meaning, 'cause there's been a lot of spiritual abuse in the church, right? Unfortunately. And so we're not saying don't spiritually override your emotions. Like, "Oh," like, "you don't need to feel sad or angry or fearful or any of that stuff. Like, you just take it to God. Like, you don't need to feel sad." But it's like, "But I feel deeply sad." Do you think someone went to Jesus, like, after Lazarus died, and was like, "Hey, dude, you don't need to feel sad"?

It's like he wept- 'cause he was sad 'cause he lost his friend, okay? But no one was like, "Hey, Jesus, you don't need to feel sad right now." No one said that to him. So Spirit And, and God is not going to tell us to stop. He's gonna say, "Come to me who are weary and need rest, and I'll provide rest for your souls," okay? And then we don't emotionally override the Spirit, meaning if the Spirit of God is teaching you you're not gonna be like, "Yeah, God, I'm so angry right now. I'm gonna ignore you because I have emotions."

Rachel: Yeah. Or, like, in an unhealthy way where you're like, to your spouse, "I'm angry, so I'm gonna be this way. Ah." You know, just not having, you know, the fruits of the Spirit along with recognizing your emotion, feeling your emotion in a healthy way.

Austin: Yeah, exactly, because there's great power and freedom in discipline, okay? We believe in being disciplined people. Like, that's why we have routines. That's why we have values, vision, agreements in our marriage. And discipline basically means that you'll make choices based on what you want the most versus what you want in a moment. That's what discipline is. Discipline comes from alignment, and alignment is basically my behavior will match my values. Okay? If I don't know what my values are, then I don't know how to match my behavior. And if I don't know how to match my behavior, I don't even know what to be disciplined about, okay? And so we have to be I, I, if you wanna live an excellent life, you gotta be disciplined. You gotta make choices based on what you mo want the most, more than what you want in a moment, okay? And your discipline comes from your alignment, and alignment comes from truth, okay? So if you know what you're doing is true, you can be a Your, your actions will match it, okay?

Back to the model, beliefs, behavior, and that helps you be disciplined because ultimately, and this is one of the most powerful points I want everyone to understand here, when we understand our emotions, we can stay in alignment even when our emotions get big. 'Cause big emotions would overtake people. It's actually moving from left brain to right brain, okay? Where you stop thinking and all you do is feel. Okay? And so we know a lot of people that are great people, that like 80% of the time, they're just crushing it. Well, then a big emotion comes up and it takes them away, and they start doing things they wouldn't normally do. Okay? If you don't understand your emotions, if you don't understand your mind, if you don't know how to identify the difference between a feeling, an emotion, and a desire, okay? If you don't know thyself, you will not know how to stay in alignment when you have big emotions. Okay? Because when you can stay in alignment with big emotions, that means you can go to God in prayer when you have big emotions.

That means you can hold fast to the, the, the true Word of God when y even when you have big emotions, because you can't control yourself without knowing yourself. And you cannot relate to the Spirit of God if you don't have any context of what going to the Spirit actually looks like. How can you relate to God when you don't go to God? Okay? How can you relate to God when you've never taken anything real about you to Him? Like, w like, 'cause everyone, seriously, like, that's listening to this right now, like, when have you ever really slowed down and been like, "God, I'm struggling. I felt sad all day today. Like, God, I'm just feeling sad, and I don't know what to do with that. I, I need you"?

Rachel: Typically, when you get that honest, you will start to feel.

Austin: Yeah. And then God is like, "I want you to be present with me." You can't be present with God when you're lying to Him. You can't be present with God when you're doing charades. Okay? Because I'm so tired of the story of these big leaders, big pastors, happy couples, et cetera. Everything's perfect. Boom, moral failure, divorce. And you know what they always say? Didn't know how to deal with my emotions. I didn't know how to deal with all the big things going on in my heart. I didn't know where to turn to. Everything bottled up, okay? I read all the scriptures. I did what everyone said to do. I prayed. I relied on God. I put it at the foot of the cross. And, but, but, but it wasn't enough. I was scared to tell people how I was feeling. I didn't wanna lose the pulpit. Got scared to tell my wife. I didn't want her to lose confidence in me. It all comes down to the same things.

It's this dissociation from our emotions because we think that they're deceitful. They're not. Your emotions will point to your beliefs, and then we can decide if your beliefs are deceitful or not. Right? It's like if you believe that it's appropriate for you to invite a woman into your office and shut the door who's not your wife- You have been deceived. Okay? That would typically lead to something bad, okay? Beliefs can be deceitful. But emotions are not. Emotions only point to what you believe. So we have to understand ourselves so that we can actually change. And when that happens, we can then ask God for what we want Him to do in our life, which will actually make us show up better in the Kingdom of God. It'll make us show up better in our marriage. Okay? And so- I just feel a lot of sadness when I think about the classic freaking story about moral failures and divorces in the church, okay? And sadly, even in the local church to Kansas City.

Like, we've had a lot of, like, tough blows lately, okay? and I do not believe God's record, is anything less than 100%, right? So if all we have to do is just pray and read the Bible, our record, our, our, our We should be batting 1000, okay? But we're not, so there's more. We're

Rachel: There's more to the picture.

Austin: There's more to the picture. And that's what we help people understand. Okay? And everyone, no matter at what position they're at, from janitor to the pulpit, in between, it doesn't matter. Accountability, connection, relationship, friendship. Like, we need quality people in our lives that are speaking life into us, that are asking us tough questions, that are walking through life with us so that none of this stuff sneaks up on us. We gotta tell the truth about what we're feeling. We gotta be with the, the feelings God has given us to feel so we can illuminate the problem. Like, if you're a pastor listening to this and you're anxious all the time, and you're confused about how you could possibly be anxious even though you're preaching at the pulpit for people, there's probably something going on. Okay? God's probably saying, "Hey, hey, hey," like, "Slow down. There's something you're not paying attention to. You're anxious about it. Stop ignoring that." Okay? Your anxiety, your sadness, your anger, your feel, it's not, it's not deceiving you.

It's trying to make you pay attention. There might be this problem festering in, in your beliefs that you're not bringing to me, you're not even telling yourself the truth about. You're not bringing it to your spouse. You're not bringing it to, your coaches in the Conscious Christian Marriage membership program. Whatever that thing may be. And so I just And I wasn't even gonna talk about this, but I just, last thing before I want you to share some examples. But I just want to encourage everyone listening today, like, you can be a really faithful Christian and wrestle with emotions. And you probably believed your whole Christian life that your emotions are deceiving you. They're not. They're, you're just feeling happy, sad, anger, sexual, or fearful. And those emotions are coming from your beliefs. Let those things make you pay more attention to what you believe, and there we will find whether you are actually being deceived or not.

Rachel: Yeah. And just before I give an example, it's part of your human experience that you're robbing yourself of and basically enslaving yourself to instead. You're trapping yourself, but we're created in God's image. So God experiences emotion. It's not just Jesus. But, like, how cool is that, that you take part in who He is when you're rinsing and repeating or being aware of your emotions and feeling through them with Him. It's an amazing place. I personally have felt and experienced the Holy Spirit, well, every time I feel the Holy Spirit, 'cause I'm saying feel, right? Like, I'm feeling something. And it's powerful. Anyway. One of the women in our, Conscious Christian Marriage program, before she joined CCM, she would often find herself, stewing or upset about things, you know, having an emotion that comes up of like, "Ugh, that person said that one thing," or, "I can't believe that. Ugh, why, why is this happening?" And, you know, would often, you know, find herself cleaning and just really, really getting worked up about things.

But, like, would just It was a habit. You know, just getting worked up and a little bit of that drama. and the more that she learned to pay attention to a feeling when it comes up and just everything that she's learned in CCM, it's now not even a blip on her radar, right? But she learned to, when she has a feeling, it's like, "Oh, what's there?" "Okay, why do I, why am I having this feeling towards this person? What is there for me? What am I not owning? Why am I seeing that in that person? Is there something I'm not loving in myself?" "Oh, I'm feeling sad about that. Oh, I'm feeling this about that." And learning to be introspective and as she feels, having that insight. And then through the insight comes, "Oh, I'm I'm not actually even upset at that person. It was this. Oh, I didn't love myself with that. Okay, God, like, forgive me. Okay, I love myself." You know, feel that, move on, have a joyful life.

And so she has learned to have a habit of when a feeling comes up, to get curious and to recognize it, to feel it, and to own it. And that has given her incredible freedom. And she's not a stewer at all. She is a steward-er. She has stewarded her life very well, and leads others very well in this as well.

Austin: Yeah. And, you know, I think I know who you're talking about, and I think she shared this on a call one time. But, like, you know, her old tendency might have been to, like, always blame the Devil. And that was almost her way of never having to face the emotion. 'Cause, like, if we just blame the Devil, we don't have to be like, "Oh, I'm actually sad. I'm actually angry. I'm actually scared." I'm feeling all these things, and there's some revelation on the other side of my emotion. And so instead of actually allowing yourself to feel so you can get to the revelation, it's like, well, it's the Devil.

Rachel: Yeah, that was the excuse, is like, "Oh, gosh, spiritual warfare," like, "The enemy's really getting at me today." You know, it's like

Austin: And if

Rachel: All these dark thoughts. Man, the enemy's just really getting at me today.

Austin: Yeah, and if, and if the enemy's getting at you, then you don't have to do any work with you. You know?

Rachel: Then it's easy to say, "Oh, well, that's the Devil." Like, "Man, the Devil's just really getting me."

Austin: Yeah, and what we want is that we seek the Holy Spirit speaking to us and through us. And we use our emotions and our desires as more of a roadmap to even, what are we going to God with? 'Cause it's so powerful when you can go to God and be like, "Hey, God, I'm feeling sad about this today." "And I notice this desire come up." Of like maybe wanting to quit my job or maybe, and maybe even being able to say to God, like, "God, I've, I've thought about like leaving my spouse," or, "I've thought about like just giving up on life," or- "I've thought about this, and like I'm sad about that and I wanna bring that to you." Now I know how to ask God to comfort me. But if I'm like, "Oh, well, you know, it's just the devil. It's just the evil one. It's just the en you know, it's just, the devil doing that to me," a lot of times that, we think that absolves our responsibility.

Rachel: And it sure does keep us stuck.

Austin: It sure does keep us stuck. Yeah, because we are co-creating with God. Okay? And if we cannot be snatched out of God's hand, if we've been given the power to trample heads of snakes and scorpions and all the different promises we're given with the power of the Holy Spirit, what are we even worried about?

Rachel: Yeah. If we said, "Christ, you live in me," and we accepted him as our Lord and Savior, and his light, his life dwells in us where there's light there's no room for darkness.

Austin: Yeah. My, my, my first thought is never, "Oh, that's Satan." It's, "God, how am I showing up? how am I not showing up? What am I not giving to you? What am I not trusting with you? What am I not feeling? What am I not owning? What am I not telling the truth about? God, what are you calling through this painful situation? H how are you calling me to respond?" "How are you calling me to rely on you? How are you calling me to be a man of integrity?" Okay? Now, and I'm not saying it's never not a spiritual warfare issue for sure because we have episodes and episodes and episodes that we could tell you guys about the unseen realm. When it comes to our emotions, our desires, our thoughts, i if you ha if you have the feeling I feel like cheating on my spouse, I don't think that's the devil deceiving you. I think that you're missing something that's really important in your life, you're ignoring it, so then your subconscious or maybe a spiritual warfare element is serving up thoughts that are so painful it will make you pay attention before you do something really, really stupid.

Rachel: Yeah, and I have to say, since we're talking about spiritual warfare, I, we have very much felt that in our lives before. And the way that we got through it was like, "No, here's how I grow. Here's how I lean in." "Here's how I feel. Here's how I process," and saying, "I'm not giving that even the name or the attention because you don't even deserve to be recognized, 'cause I'm focusing on God." And that's how we like conquered and got through, through Christ.

Austin: Yeah. That's, yeah, it's, it's powerful because the devil doesn't even have a name. You know? It's like I'm not even gonna give you a name, you know? It's like, you know, Satan in the, you know, actually just means, an Elohim, okay? one who d who dwells in the, in the realm of the spirit who tempts. Didn't even give him a name. It's just a ma there's

Rachel: We've just done that, yeah.

Austin: Yeah. Is it Yeah, yeah. He's, yeah, anyways. Just some powerful theology there for you. But my example is, I'm just gonna kinda roll through this one a little bit quick, but one thing that I do is I help men, get unaddicted from pornography. And we have a program that works for men and women, but I work with a lot of guys on helping them kick pornography. And I forgot the latest study. It's like 70% still of men that look at p pornography, which is really, really, really sad, but seven out of the 10 dudes that you're seeing on a daily basis are probably using some form of, of pornography. And what, I, I use a lot of different, aspects or kind of modalities within my methodology to help men kick porn, but one of the most important ones, and I'm just thinking about one guy in general, one reason he was looking at porn was he was ignoring how he felt. and so he was ignoring the fact that he just felt deeply sad.

He felt, kinda insignificant. and just was feeling low about himself. and so, and all those things are beliefs, okay? but he was feeling sad, he was feeling angry, and just feeling scared about the future. But pornography was a way for him to help him feel an artificial sense of significance and artificial s sense of success. you know, because if, you know, your brain ties, you know, in-person sex with your spouse and pornography very closely together and, you know, so for a lot of men it's like, "Oh, I, I got this woman to undress for me," okay? Like, "That must mean I'm a really great man," 'cause that's how men and, in their masculine, feel with their spouse, okay? But sometimes if men are feeling particularly insignificant, well, one of the biggest shots in the arm of confidence or of significance is to think that some other woman is doing that for you. Well, she's not. She's on a screen, and it's, that's pornography. That's the big lie.

And so what really helped him shift was we sat down together and I helped him kinda just wade through those emotions he had been ignoring. And I'm like, "So what happens right before you're tempted, you know, to look at pornography?" "Well, I notice a deep sense of sadness, a deep sense of anger." Okay? Let's talk about those. Helped him feel his feelings, helped him feel sad, helped him feel angry, helped him feel his fear. And then right on the other side of those, we figured out really what was going on. I'm lacking feeling important. I'm lacking feeling significant. I'm lacking knowing my exact purpose in God, which is found in Isaiah. It's to worship God. and I'm not feeling like I've accomplished a lot. I don't really think highly of myself. I'm not, I, I, I don't think people think highly of me. We basically just figured out all the beliefs he was carrying because we processed through his emotions. And once we processed through all those beliefs he carried about himself, he kicked pornography in one day.

And to this day he's still never, never slipped. Okay? And he didn't do that by overriding his emotions and by shaming himself.

Rachel: 'Cause shame makes you stay stuck.

Austin: Shame makes you stay stuck. He did it by telling the truth, feeling his feelings, wading through those painful emotions, and that's what actually helped him kick this really, really bad habit. and so all that to say, leaning into your emotions, okay? And basically saying like, "Okay, Holy Spirit, guide me through understanding who I am, what's going on in me, what I'm really thinking, what I'm really feeling, what I'm really wrestling with," that's what will lead us to freedom.

Rachel: Yeah. That's good. Thank you, Austin. So without further ado, before we give you your action step so hang tight, today's nonprofit shout-out is this wonderful ministry called While We're Waiting, which I think is really cool 'cause it's like while we're waiting to get to heaven. it's a ministry for parents who have lost a child, whether that child is stillborn, you know, lost in the womb, lost young, or, you know, if you lost a child well in To whatever age. At any age that you've lost a child, this is a great ministry for you to be able to connect with other parents. They have retreats. they have There's actually here locally we know some people who lead a small group that meets, I think, once a month or something. so if you have lost a child and this interests you at all, you can reach out to us. But you can also go to whilewe'rewaiting.org. And if you enjoy this episode at all, whether you've lost a child or not, we encourage you to donate.

Just click on the menu and click donate and donate $5. honestly, just donate five.

Austin: Yeah. Just

Rachel: Like, just do it. Just go. Give $5 because, your donation helps families heal through some painful, experiences that they've gone through.

Austin: Yeah. Well, thank you, Rachel. And, so today's action step for you all is next time you notice yourself having an emotion or even wanting to say something like, "I feel like blank," which is a desire, okay? Next time you notice yourself having a big feeling or a big emotion, instead of overriding it and maybe shaming yourself, what we want you to do is just take a deep breath, get curious allow yourself to be with that emotion, okay? And then see what insight follows that emotion, and then go to God, okay? And say, "God, I, I've been feeling sad today, and I, I realize as I was feeling sad that, here's what's going on in my life and here's how I want love and support and grace from you." We do something very similar in our marriage, you know? Like being able to say, "Hey, honey, I felt, I'm feeling sad today. I'm realizing that this, this, and this is going on, and the way I wanna ask for support is this."

Okay? But instead of shaming yourself or telling yourself, "Nope, I don't need to feel that way," or, "Nope, I don't feel that way," or, "Emotions are bad," or, "My heart is deceiving me," what we want you to do is just slow down, take a deep breath, be with what's going on. Pay attention to it, because pain makes us pay attention. Don't create more anxiety by ignoring it, but just be with it. See what comes up for you, okay? And then go to God in prayer with what comes up for you. Ask for His, His provision, ask for His love, ask for His grace, ask for His peace, and see if that strategy works better than maybe the one you did before. So thank you for watching this episode today of the Conscious Christian Marriage podcast. Please like, comment, subscribe, rate, do all of the things. It helps other couples like you find us and what we're doing. So we love you all, thank you for being here, and we'll see you on the next episode.