00:00:00.960 Hello, everyone, and welcome to MilMac Musings, where Allison Miller and Gerard MacLellan reveal the intersection between God and science for living wholeheartedly. Welcome to MilMac Musings. Today, we're going to talk about a subject that is really near and dear to my heart, is the subject of emotions. And we're going to be talking about, first of all, from my perspective, the emotions that we that are most dangerous are the ones that are buried, the ones that we keep inside of us.

00:00:34.980 And we've talked about it before. I believe one of the main reasons, particularly as Christians, is we don't want to be judged as non-Christian. So the Christianese language is, "Oh, I'm great. Wonderful. There's nothing wrong here." And everybody thinks they're supposed to have a victory every second of every day. Everything is a work in progress. So when we're looking at the particular emotions that we're going to talk about today, I think a few of them or at least the most important one is anger that we've talked about before.

00:01:06.600 And I think we can go into the few phases of that. And is there anything you want to add to that prior to moving forward with that? Well, I was just thinking about what you said and about how we have this fear of being judged if we're not perfect, basically, which we're not. And so who's going to judge us in that? Who do we think is going to be judgmental about us? Other Christian people? Mm-hmm. Okay. Sure.

00:01:34.320 So yeah. Okay. Well, unfortunately, that happens so much in the church, too, because everybody is thinking that they have to meet a certain standard in order to be a true Christian. And I think sometimes within a church pulpit, it's preached that way, that you have to be it's more of your works instead of what Christ did for us. One thing I really like is Christ plus nothing equals everything.

00:02:05.280 And as we try to imagine ourselves doing works to please God, it's not pleasing to him because all we have to do is accept this beautiful gift. Right. And it's the righteousness that we had through him. And he's our king. Yeah And we reign in life as a king. So I think it's important to kind of delve into the emotion aspect because so many people, first of all, they don't start out with confession. You know They don't bring it out. Burying it like that.

00:02:32.100 So they're burying it inside of themselves, which makes it even worse. Oh my gosh, yes. Because they're dealing with all that. And I have no idea what that's like. Yeah. Yeah. For sure. Yeah. And as you walk it out and as you bring it out into the light, as we've mentioned many times, that's where the healing process begins. But again, we have to start out with confession. And the other part of the anger and other things is forgiveness. Yeah. Who are we confessing to, though?

00:03:02.400 I mean, am I like supposed to come to you and say, "Gerard, I'm having this issue with this? Is that where I go first?" No, it's confession of God. Okay. You don't hide any. He knows everything. And we think that we're hiding it from others and God. And it's the relationship with God that he wants to bring everything out because he knows everything about us. He created everything about us. You've seen it all from the beginning to the end? Absolutely. So for us to pretend of hiding, it's pretentious of us to even think that he would you know not see it.

00:03:34.140 He knows everything. I think about Adam and Eve in the garden. And when he came to me, he was like, "You know, you're hiding. Why are you hiding from me?" And it's like, "That's what we do with our emotions." But like you said, it's because we don't understand, really, that God gave us emotions. And they're good to have emotions. Very good. We were talking prior to the podcast is that it's a certain form of anger, it's very important to have that because God gave it to us to signal that there's something wrong here.

00:04:06.720 So as we are communicating with one another, we may not see eye-to-eye and everything, but what we have to see what I think is the most important thing to do is look at the person not as a defensive for us to go in defensive mode, but just talk to them and say, "Okay, what made you what did I do to make you angry? Mm-hmm. Or why are you angry about this?" And as we do that, we can always just sit down and listen as we're talking to them.

00:04:32.760 And if we see something that they say or hear something they said, and you say, "Okay, you're right." And, you know, with Dr. Mildred Berkeley, yes, Berkeley. Yeah. She had a great way of handling these. And it would be, you know, you just when you diffuse the situation, they're taken aback by, "Yeah, you're right." Because it's a confrontational thing for most people. And it doesn't have to be that way. Right.

00:04:58.920 So when you come into an agreement with them of, yes, you're right, then you're able to start having that conversation from a level ground, a level place. And it's a dialogue that's helpful for both people. So it's really a win-win. And there's no as you walk it out, you know, it takes time to, to get to that point. But you're seeing the other person.

00:05:19.860 It's really through the love of Christ, because you're saying, "Okay, what did I do?" Not it doesn't happen all the time that you did something, but you're looking at them in a different perspective, from a different perspective, saying, "Okay, either they're angry about something or something underneath, or I did something wrong, and you don't have to be defensive about it." Right. You know, that's the key to having healthy communication. Right. So how is a person going to know? I mean, most of the time, if you're a Christian, you are gonna know there's an underlying reason for someone's anger.

00:05:52.320 Mm-hmm. A lot of people know that, whether they're Christian or not. You know But what if somebody doesn't know that? And so how do they this will help them understand how to approach that better, I think? Mm-hmm. Yeah. Okay. Well, as they're looking we have started from the beginning to say that they have to look inward. They don't have to look at the other person. They have to look inward. And they have to delve deeper into themselves, you know, just introspective.

00:06:21.600 You know, just going inside and saying, "Okay, you know, what is wrong? Why am I thinking this way?" But it takes a concerted effort to do that for yourself. Yeah. And that's when we've talked about many times that you have to journal, you have to think about things, you talk to it. And then, you know, from a Christian perspective, we bring it to the Lord, too. And that's very important. Again, in most areas from the Christian psychology, which is Christian psychology, it's not really helpful because they have more of a secular worldview.

00:06:54.960 But when you get into the true Christian psychology, which is really Jesus being in there, and us confessing, and us bringing it out, and us being able to confess to God what's happening, He'll begin to heal a heart. And the other thing, too, that's wonderful, is you're dealing with people who have the understanding that we're talking about. That is interpersonal relationship in a good way. Right. And that's the way you know Jesus did it in the Bible. Jesus got angry, as we talked about before.

00:07:26.280 He had the range of emotions. But he always did it in just the perfect way. And we're not perfect. Right. But we try to embrace him as being in our relationship with him. Because first and foremost, whether you like me or somebody else likes me or loves me, it's nice. But the big thing is it's God who loves us. So when you look at him first, and again, it's a pyramid, everybody looks to him within the relationship, and then he works through us to help each other.

00:07:58.440 And that's really, really important to grasp. Yeah. Anything? Yeah. And when we look through the scriptures and we look at how he talks to us about communication, how he communicates, then we have such an amazing model for that. And we're created in his image. And so that helps us to be able to say, "Oh, okay. So this is how he does that." And then as we confess, he knows us. He knows what we're going through.

00:08:27.000 And then he helps us to come to that place where we can model what he's doing. Right. Yeah. And as we move forward, I think it's James 1:19, who says be I believe it's to be quick to hear, slow to speak, and slow to wrath. Mm-hmm. And that's what Jesus did. And then Jesus would do it to the people for the Pharisees at the time. He understood that, you know, from their perspective, their God was the law.

00:08:58.200 It wasn't God. So he was just trying to correct them, but they kept coming after him. And so he had to just, you know, his anger rose and just woe to you. Yes. And it's only because they weren't accepting and embracing Jesus as the Messiah. And I say that from a religious perspective or a theology perspective, because it's really important to understand the Bible itself is the Word of God. It's the inspired Word of God.

00:09:24.900 And it's not a, you know, a divine, you know, trance that these people had. If God had the providential hand over their lives as they went through everything they did, so the Holy Spirit could work through them to write, you know, write what he wanted them well, he inspired them to write what they wanted. So anyway, that's an aside. But theology is important from a it's important to incorporate true biblical theology into the Christian.

00:09:54.660 And there's a lot out there that's not true. And so really coming to the place where you understand the context of it and the culture and understanding what he's saying so that you can really understand the truth of what is being said. Exactly. That's the key. It's understanding it. And as we open ourselves up and become vulnerable, that's just really look at Jesus. Jesus was so vulnerable. He threw it all out there. Yes.

00:10:22.740 And it was the love that he had for us to show us how to do this in the proper way. And even, you know, with the woman who was caught in adultery, just the grace and mercy he had on her. Oh, yeah. And all of these things bring everything out into the open. And that's the key. Yeah That's the key. So sharing with him first, confessing to him and allowing him, inviting him.

00:10:54.480 Because he's invited us to come to him. Right. Yeah. Okay. And he's our creator, and he knows what's best for us. Yeah So it's important to understand that. And I'm just looking at a couple of things from her book, from Dr. Berkeley's book.

00:11:14.820 One thing that I'm just looking for here, it's just emotionally speaking, we have to remember that from a Christian perspective, the well, I think they call it well, it's the I had it in there. I can't see here at the moment, but what we want to be is a thermometer, Christian. Yes, a thermometer or a thermostat.

00:11:40.500 Right. Exactly. Uh-huh. That's the key. We don't want to be these up and down people. Roller coaster. Right. You can't be that way. You have to be and that's every day is a new day. Yeah. And we work at this. And it's just a new day. Every 24/7, we're trying to be the best that we can be. And there's no pressure. It's just relationship with him. And as we bring everything out into the open, it's so important to journal. You have to journal.

00:12:10.440 You have to write it down. And it's important even to ask questions. You know Ask questions about what's bothering you, or trying to find out what may be underneath, or trying to say, "Why did I do that?" These are important questions. And there's no condemnation. Yeah. It's just trying to understand. Yeah. I know. I've had emotions before, a feeling of like maybe somebody I didn't like what somebody said. Sure. And it really made me feel uncomfortable.

00:12:40.020 But the first place I went, I didn't always do this, but once you come to that place of inviting the Holy Spirit in to help you through that, coming in and saying, "Well, is there something in me that you want to help me with first before I even approach thinking about approaching a conversation with someone else?" Right. Yeah.

00:13:05.820 That's a great point because when you're looking at how people interact with each other, and we've talked about, too, we can do it in another way. We can be speculative imaginative. We can do speculative imagination. So a person might be saying Can you explain that? Sure. So speculative imagination is just when we have a thought about what we feel the other person is thinking about us, which is totally not true. And it's through the lens of our own experience probably before unhealed emotions.

00:13:35.460 And so we're thinking based on Flawed. Flawed. Thinking. It's terrible. And you know when you look at it from the totality of our lives, how much time is wasted on these things, which are just frivolous? Yeah. Mean nothing. But we take it so we take it to heart internally. And it's just the wrong way of thinking. And that's where God comes in and says, Romans 12, renew your mind.

00:14:01.140 Yeah And we talked about a neuroplasticity, and neuroplasticity is a great way of how God designed us, that we have new neuron pathways that we're thinking, and we're basing on the truth, the absolute truth. Yeah So I love that. I really do. Did you see anything within her book that you liked as well? Well, I was just thinking about one of the things that she had written about was, and we know this to be true, the longer we hold something in, the worse it becomes in us.

00:14:32.820 The darker it becomes in us. The more we feel less about ourselves, the more our emotions are more roller coaster-like rather than thermostatic. And so I think that's very important for us to understand bringing it to God first. Getting it out, we've talked about this so many times, bringing it out into the light. Sure. Because as soon as you bring it outside of yourself, first with God and then with others, who are safe, people to do that with.

00:15:08.880 But as soon as you do that and that person validates you and you find that almost everybody has this stuff in them because they do. They just walk around thinking they don't. It's the mask. We've talked about it before. It's the mask. They get it from a learned environment, as we've talked about. So you have the learned environment creates the mask as well, but it also it's a generational mirroring.

00:15:39.840 Yeah And so that's important to you know we're bringing everything into it because emotions are the key to having a healthy life is to have a healthy emotional life too. Right. And, you know, when I was growing up and throughout my adult life until I was born again, I had a distorted view of myself and others. So I would be burying things, keeping it, and it wasn't doing anything. It was absolutely horrible for my health. Yeah. You know I had high blood pressure.

00:16:06.540 I had all these symptoms based on burying emotions and judging myself so harshly, comparing myself to other people who I thought were perfect or were better people or were more successful. And that's not the way to do it. Absolutely not. It's so amazing. We don't think about these things when we're in those moments and we're having that. But when you learn that that affects your I mean, your emotional health affects your physical health. In such a big way. It does. Yeah.

00:16:36.300 Absolutely. And a lot of people don't realize that. Yeah So a lot of people will go, as we've talked about before, will go into something that will help just curb the pain. Alcoholism. Coping. Coping. Yeah. The coping mechanisms are just another way of just you know from drugs or alcohol or eating or other things that are out there. It's just too dead in a pain that they're feeling. And that's just you know, we were never meant to live this way. And this is what makes me so mad. Yeah.

00:17:05.400 I really am angry about it because, you know, the veil is over so many people's eyes, and it doesn't have to be that way. And part of the reason that Jesus came was to free us from all of that, for us to know the truth so that we could be freed from all of that. So your anger, you just expressed you have an anger about that. Yeah, I do. And you know we're going to go into assertive anger. Assertive anger is very good because you have to have boundaries, and you have to be you know, you have to you want to create a good space for yourself.

00:17:40.200 So you have to be assertive in a way. And God wants you to be that way. He wants you to be able to speak your mind in a clear way. Not in complete anger or anything. The anger we're talking about is just your boundaries of your limits. Because if you go beyond that, you're doing harm to yourself. You're not helping the other person. And we need help too. And so if we need help, we have to ask for it. But when we're talking about for me, that anger comes from the woe being pulled over to people's eyes.

00:18:11.520 And Jesus came and did it for us. Once he got off the cross and was resurrected, the enemy, all the enemies in the spiritual realm, they are bound. Bound. And we are lost. And that's why we want to bring this and again, we've said it a million times, just shout it from the mountain tops. And because we have been doing the research and studying and lived through it, we see just how wonderful and freeing it can be. And again, things can you know, life is a struggle.

00:18:42.900 There's no question. But we are victorious, and we're victorious in him. So that's why I get angry that people are living beneath their dignity of the way that God has. And he's created every single being. Whether you believe in Him or not, you're His creation. Right. And He wants you with Him, every single person. Right. Because He wants good things for you. And He wants you to have that freedom. And he wants you to live in the design that he created for your life. Right.

00:19:11.400 But what I find interesting, Gerard, is that as you're talking about, your anger about that, you know your face didn't turn red, your veins didn't pop out of your head, you're not yelling, you're just expressing that you have anger about that. And I think that that is a very healthy form of anger like you were talking about. That's an assertive anger. But there are other kinds of anger.

00:19:41.220 And they're harmful to us and to others. Did you want to talk about that somehow? Well, we can. We do some very good I just want to just she's a wonderful writer, and she's also been, unfortunately, she's deceased. But she left a legacy of really being part of the movement to help people understand trauma and to help people understand how God sees them through what they're going through.

00:20:12.720 And so when people are going through and have the wrong image of God, she's there to tell us and others as well. And we are, too. Thankfully, the Holy Spirit working through us that we understand that the way we are living, in the cases of people not understanding what God is, is beneath the way God has designed us to live, as you said. So there was two other angers that well, part of the anger that we were talking about.

00:20:41.640 And one is aggressive anger, which is destructive to others, and really, therefore, it's a sin. Yeah So in Psalm 4, and Paul also mentions it as well, they're not quite a bit angry. But when you go too bad, don't contemplate about the anger against the other person. Just look in your heart and say, "What's happening? What can I do better?" Or just you try to release the anger in a healthy way by talking to God. You know, that's the key is really the relationship with God.

00:21:12.840 And just talking to yourself, saying, "What can I do better? Is this something that the other person is experiencing that I'm not realizing?" So those are the healthy ways to deal with anger. You know, we talked about it before in the show. When you're dealing with anger and you're burying it, and you're keeping it suppressed, and you're coming out with other ways of assertive anger, it's not healthy. And you, yourself, that's the sin. And the sin is just missing a mark.

00:21:42.360 Yeah. You know, that's what it is. And God is saying, "Don't do that to yourself." Everything God's telling us to do is for us to be healthy. Yeah. Because all of that, it creates a self-criticism, a self-judgment, self-talk that's unhealthy, judging others, demeaning others, name calling others, all of those things that we've talked about in the past, when you push all of that stuff down and you don't bring it out, it creates that. And then it may rise in your barrier, it may rise in your barrier.

00:22:13.380 That's the roller coaster. Oh my gosh, yeah. I don't know anything about it. I love that. And you know I'm thankful for working through it. Oh, I know. And it's a daily walk. It's daily. It is. But as you understand it more clearly, it's easier to deal with. It's easier to focus in a good way on yourself and what you can do to make the situation better or make it better for yourself. Right. Well, you were talking about the Psalm 4, and part of that scripture was you know to be still.

00:22:45.060 And it makes me think of be still and know that I'm God. And you know it's like if you're still in what it is you're experiencing and you're doing exactly what you said to do, which is what the Scripture instructs us to do. Sure. I'm just going to read this. That's what I'm looking for. So just bear with me. But go ahead if you have another So it helps us to allow we also get to watch and see what God can do.

00:23:10.740 So it's that experience of, "Okay, if I do how you say do it because you have the best interest for me, if I do it that way, then I'm trusting you to do what only you can do." And so then God begins to work in all of that in a way that you never, I never, anyone never could have done. No, that's so true. Yeah And God can do anything, everything he can do. Nothing's impossible for God. So if it's okay, I'm just going to read these first.

00:23:40.320 I think there's only eight of them. Yeah. So this is Psalm 4, Psalm of David. And he starts out and you have to imagine David talking to him, and he's doing it in a way of just bringing it out, just like we're talking about. Right. So answer me when I call, "Oh, God, of my righteousness. You have given me relief when I was in distress. Be gracious to me and hear my prayer." And as we're praying, some people think of it as a structured prayer, you know, talking to it's communication every second of every day.

00:24:13.800 You have the availability to do that. Yeah And that's It's a real relationship. It is. Just like you and I talking. You just don't see it. You're talking to him all day and your heart and your mind and thoughts and Right. Could you imagine if I'm over there in the corner saying, "Oh, you know just talking and talking and to just myself over there and not communicate." There's no relationship. He's just sitting there talking to a wall. That's not what he wants. He wants relationship. And that teaches us with one another too.

00:24:43.560 Exactly. Exactly. Good point. Very good point. Yeah Omen, how long shall my honor be turned into shame? How long will you love vain words and seek after lies? But know that the Lord has set apart the godly for himself. The Lord hears when I call to Him. And that's the truth. We are in the body of Christ and He hears our prayers. Yeah Be angry and do not sin. Ponder on your own hearts, on your beds, and be silent.

00:25:13.620 And I think this is what Paul is alluding to in his scriptures. Offer right sacrifices and put your trust in the Lord. So here, from my understanding, sacrifices means praise. Yeah And we praise our Lord. And when you're praising God for who we are in Him and just the relationship-wise, that diffuses so much that we put on our hearts, ourselves. Within ourselves. Absolutely. Yeah.

00:25:42.180 The remainder you say, "Who will show us some good? Lift up the light of your face upon us, O Lord. You have put more joy in my heart than they have when their grain and wine abound. In peace, I will both lie down and sleep. For you alone, O Lord, make me dwell in safety. That's a great prayer. Yeah That is really such a great prayer. And it really shows what David understood that it's God who is our safety.

00:26:11.040 He just surrounds us with the safety. And you know, things happen. But in the end, it's God who is our Lord and Savior and who we go to in time of need. Yeah Or anytime. You know In that scripture, I hear he's our safety, he's our joy. He's our peace. And he gives us rest. Right. So you can go back to Psalm 23, where he gives us rest there too.

00:26:36.840 So it's really just from a biblical perspective, which our ministry really tries to bring that into the counseling and the psychology aspect of it. It's important for us to say that. And for me, I get so excited when I can do that because we're bringing the truth into a realm or a space where that's sorely lacking. Yeah. You know Anyway, do you have any other thoughts on sort of anger? No. Okay.

00:27:06.720 Oh, I just go through, you know, some of the parts of aggressive anger, which when it remains unresolved, you have, you know, yelling, loud cursing, finger-pointing, no idea about that. Throwing objects, famous excuse me, furious pacing, name-calling, temporal outbursts. And all of that just you can be, you know, aggressive anger. And one of the other ways of anger is the passive-aggressive anger. Mm-hmm.

00:27:35.340 And that's just equally as destructive. Right. It really, really is. Yes. And unfortunately, I have to admit, I've done that once or twice in my life. Until you know. Yeah. Until you know, I really believe, until you know when you get the truth and you understand this, it is what we do because we come from a learned environment, like you said. This is what we learn throughout our lives. We're all in this mode of self-protection.

00:28:03.240 But until that time that we know and we learn the truth, then we can start releasing that and learning a different way to do it. Right. So both of these types of anger obviously are very destructive, but at least to shame. Yes. You know Okay, let's step back a minute. Some people use this as complete evil. They are evil. These are evil actions. But others who do this or perform it can go into shame, can go into guilt.

00:28:31.320 So these are emotions, other emotions. And shame is a horrible emotion to sit there and say, "I am bad. I did something wrong." You know? So it's, it's the guilt aspect is I did something wrong, whereas the shame is I am. There's something wrong. I am bad. I am bad. Yeah. And that's something where another emotion that really keeps us, you know, buried within us and makes our living not the way God designed. And we can do that to ourselves.

00:29:00.660 Sure. Or, like you said, there are people that use it for evil, and they can bring that against us and do that to us as well through their anger that is unhealthy. Right. Right. It's very, very unhealthy. And as we've talked about before, it's abusive. Yeah. And that's not something you need. God didn't design us to be an abusive relationship at all. Not any kind of relationship. Right. We're interpersonal relationship. Right. We don't do everything perfect. Right. But when we look to him, he can work through us to help the relationship.

00:29:31.680 But if you're not doing that, if you're abusing the other person that is totally against everything God has designed a studio. Right. So that's something I felt was important to mention too. Well, I agree with that. And I'll just add one more thing to that. If you are in that relationship and you know you're with someone who's not trying to get on track with you, that's not the design of God either. Right. He wants us to, like we said, he wants us to come to him and confess to him and let him work.

00:30:00.960 And you use the pyramid as the example of when we look to him, then he can start working through each of us. Right. But we each have to do our work. Right. And then we can't do it for the other person. And I learned that the hard way, too. I really did. And as you're going through the abusive part of it, two other things that we've talked about before was the confusion of it all. And what you need to do is you need to have you need to be able to talk to a good lawyer, and you also need to have a safe place.

00:30:32.040 So these two things are going to where we, you know, moving forward and helping to put together things for that, for resources for them, for you to be able to do that. Because the confusion can lead to more abuse, because you're unsure of what to do, and you may have people who are and we've talked about it, who are thinking maybe you can be a better wife, or you can be a better husband, or you can do this. It's not good enough.

00:30:59.460 If I could just do it better, then he'll be better to me, or she'll be nicer to me, or yeah. And so getting back to what we've mentioned before, a lot of times, the church has it wrong with divorce. They have it wrong. And we're not sitting there promoting divorce, but what we're sitting here is it's a temporary you can easily have a temporary separation. Right. So each person works in themselves, but it has to be done in safety, and it has to be done with a lack of abuse.

00:31:30.300 So that's why you have to move to safety. But then again, there is a family law portion of it that you have to know your rights, and you have to understand how to go forward with it. And again, as we just mentioned, if the other person is not doing it. Yeah. Yeah. So you know one of the things that I've learned is like if you could just picture two lands. You have two separate geographical locations.

00:31:57.420 And there's a marriage where people we've talked about this before, about where people are, "Okay, my spouse did something that irritated me today," or, you know, whatever. You have that one where people need to work together and you get this great, great counsel and all from the church to help you to navigate through your relationship so that you can be reconciled and work through things and continue on.

00:32:29.460 Right. And then there's the land of there's an abusive person in the relationship. And the same counsel is not going to work with that person. That's the confusion that we want to try to help clear up. Right. Because people have been killed from that particular type of counsel. Right. And it's not right. So whenever you know some people can take, "Oh, they abused me," or, "He said something wrong," or, "She said something wrong." That's not it, what you're saying.

00:33:00.360 What you're saying is it's the abusive tendencies of people that create a very unsafe environment. Right. And that's the confusion of the church today. And we absolutely want our ministry to get out there and bring that awareness to the church so people can understand that it, again, God divorced Israel. Yes. And it's a biblical setting that he did that. He kept with great patience for them, you know, to come to him. But they kept going to other gods, other idolatry.

00:33:31.080 And, you know, the lesser gods. And he wasn't going to put up with it. Neither should anybody who's going through an abusive relationship. Right. And you may have people in your life who may not understand this, and maybe also trying to give you advice similar to what some of the pastors would give you of you changing, of you trying to be the right person because God hates divorce. Yeah. Or your place is beside him. Absolutely right. Right. And you just have to deal with it. Yeah. That's godly, I'd say, you know.

00:34:01.320 Yeah. Yeah. But thank God that you know with this movement's going forward, and it's very healthy for people to understand that as they're going through what they're going through in very difficult times, God does not want you to go through that only in an abusive way. No, He wants you to be healthy and whole. And whatever it takes in that type of relationship, because if that person's doing it to you, and from a God's perspective, you have a right you have a right to walk away from that because it's something that this other person and they have free will.

00:34:39.000 If they're not doing it, if they're not going to help themselves in any way, then you just have to walk away. You just have to. And again, it's not promoting divorce. Maybe it could be a separation. Yeah But the bottom line is you have to be healthy. Everybody's got to get healthy. You can separate. I mean, especially if you're unsafe emotionally or physically, you can separate. And then you know hopefully, both parties will work on themselves. But if not, then there are next steps to take.

00:35:09.780 For your life. That's the best way to put it, because you're hoping beyond hope that both parties will do it. Because you don't really want to have it. But if somebody's in danger, yeah that can't be. Yeah. Absolutely. It's not tolerable. Right. Not at all. Right. Which comes back to what you were talking about is this aggressive anger.

00:35:30.240 This is part of what is inside someone who abuses and it might be part of what's inside of us as individuals that aren't abusing, but we've dealt with so much in our lives that we learn to have aggressive anger versus really learning how to be assertive In a healthy way. In a healthy way. Right. Exactly.

00:35:51.660 And that has been one of my weaknesses for the longest time is to have that assertive anger in a way that just helps to just bring your emotions out and in a calming way, tell the other person what's bothering you instead of being afraid of doing that. It's that fear that holds you back. And then you're like, "Well, why didn't I say that?" Or if I had only said or but when you learn that when you do say it, that there's a totally different dynamic.

00:36:25.980 Right. Things can change. Exactly. And again, it's a speculative imagination that comes forth because you're thinking you're trying to have the response the other person is going to have for you by doing it. It's just wrong. Yeah But each person is an individual, and we don't know what they're thinking, and they don't know what we're thinking. So it's very important to understand that and to clear the air, so to speak, in a healthy way, helps both parties to maintain a relationship and actually goes deeper and increases. Yeah. You know, it's important. Yeah.

00:36:54.840 I'm just going to go back to passive-aggressive anger for a minute. And it's a destructive type of anger and it's the most difficult to handle. Again, what makes it a sin is that we are taking this anger in a way that we're not handling it properly. And when we're coming up, because obviously passes, we're hiding it. We're saying things in a very negative way. We're coming out in a way that belittles somebody, or you know joking. They say joking, and they're belittling you.

00:37:26.280 And that's passive. That's hurtful. Right. So you have the aggressive, but when it's passive, it's equally as damaging. Yeah And it's displayed in silent treatment, holding grudges. No idea about that. Social withdrawal, deliberately ignoring and cold and icy glares. And I know I've experienced that once or twice in my life. And then from a perspective of getting back at people, maybe it could be a work relationship or something.

00:37:54.180 It could be laziness, procrastination, and then half-hearted efforts to do something. And chronic forgetfulness and tardiness. So this can help this can hurt you in a working relationship, too. But it's important to understand that these assertive anger, passive aggressive anger, and aggressive anger, the differences between them. Right. And assertive anger is what is godly. And again, it doesn't mean vocally, you know, screaming or yelling. It just means, "This is how I feel." Right.

00:38:24.060 And I want the other person to tell me how they feel about this, too. And again, if something's really bothering you and you're listening, that's the key to be as a good listener. Because so many times in my life, somebody's talking to me, and I'm in my mind, pretending I'm listening. And I have my response coming. It's just formulating my response, which is defensive. Yeah. And how many times that just hurts the relationship? You don't hear anything they say. No, you don't. It's so hard, but it's an art.

00:38:54.540 I mean, it really is a learned thing to be able to listen to what someone is saying instead of deciding what you're going to say next. Right. You can get away from being defensive. That's the key. Once you get away from being defensive, you're vulnerable. Yeah And when you're vulnerable, you know who loves you, and that's God. And when God loves you, you know that you're loved and you're loved. So you know that the other person in front of you is a creation of God, whether they believe or not.

00:39:24.000 Yeah But you know as being a representative of Christ, whereas hands and feet, what are we supposed to do? We don't always do it, but we're supposed to sit down, listen to them, and understand that they have feelings. God created them, and we're supposed to treat each other with respect and dignity. Right. Each person has feelings, and so you're able to talk about those in a way that's a healthy way. And then you can you know navigate through those issues, whatever you're having.

00:39:56.280 But if it's coming down on you in a different way, all that does is shuts a person off and they don't want to communicate with you. Right. Exactly. And then sometimes particularly within relationships of a man or wife or, you know, a close relationship between a girlfriend or boyfriend, it's important to if there's something that you need to kind of walk away from for a few minutes to get your thoughts in order and just explain to them, okay, nothing against you, I just have to walk away for a few minutes and just to get my thoughts clear.

00:40:29.280 And then we can discuss it afterwards because sometimes things can get heated. No question about it. But to be able to do that is something that I want to do a better job of. Yeah. Well, and taking a break. I mean, like you said, walking away, but there's also, I think, it's healthy and it's okay if you want to, rather than coming back and having that conversation. If you don't feel like you can really communicate what it is you want to say without stumbling because sometimes in these situations, your brain is just not working, right?

00:41:02.940 You can't get your thoughts together. It's okay to write it down and share it. That's a great point. Yeah You can write it. You don't want to go too long with it. But you know I think it comes about from trusting the other person too. So you know that if you're going through something that's really, really you're feeling turmoil inside of you and you don't want to, you know, inject that into the conversation. You just can easily walk away and just, you know, calm down and just ponder on your heart. Yes.

00:41:32.280 And then come up with something that you internally bring it out in a calming way. And the other person will accept that. They may not always agree with it, but at least they're accepted and they'll understand what you're feeling. Yeah And if people are either doing it through the love of Christ or loving each other, then they'll accept that. Yeah So both parties can say, you know I can agree to disagree, but I understand and I hear your heart. And that's the key to really better communication and a healthy relationship.

00:42:04.980 Yeah. It's a big part of understanding our emotions. But there's really another key area that we haven't talked about yet that she talked about, that we know about. And that is forgiveness. Thank you for bringing that up. Because we talked about that before. And when we're looking at forgiveness. And when I first, you know, was born again, and just a story, and I'm just throwing it out there to be somewhat vulnerable, I went to Karas Bible College.

00:42:36.960 I think I've mentioned that to you. And when I was there one time during a lesson, I'll never forget it. One of the teachers there, Greg Moore, great, great man of God. He just looked at us and just said, "Look it, guys. You've got to forgive yourselves." Yeah. And that was so freeing to know and I just left there from that particular lecture.

00:43:00.420 I was in my car driving back, and tears were coming down my eyes because of all these stuffed emotions down there of how bad I was, and all these things I did wrong, and how horrible of a person I was because I never brought it out or never brought it to God. But that was just such a freeing moment yeah to do that. So do you have any forgiveness? Where did that come into your life, do you feel? Oh, wow. Forgiveness for me was when I was born again.

00:43:29.100 Yeah And it was a very significant part of that. It wasn't so much that I was forgiving myself at that moment, maybe a little bit. But it was more understanding of how much God had forgiven me. Just being in such a dark place before and having all those emotions and places hidden in me and how all of that had started coming up and I was sharing it with him and realizing what Jesus had done for me and why he did it.

00:44:07.020 And a big part of why he did it was to free me from the unforgiveness of myself, but also from how I viewed him. And understanding that he loved me first even in all that darkness. And so understanding the depth of his love for me is what made me seek him and want to know.

00:44:35.040 So the forgiveness that he gave me has helped me to be able to see people in the way that he saw me because we're all in that place. Absolutely. So the forgiveness aspect of it for me was first seeing how he forgave me. And yes, I had to go through forgiving myself. And I think that's a long-term process that we go through. And then you know seeing people in the same way.

00:45:03.660 The grace that we got, the mercy that we received, the grace that we received from him through his death and resurrection life. It's like, okay, well, if he can do that for me and he did it for me and I was in this place where it was totally far from what he wanted for me. He can do it for anybody. And so I just need to see and they're created in his image. Absolutely.

00:45:31.500 So to see them that way and know that at any moment I was having this conversation with a friend the other day. At any moment, someone can change. You don't know. I mean, there may be somebody in this really dark place today, but tomorrow or next week, they're going to be in this place where they're on their hands and knees asking God to forgive them. I think it just hurt my heart so much of the way that I had lived opposed from.

00:46:01.380 Exactly. That's exactly why the tears were coming down. Yes. Exactly. That's a great, great illustration. Thank you. Yeah One thing that really also to just you know go on with from there is Dr. Tim McKay had a great analogy of what we do as a human race. It's like throwing a rock into you know our actions affect so many other people. And just imagine, like, I think there's almost eight billion people in the world.

00:46:31.020 Yeah. And then all of us do this. So we're just destroying this wonderful creation that God has given us. But Jesus, like you mentioned, knew this from the beginning of the world. Right. And he knew that his he knew how we were going to live. And while we were yet sinners, he did this out of such great love for us. Yeah And you know who are we to not forgive ourselves when God has forgiven us?

00:47:00.120 You know And it's just so many people feel God is that God with the lightning boat. God is a God of absolute love. He does have anger, though. Yes. And who are we not to forgive someone else if he's forgiven us? Exactly. But also, I would like to say with forgiveness, you will go back to there are boundaries and limits for your life. It doesn't mean you know when you forgive, it doesn't mean okay, you did that to me today. Okay, I'm going to go back and get it again tomorrow.

00:47:29.520 You know Oh, I'll forgive you again. Of course you're going to forgive. But there are boundaries and limits. The limits are the key there. For healthy life. Again, you have to have healthy relationships. That's the key to a healthy life. Yeah. And it's not that you're dismissing people don't have it. You just know that you can't keep going back into the same thing. Right. You just can't because it's so destructive. Yeah And that other person is not helping themselves. So that's the key. And as you know, we're going forward with all of this just beautiful imagery of God.

00:48:00.960 It's just his love for us. And again, when it brought up his anger, his type of anger is so different than ours. You know, I mean, there is judgment that will come between the, you know, believer and the unbeliever, meaning that we will not be judged in the way that the non-believer is. You just have to tell the truth. It's just the way it is. That's true. And when you look at he clearly says vengeance is mine to us. In the Bible, vengeance is mine, and I will pay in the back. Right.

00:48:29.340 And, you know, talk to Tim McKay getting back to him. What does he do? Put a scarlet letter on, on their forehead, just no. He's the god of love. Right. So he's going to woo them with his love to hopefully bring them to the point of accepting him and to just embrace what he wants for them. And then he does love us. So just give it to him. Yeah. And it's sometimes difficult.

00:48:55.980 But I really, truly I think Paul I mean, Peter says it cast all you cares in Jesus because he cares for you. Yes. And what does that all get? It all gets it away from burying it to the openness to giving it to God. Right. So I just thank you for bringing up for giving this stuff. Yeah. That is so key. Yeah. So, so key. Do you have anything else you want to mention? No. That was great, though. Thank you for bringing that forgiveness. Yeah. So we have confession, forgiveness.

00:49:24.000 We understand assertive anger is good, done correctly. And then, you know, the understanding that maybe you might go into the passive-aggressive behavior pattern or the aggressive anger pattern. And you can realize that. And when you realize that step back, what's bothering me to create this? Yeah. So I think we at this point, we can leave it there. Yeah. I think it was a good explanation and explanation about some of the emotions that we face that can be harmful and detrimental to our health. Yeah.

00:49:52.860 Do we wanna be a thermostat or do we wanna be a roller coaster? Yeah, exactly. Yeah. We wanna be a thermostat. We wanna be there and to be able to help people and also help ourselves. And God working through us. That's the key. Amen. Yeah. Yeah. Well, thank you for joining us once again today. And we just just again, I can't thank you enough for being a part of Millmak Musings. And again, it's part of Destiny for Glory Ministry. And we're just excited again. Every day is a wonderful day to do this. So thank you for joining us. Thank you.

00:50:22.800 If you would like to get in touch with us or visit our website, you can go to destinedforglorymin.org and we have a contact tab on there where you can go there and reach out to us. We'd love to hear from you. And we'd love to talk about maybe some of the things that you all are experiencing that you feel like would be a good topic for us to address, to bring more awareness to the church about it.

00:50:52.260 And that's exactly what we want to do. Yeah. Thank you again and have a wonderful, blessed week. Yeah.