What Does the Bible Say About Emotional Healing?

What does the Bible say about emotional healing? Here are 3 signs God is preparing you for a season of healing your emotions.

1. If Your Emotions Are Not Accurately Reflecting What Is Going on in Your Life, This Is a Sign God Wants to Heal Your Emotions

When working properly, our emotions are meant to be like a window into our hearts. How we feel is supposed to be an accurate gauge of what is happening inside of us.

So our goal for our emotions should not be to always feel happy. Rather, the goal of having healthy emotions is to feel accurate feelings for whatever is going on in our lives. If something bad is happening, we should feel sad about this. If something good is happening, we should be able to enjoy this rather than being weighed down with depression or anxiety.

Therefore, when you know your emotions are not accurate anymore and are no longer telling you the truth, this means it’s time to recalibrate with the Lord. We must learn to bring our emotions under submission to God’s truth rather than allowing our emotions to form our truths. Feelings are important, so I’m not saying to just deaden your heart and believe the Bible. What I am saying is that when you believe the Bible in your heart your emotions will follow and begin to perform as God designed them. Notice what Proverbs 28:1, 26 states:

The wicked flee when no one pursues, but the righteous are bold as a lion. . . . Whoever trusts in his own mind is a fool, but he who walks in wisdom will be delivered.”

When we are straying from the Lord our emotions will play tricks on us, like feeling fear when there is no real reason to be fearful. When we believe our own thoughts over God’s word, we miss out on experiencing the deliverance of the Lord.

2. If You Just Went Through a Very Emotional Season in Life, God Desires to Help Your Emotions Return to a Normal Operating State

As I said in the previous point, the goal here is not have manufactured emotions that only give us positive, warm, and happy feelings all the time even when life actually is very hard and bad things are happening. When you go through a very hard season or a traumatic experience, your heart should feel intense emotions that accurately reflect what is going on.

However, when that storm in life passes, sometimes our emotions can keep running at that heightened state even though the circumstances in our lives no longer warrant such emotions. So if you find yourself crying really easily, or if you feel yourself snapping at people when they barely do anything wrong, or if you find yourself depressed even when good things are happening now – this could be because your emotions are still stuck in the heightened state from that storm you just recently went through.

The way to bring your emotions back into balance is to give yourself the exact opposite season of the season you just went through. For example, if you just got done with a crazy hectic holiday season with all kinds of family drama, the way to bring your emotions back into balance is by going through a season of heightened solitude and rest. I’m not saying you turn into a hermit forever, but if you are emotionally exhausted from being around all kinds of drama, your heart needs an extended season of rest where there is an extreme lack of drama.

For example, when Jesus was surrounded by masses of people who were constantly trying to touch him and get things from him, Jesus then followed up that season of craziness in the city with a completely different season of spending one-on-one time with just his Father in the wilderness. In Luke 5:12-16 it states:

While he was in one of the cities, there came a man full of leprosy. And when he saw Jesus, he fell on his face and begged him, “Lord, if you will, you can make me clean.” And Jesus stretched out his hand and touched him, saying, “I will; be clean.” And immediately the leprosy left him. And he charged him to tell no one, but “go and show yourself to the priest, and make an offering for your cleansing, as Moses commanded, for a proof to them.” But now even more the report about him went abroad, and great crowds gathered to hear him and to be healed of their infirmities. But he would withdraw to desolate places and pray.”

3. If Your Emotions Are Reflecting Your Earthly Concerns and Crowding Out Your Joy in the Lord, This Is a Sign God Wants to Heal Your Emotions So You Can Experience More of Him

When we are filled with doubts and worries regarding the earthly issues happening in our lives, it will be impossible for us to experience God as he desires us to do. Really, when this type of thing is happening, it’s not an emotion issue because our emotions are actually doing what they are supposed to being doing – reflecting what is going on in our hearts.

If we have worry, anxiety, and fear in our hearts about the things we desire in life like relationships, money, or social status, this will manifest in our lives as negative and unwanted emotions. So the goal here would not be to stuff down these emotions and try to force ourselves to feel differently. No, the real solution is to go to the root issue which is our lack of trust in the Lord.

We need to ask ourselves, “Why do I feel this way?” If the answer is that we are focusing too much on earthly issues and not enough on our Heavenly Father’s power, this is a sign God wants to correct our emotions by increasing our faith and trust in him. As the Bible says Matthew 6:30-33:

But if God so clothes the grass of the field, which today is alive and tomorrow is thrown into the oven, will he not much more clothe you, O you of little faith? Therefore do not be anxious, saying, ‘What shall we eat?’ or ‘What shall we drink?’ or ‘What shall we wear?’ For the Gentiles seek after all these things, and your heavenly Father knows that you need them all. But seek first the kingdom of God and his righteousness, and all these things will be added to you.”