Lately, I’ve been fighting the tension of resisting the sculpting hands of the Lord. I know I’m being summoned into sacred consecration and called out of hiding. Now, of course, it sounds ridiculous to run from God, but when He becomes the Potter, His craftsmanship shapes us according to what seems best to Him. The central truth is this: consecration requires surrender, and surrender feels like being pressed and crushed, in which cultivates maturity. Though maturity is necessary, it doesn’t feel good when He breaks my need to control outcomes, strips my fear of people and people-pleasing, or develops my emotional state, especially when those things have become embedded in my need to protect myself.

When God is shaping us, He leads us through seasons of refinement that don’t necessarily “feel good.” The truth is, He has every right to be the Potter when our personhood is marred by idolatry, filled with timidity, or lacking identity. There’s no need to protect ourselves when we claim He’s our refuge, yet when that reality gets challenged, survival rears its head. Yet, here is God, simply sculpting healthy development fitted for partnership with Him.

When Feelings & Emotions Corrupt Development

Over the past few years, the Lord has been teaching me to show up authentically through obedience. One may think there’s nothing wrong with that, but for me, it felt as though I landed in situations that triggered the very thing I struggled with: protecting my image and dealing with the fear of people. My last few obedience assignments came with ridicule and slander from others, which left me emotionally broken and guarded.

Here’s the thing: it wasn’t responding to the Lord’s will or the responses of others that crippled me—it was my inability to reconcile my natural emotions with what God was doing eternally for His glory and internally for my development. When pain and suffering come by way of circumstances or a simple act of obedience, we tend to cope with how we feel and neglect what God is teaching in the moment. We misuse the refining to stay in our feelings rather than capture the Lord ringing out what’s unholy in our hearts.

Here is the Lord revealing a trait that will be enmity with Him every time He asks anything of me. If my responses to His will are more about how I will look rather than the task at hand, everything becomes about me rather than Him. What use can He get out of me if He always has to fight with Kevonna protecting her character? Instead of repenting for the idolatry the Lord found in my heart, the only thing I uttered was, “I only did what you asked me to do,” because of the pain I felt.

Feelings and emotions corrupt development because they often dictate our perception. Our emotions sometimes shape how we see things, and without healthy, regulated emotions, we plateau in how we respond to life. We become jaded and treat others through the lens of our triggers, rather than live in the fruit of forgiveness. We guard our hearts and call them boundaries, but the truth is the only thing we are guarding in our hearts is fear. We say yes to God, but it comes with our terms and conditions. We say we love working behind the scenes, but we are actually afraid of rejection. We love from a distance, run from new positions, carry bitterness, shame, and everything in between. All of it supports arrested development because unprocessed emotions and unhealed feelings keep us from maturing.

Reconciling our natural emotions with God's truth helps us process with God instead of processing without Him. When we make room for God’s truths to govern our emotions, we live out the Scripture in Philippians 4:17: “And the peace of God, which transcends all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus.” We can walk this out because whatever emotion is raging becomes subject to God's peace. Once the Lord’s peace regulates the emotion, we actively focus on God's move, even when it’s tough. Yes, the emotions are there, but they’re submitted. When emotions are submitted, transformation happens. When transformation takes place, honest conversations in prayer follow because we can process what is being revealed.

TO THE READER

Sometimes we buck up against God’s methods of redefining because it doesn’t feel good. As a result, our feelings and emotions resist divine development because we’re stuck on how it feels rather than the method God uses to restore, correct, or even transform how we function. When God is moving in His divinity, anything unholy becomes a candidate for correction. The Lord is committed to a completed work within us, which means anything that resembles stagnation, He’ll put us on His potter’s wheel with no hesitation. I once read, “God isn’t destroying us; He’s making room for what’s divine“ and I couldn’t agree more.

A season of refining gave me an opportunity to repent, yet I remained guarded because of my feelings. With another round of consecration on the table, I get to respond to the crushing and pressing with maturity because I now see and know arrested development is crippling. I stated earlier that I have to fight the tension to run—meaning, at this place in my life where spaces are unfamiliar, I have to do the hard work. I have to get out of comfort zones without second-guessing what I look or sound like, allow God to affirm me even when people start to notice what I carry, and keep submitting raging emotions to the peace of God. It’s doing the hard work of relinquishing control and outcomes.

One last thing: the point is not to dismiss or conceal our emotions and feelings. It’s more about giving them a filter to run through, which is Christ Jesus. He should always cover the state of our heart and mind. When our emotions lack the truth, we get stuck in what we captured, but His truth gives us a full perspective. Not partial, nor biased. Therefore, the suffering we may have experienced holds a divine perspective for development, not failure.

Love, Kevonna

If you’d like to send a direct message regarding the blog post, a prayer request, or leave a personal comment, please do so below.

Arrested Development

Hey, Girl! Real Quick