Everyone wants to know their place in life. Where do we fit in our family, our school, our workplace, with God? When I was growing up, I had a hard time discovering my place and my family didn’t talk about emotions much. As I matured, I realized I was full of feelings and now am learning how to identify and verbalize my emotions. Importantly, I’m learning Christ-like responses to challenging situations with others. Bible stories offer powerful teaching tools
to guide in managing emotions and relationships.
In Atlas of the Heart, Brene Brown aptly reminds that language is a portal to identifying emotions and then building community connections by establishing a caring environment. Based on survey research, she reports that most people can only identify three emotions – happy, mad and sad. While learning to articulate those three emotions is critical, we should develop a more robust emotional vocabulary to be able to make sense of the world and understand the human experience.
This concept of knowing, verbalizing and confronting feelings is called Social Emotional Learning (SEL); this type of learning must begin in the home and in our churches and be grounded in God’s Word and ways. When we teach our children to apply SEL skills, there will be increased awareness of self and others, care for others, stronger responsible decision making and self-management. These devotions in Full of Feelings are designed to create meaningful experiences with your children helping them to identify and manage their God given emotions by examining 26 Bible Stories and understanding Christ like responses through scripture memory, memorizing songs and thoughtful questions.
Elisabeth Elliot wisely affirms “If you dwell on your own feelings about things rather than dwelling on the faithfulness, the love and the mercy of God, then you’re likely to have a terrible, horrible, no good, very bad day. Our feelings are very fleeting and ephemeral. We can’t depend on them for five minutes at a time. But dwelling on the love, faithfulness and mercy of God is always safe.” We are full of God-given feelings and must learn to identify and manage them through God’s perspective.
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