"Is your soul running on empty? 💔 In this life-giving message, Karen Weber unpacks the essentials of spiritual health—because thriving in Christ isn’t just about surviving chaos, it’s about flourishing in His peace. Discover how to: ✅ Detox Your Spirit: Replace anxiety, burnout, and distraction with God’s rest and clarity. ✅ Fuel Your Faith: Daily habits to deepen your prayer life, Scripture connection, and worship. 📖✨ ✅ Guard Your Heart: Biblical boundaries that protect your peace without compromising your purpose. 🛡️
📖 Key Truth: “Above all else, guard your heart, for everything you do flows from it.” — Proverbs 4:23
💡 Why Watch?
You’re tired of “quick fixes” and crave lasting spiritual vitality.
You want to balance serving others with nurturing your own soul.
You’re ready to trade exhaustion for overflowing joy in Jesus.
👉 Hit ‘Subscribe’ 🔔 and join a sisterhood committed to wholeness—spirit, mind, and heart!
00:00When I got there and they told us who the speakers were, two of them were like psychologists.
00:06And I thought, wow, that tells you something about this pastor's life.
00:11We must really need some work, you know.
00:13But anyway, so one of the sessions, the speaker got up and she was speaking and she was digging.
00:19I mean, she was digging way down inside.
00:22And in that session, the Lord revealed something to me about me that I have never told another human being until today.
00:34Let me give you some background.
00:36When my parents, before they had any children, my parents were in the ministry.
00:42My dad was a pastor.
00:45I came along.
00:46My little brother came along.
00:48And when we were toddlers, our father decided he didn't want to be married.
00:54And he also decided he didn't want to have anything to do with our family.
01:02And so he left.
01:04And it was very, I'm sure it was very traumatic for my mother.
01:08I was so young I don't remember.
01:10But all of my life had little to no contact with my father.
01:17There were years when I was growing up that if he had walked up to me on a sidewalk, I wouldn't have known who he was.
01:24Because there was just no contact.
01:27Now, to be honest, as we got older, and I think it was because he knew eventually he would die.
01:33But anyway, he decided he wanted some type of relationship with us.
01:37But even then, it was simply like an acquaintance.
01:39So I'm sitting in this conference, and she is digging and, you know, pushing us to look deep within our emotions and expose all of who we are to God.
01:52And I'm sitting there, and the Lord began to speak to me.
01:57And he was very quick.
01:58Now, I'm not spooky kooky.
02:00I don't have visions.
02:00So this was really quick.
02:03It was more like an impression on my heart.
02:06But the Lord began to reveal to me, and he began to show me that when I pray, I come to God, and I look at him very high and very lofty.
02:18And in all of his majesty, because he is.
02:20He's all-powerful.
02:22He's all-knowing.
02:24He's all.
02:25He's everything, everywhere, all the time.
02:28And he began to show me that when I come to him and pray, that that's how I approach him.
02:35He's so grand.
02:37God, you're so great.
02:39You're so worthy.
02:40You're so mighty.
02:42You're so awesome.
02:44And I thought, which one was that?
02:46And then the Lord showed me that I have never had a crawl-up-in-my-lap-and-talk-to-me experience with him, because I never had that in the physical.
03:02I don't even know.
03:03When people say, I'm a daddy's girl, I don't even know what that means.
03:06And so, I've never let God down in that place, because I just, I didn't know.
03:16I didn't know that I kept him high and lofty.
03:22And that's what I'm talking about.
03:24Sometimes, even our view of God gets distorted by the things we have experienced and the things that have happened to us.
03:33And we don't even realize that even though we may have a wonderful and great experience with God, he still wants more.
03:42I'm 54.
03:43I've been living for God all of my life.
03:45And just to think that after I was sitting there thinking, God, why didn't you tell me this like 30 years ago?
03:51I could have been crawling up on your lap all this time.
03:54You know, but think about it.
03:57It's never, we're never done with God.
04:01You know, there's always more.
04:03There's always more that he's trying to do within us and change us.
04:07And for Christ to be formed in us, we have to be willing to let the Holy Ghost power invade all of who we are, way down below the surface, and transform those deep places in our lives.
04:21Dawn, you said it yesterday.
04:22I nearly jumped up and screamed.
04:24I thought she's just going to preach my message.
04:26When you just declared in here, God changed me.
04:31God changed me.
04:32You said it.
04:33And that's what I'm talking about.
04:34Don't be content to just feel good once in a while.
04:39Don't be content to just have the goose bump experience on Sunday morning.
04:45Let him get deep down inside.
04:48God, not just touch you, but transform you.
04:52Because if we don't allow God below the surface, then our spirituality becomes divorced from our emotions.
05:01We keep it separated.
05:03And then there's all these layers that remain totally untouched by God.
05:07Part of the iceberg that's below the surface, and nobody sees it until a crisis comes along, and then there it is.
05:13Yeah.
05:15Now, when Stephanie asked me to speak on this, you have to understand, I did a four-lesson series, so I'm trying to cram everything in right here.
05:22But let me just give you a few things that will tell you my spirituality might be surfaced.
05:30Okay?
05:31One of them is we use God to run from God.
05:35We create a great deal of God activity, but we ignore the difficult areas in our life that God wants to change.
05:45Okay?
05:46Another one is we ignore anger, sadness, and fear.
05:50Because as Christians, we've been taught that feelings are unreliable and that they shouldn't be trusted.
05:57And that's true.
05:58We don't want to live in the extreme of our feelings in an unhealthy, unbiblical way.
06:02But to feel is human.
06:06And to minimize or deny what we feel distorts what it means to be an image-bearer of our God.
06:13That's good.
06:13Okay?
06:14That's so good.
06:14And so if we're unable to express our emotions, then we are impaired in our ability and the way we love God and the way we love others and the way we love ourselves.
06:25The key is handling those biblically.
06:28And I don't have, that's a whole lesson in itself.
06:30But, you know, go see Adina for all that.
06:33Another way we keep our spirituality disconnected from our emotions is when we try to divide our lives into secular versus sacred.
06:43It's so easy to compartmentalize God to just Sunday or to just Christian activities around church or around my spiritual disciplines without thinking that he's supposed to be invading my thoughts and invading my words and invading my actions and invading how I feel about everything on a moment-by-moment basis.
07:00Another thing we do is we do for God instead of being with God.
07:07When we work for God and it's not nourished by a deep interior life with God, then even that work for God will be contaminated.
07:19We have to make sure that our sense of worth comes from the unconditional love of God rather than what we're doing for God.
07:28Okay?
07:28And here's another thing we do.
07:30We spiritualize away conflict.
07:34We believe that smoothing over disagreements or sweeping them under the rug is really how we follow Jesus.
07:42And that's one of the most destructive myths alive in the church today.
07:48We have to resolve conflict in a biblical way.
07:51Another thing we do is we cover over our brokenness and our weakness and our failure because there's pressure on us to present this image of ourselves as strong and spiritually together.
08:03And we feel guilty if we don't make the grade and we forget that none of us is perfect and that we're all sinners.
08:12Think about this.
08:14David used his absolute power as king to ensure that the details of his colossal failure with Bathsheba were published in the history books for all future generations.
08:29He just put it out there.
08:31He knew that God does not despise a broken spirit and a broken and contrite heart.
08:41Even Paul admitted that God's strength was made perfect in his own weakness.
08:46So how do I allow God way down on the inside?
08:50How do I make this happen inside so that my spirituality is not just surface?
08:56Well, I'm going to talk just about one aspect and that's our emotions.
09:00God created human beings to feel a wide range of emotions and they greatly affect our spirituality.
09:08Most Christians don't think that they have permission to consider their feelings, to name them or even express them openly.
09:16Especially the difficult ones.
09:18But when we continually stuff those feelings, eventually they begin to leak all over every relationship we have.
09:25And the longer we deny the pain, the loss, the feelings, we become less and less human.
09:33But feelings have a biblical place in our spirituality.
09:37And so denying them will cause very extensive damage to our spiritual health if we're not careful.
09:43In the book, The Cry of the Soul, the author says, emotions are the language of the soul.
09:50They are the cry that gives the heart a voice.
09:53So the journey to healthy spirituality, one way, I think, begins.
09:59And I'm beyond the new birth experience.
10:02I'm beyond, you know, I know all of you in here already have a relationship with God.
10:07So I'm beyond that.
10:07I don't think I have to qualify that.
10:10But Scripture reveals that God is an emotional being who feels.
10:17In creation, God saw that it was good.
10:20He said it was very good.
10:20That's delight.
10:22Genesis 6 and 6, the Lord was grieved that he had made man on the earth and his heart was filled with pain.
10:28Exodus 20 and 5, God is a jealous God.
10:30I feel bad for being jealous, but God was jealous.
10:35Isaiah 42 and 14 says that, like, describes him like a woman in childbirth crying out, gasping and panting.
10:42Jeremiah 30 and 24 says the fierce anger of the Lord will not turn back until he fully accomplishes the purposes of his heart.
10:49Jeremiah 31, 3, I've loved you with an everlasting love.
10:52You hear all these emotions that God has?
10:55Hosea 11, 8, all my compassion is aroused.
10:58Matthew 26 says he was sorrowful and troubled, that his soul was overwhelmed with sorrow.
11:06Mark 3 and 5 says he looked around them in anger and he was deeply distressed at their stubborn hearts.
11:11Luke 10 and 21 describes Jesus as full of joy through the Holy Spirit.
11:16And you are a human being made in God's likeness.
11:20And part of that likeness is to feel.
11:22To feel.
11:22And the problem is that we can't reflect on nor respond thoughtfully to our feelings if we don't know what they are.
11:32Because so much of our true self gets buried under those feelings we think we're not supposed to express.
11:38Listen to Psalm 139 verses 23 and 24.
11:42Search me, O God, and know my heart.
11:46Try me and know my thoughts.
11:48Another word there is anxieties.
11:50Know my anxieties.
11:51And see if there's any wicked way in me.
11:55In other words, point out anything in me that's not right, that offends you.
11:59And then it says, and leave me in the way everlasting.
12:02And when we neglect our most intense emotions, we're not only false to ourselves, but we close off a door through which we can know God.
12:14And it affects our relationship with Him.
12:16So we end up wearing a mask.
12:18We end up wearing a mask before God, before ourselves, before other people.
12:22We try to hide our true self.
12:24So we have to be strong enough to admit, I'm confused.
12:30We have to be able to admit, I don't know what God's doing right now.
12:33I'm hurt.
12:34I'm angry.
12:35This is a mystery.
12:37I'm sad right now.
12:38Or like Jesus admitted, God, why have you forsaken me?
12:43He admitted how He felt right there.
12:47You know, it seemed that everyone had expectations of Jesus.
12:51He disappointed a lot of people.
12:52He left His family of origin and their expectations.
12:56And at one point, they wondered if He was out of His mind.
13:00The people He grew up with in Nazareth tried to push Him off a cliff when He declared Himself as Messiah.
13:06The disciples projected onto Him the kind of Messiah they wanted Him to be.
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