Are your feelings hurt? For those of us who are sensitive and get our feelings hurt easily, what should we do about it? Please read on!
I was always sensitive, always felt emotions more deeply than the average person, and definitely got my feelings hurt more than many others might. But never did I expect I would become even more sensitive as a Jesus follower. I would have thought I would have become strong and thick-skinned and not feel everything so much. Oh, not so!
While I would have thought this is a bad thing to be so sensitive, I now see it as a blessing albeit one that comes with challenges. A blessing most importantly because my ability to feel things very deeply means I feel such an amazingly wonderful deep and ever-growing love and passion for God. And a blessing because God uses my sensitivity to have great love and compassion and concern and care and a desire to love and serve and help others.
So what should we do when our feelings are hurt?
Please be encouraged considering these four tips God has blessed me with incorporating into my own life and relationship with Him.
- Forgive those who hurt you whether they intended to hurt you or not, and ask God for help and the ability to forgive them if you feel unable to forgive.
- Pour out your heart to God and receive His love and comfort. Release the hurt; don’t hold onto it and don’t react to it with sin.
- Repent before God and seek the other person’s forgiveness and anyone else’s you have hurt and done wrong against in any way. We can be quick to be hurt over what others have said and done or not said and not done but sometimes neglect to look at our own wrongdoing. For example, we may need to repent of bitterness, anger, jealousy, pride, judgment, criticism, gossip, vengeance, etc.
- Go forward not backward. Don’t get stuck in what happened. Move forward following Jesus and in God’s will for your life.
Let us not become paralyzed in the hurt and become down, depressed, discouraged, and keep going over what happened which can be so easy to do! Instead, let us cry out to God and seek His help in going forward in life as His Holy Spirit leads us ahead!
Please note how the psalmist whom we see in the Psalms is so expressive of his deep and strong emotions uses his ability to feel so deeply to pour out his love and zeal and beautiful passion to the Lord in his wonderful devotion to and adoration of Him!
May those of us who are very sensitive and have deep and strong emotions pour out deep and strong love to the Lord and to the world around us and use our sensitivity to show care, kindness, and compassion to others! Amen!
“As the deer pants for the water brooks, So pants my soul for You, O God. My soul thirsts for God, for the living God. When shall I come and appear before God?”” Psalms 42:1-2 NKJV