Brett shares about how his battle to come to grips with painful losses in his own story led him to try and escape his suffering. The energy exerted trying to avoid the suffering only created a deadening effect on Brett’s heart. Brett became numb and his ability to experience delight, joy, excitement, were dampened in a grey morass of numb irritability.

Daniel and Mike are joined by special guest, Peter Sondergeld from Australia, during a Redemption Group Immersion in Ft. Worth, Texas.

Anger and Numbness

Anger is a multifaceted emotion that is commonly misunderstood. Anger is a secondary emotion that is attached to other emotions. It is common to focus on managing anger and controlling anger while missing the underlying causes of our anger.

In Brett’s story we hear how anger impacted his life. Brett expressed that he was not experiencing fullness of emotions that God designed us to have, but predominately felt anger or irritability. Anger has an explosive energy to it. To constantly utilize the emotion of anger as the primary emotional expression will eventually deplete you relationally and cause you to feel numb. Brett shared how he felt like a “shell of a person” it came out in his marriage and relationship with his kids.

Grief

Brett went through a Redemption Group experience and was invited to consider his own suffering. As Brett sat struggling to come up with ways he suffered, he heard God say, “What about the three children you lost.” Brett explained that in this moment God invited him to honestly confront the pain of the miscarriages he and his wife had suffered through.

God met Brett powerfully in his pain. Brett learned that God is not a detached from our suffering but entered into our suffering through Jesus Christ. Although Brett never received “an answer” to his “why” question, he did receive a clear sense of God’s presence of love with him in the suffering. Brett described how powerful it was to feel that God saw and knew his pain.

Honestly dealing with painful loss enabled Brett to wake up from his numbness. Other addictive habits slowly began to fade and relational patterns changed too. Brett experienced to power of God to break him out of his “shell” of self-protection. It is a reminder to all of us that God genuinely cares for us in the midst of our suffering. He desires to meet us in those places of pain and heartache.

Your Walk

Where do you feel numb? Have you considered there may be some emotional experience that you are trying to run and hid from? Would you be willing to consider taking that to your Father?

If you are struggling with anger, invite another person into your struggle. Tell them the ways your anger shows up the most in your life. Invite them to pray with you as you seek to root out the source of the anger.

Member Library Links

Here are links to some of the extra content available in our member library, mentioned in this episode:

* Daniel's Redemption teaching: Bitterness, Passover and Forgiveness

https://redemptiongroups.com/library/daniel-teater-bitterness-passover-forgiveness

* Peter's Redemption teaching: Crossing the Red Sea into a Life Free from Shame

https://redemptiongroups.com/library/peter-sondergeld-crossing-red-sea-life-free-shame

Music credits: “Mountain Drive” by Sea Sheperd, “Road” by Stephen Keech, “Were” by Triads,

“Further Up” by Joel Slabach, “Wesley Swing” by TituS, “Mischief” by Adrian Walther, “Dovely” by Adrian Walther, all courtesy of Soundstripe.