To help become personally honest, authentic and real, and thereby greatly enhance our relationships, the following steps will help:

First, realize that a normal human being has a whole spectrum of emotions ranging from love, joy, peace, wonder, through to fear, hurt, anger and so on. These are all God-given emotions. Without them, life would be characteristically dull and boring. To be emotionally whole means to be in touch with every God-given human emotion.

Second, we need to see our need and strongly desire to be honest.

Third, we need to admit and accept responsibility for any problems we have, and consider the possibility that our impaired relationships, dull marriage, unsatisfactory sex life in our marriage, anxiety, depression, destructive habits and any physical symptoms we have might be caused by unresolved super-charged repressed negative emotions.

Fourth, and most important of all, we need to learn to pray the right prayer. If necessary, tell God that you don’t know how, or are too afraid, to be honest with yourself and need his help. Ask him to give you the courage to see yourself as you are and to face the truth about yourself. His answer will probably come in an unexpected way—perhaps through a book, a personal setback, a friend, a difficult or broken relationship, or some other painful situation. Unfortunately, most of us only look at our inner-self if we are hurting sufficiently.

Fifth, learn through practice to express your feelings openly and honestly, especially to the people who are important to you. If you’re feeling hurt, afraid, confused, or angry, admit it and say, “I feel confused or angry.” Never say, “You make me angry,” or “You hurt me.” This blames the other person for our response, which is always our problem and responsibility. Identify why you are feeling the way you are. For example, say, “I know my feelings are my problem, and I may be overreacting, but when you speak sharply to me as you just did, I feel hurt and/or angry.” Or simply, “When you say (or do) things like that, I feel very hurt and/or angry.”

If the person won’t accept your feelings, write them out in a letter. If you feel you should give it to the person, sleep on it and re-write it before doing so. If they still won’t accept them, try what Gary Smalley and John Trent suggest in their book, The Language of Love. Share how you are feeling by using word pictures; that is, make up a story or parable that will clearly show how you are feeling.

Finally, if I love you, I will always be open and honest with you and as the Bible suggests, I will always strive to “speak the truth in love.” Therefore, I will never blame you for my feelings, but will take full responsibility for them and for handling them in a loving, non-judgmental manner.

Denying our faults and feelings, acting them out blindly, or lashing out and hurting others with them, is weak and immature. Acknowledging and talking them out in a responsible manner is a hallmark of the mature adult. It may not be easy, but it is true strength, and is the only way to develop growth-producing and intimate relationships.

Suggested prayer: “Dear God, please help me to be honest with myself, and open and honest in all my relationships and with you—and thereby be a clear channel for your love to flow through to every life I touch. Thank you for hearing and answering my prayer. Gratefully, in Jesus’ name, amen.”

1. 1 Peter 2:1-2 (NLT).

In speaking about personal honesty in regard to interpersonal relationships, best-selling author, Dr. John Powell, believes that “most of us feel that others will not tolerate emotional honesty in communication. We would rather defend our dishonesty on the grounds that it might hurt others, and, having rationalized our phoniness into nobility, we settle for superficial relationships. Consequently, we ourselves do not grow, nor do we help anyone else to grow. Meanwhile, we have to live with repressed emotions—a dangerous and self-destructive path to follow. Any relationship which is to have the nature of true personal encounter must be based on honest, open, gut-level communication. The alternative is to remain in my prison, to endure inch-by-inch death as a person.”²

Denial of emotions (and motives) also causes the exaggeration of opposite characteristics. Saccharine-sweet people often seethe inwardly with hostility. People who withdraw take their anger out on others in underhanded passive-aggressive ways. Withdrawal is a “dirty way to fight.” The dogmatic are riddled with self-doubts. The overconfident are insecure. The extremely prudish are overcompensating for sexual inadequacies. Others silence painful feelings in over-busyness or go-go-go activity, substance dependency, destructive behavior, overeating, constant talking, unbalanced religious fervor, theological rigidity, a controlling attitude, and so on.

Others project their faults onto others, seeing in them the very faults that lie hidden within themselves. They simply cannot accept in others what they refuse to accept in themselves. Or they might displace their bad feelings by taking them out on somebody else. For example, Fred may be angry at his boss, but fearing he may lose his job if he says anything, takes his feelings out on his wife and children.

We can also become experts at rationalization. For example, when we deny our fears, we can unconsciously sabotage our relationships, or set ourselves up to fail in certain situations. We then brush off our failures by making excuses, blaming others, or even by saying what happened must have been God’s will!

The challenge is, how do we learn to be honest with ourselves? It isn’t easy. For many, it’s like learning a new language. And as long as we are not honest with ourselves, there is no way we can be honest with God or anyone else. And without personal honesty, it is impossible to have closeness and true intimacy with anybody. However, there are some positive steps we can take. We will discuss these in tomorrow’s Daily Encounter.

To be continued …

Suggested prayer: “Dear God, please help me to get in touch with all my emotions and my motives, and be honest in my heart about these so that I will know wisdom in my innermost being. Thank you for hearing and answering my prayer. Gratefully, in Jesus’ name, amen.”

1. Psalm 51:6 (NLT).

2. John Powell, Why Am I Afraid to Tell You Who I Am?, p. 61. Argus Communications, San Mateo, Illinois. Copyright 1969. Used by permission.

There was a time in my life when I thought that to be liked, I had to be strong—strong like the Rock of Gibraltar. Let the storms rage, the lightning strike, the winds blast, and the seas beat violently against it, and there it stands, solid as a rock and secure.

To me, fear was weak and anger bad, so you never showed these emotions, and as a man you certainly never showed your hurt feelings or cried. Through years of practice, I learned to hide many of my emotions, put on a brave front, and pretend to be something outwardly that I wasn’t feeling inwardly.

The trouble with being a rock, however, is that rocks don’t feel. They aren’t real either, and they can’t relate intimately to anyone. Neither could I. Like the first man, Adam, who feared rejection, “I, too, was afraid, so I hid myself.”

One of the serious side effects of denying and hiding our emotions is that we deposit them in our unconscious memory bank where they build up unhealthy interest. The payoff is that we either withdraw or become defensive, touchy, hostile, non-feeling, cold and distant, and/or depressed.

Or we act out these buried emotions through destructive behavior or physical illnesses. Medical science reminds us that unresolved emotions such as fear, sorrow, envy, resentment and hatred are responsible for many of our sicknesses. Estimates vary from 60 percent to nearly 100 percent.²

The point is, whenever we fail to admit our faults and talk or write out our negative feelings in creative ways, we inevitably act them out in self-destructive ways.

Dr. Cecil Osborne, author and counselor wrote, “Many persons bury feelings which they find unacceptable. For instance, one learned as a child that hate, greed, jealousy, fear and lust were ‘bad.’ ‘You shouldn’t feel that way,’ is the message which the child received, verbally or otherwise. Furthermore, by a clever bit of unconscious dishonesty, one may have said to himself, ‘A Christian never hates. I am a Christian, therefore I never feel hatred.’ And the aggression which is part of the normal equipment of an average human being is then buried in the unconscious, only to come out in some unacceptable form, often as a physical symptom.”³

Denial of emotions also acts as poison to relationships. It erects “brick walls” around the heart and suffocates love, intimacy and closeness.

To be continued …

Suggested prayer: “Dear God, please deliver me from the sin of dishonesty (denial) and help me to be honest and real with myself, others, and with you. Thank you for hearing and answering my prayer. Gratefully, in Jesus’ name, amen.”

1. Genesis 3:10 (NKJV).

2. S. I. McMillan, None of These Diseases, Marshall, Morgan and Scott, 1966, p. 7.

3. Leader’s Handbook, p. 32. Yokefellows Inc., Millbrae, California.