What is the greatest pain that people can experience?
We can make a strong case for it to be the pain of emotional neglect. There’s nothing more damaging to a person than to feel completely emotionally alone.
I am told that if you take a child and put that child into a closet and only feed and clothe that child, but never communicate with them, that child will die. It hurts people deeply to be alone.
There are husbands and wives who feel emotional neglect at times, and it causes pain. In that kind of situation, a spouse will often become emotionally attached to something or someone else. A man may marry his work (emotionally). A wife may form an emotional attachment with her children or a sibling. This never helps the situation, in fact it makes it worse by prolonging the path to peace and freedom. You job can't love you, and you were not created to be one flesh with anyone other than your spouse.
For those of you who are married, God did something special when He put your two hearts together. He gave you the ability to connect with your spouse on an emotional level. When you have that (and you will sense it if you don't), life is a lot more fun. When people experience spiritual and emotional intimacy, their depression tends to go away, and their joy in life goes up. This is God's will for your marriage.
Common Causes of Emotional Detachment
When you have a parent emotionally detached from a child from day 1 (for whatever reason) that child will become crippled and not be able to respond emotionally in a relationship the way that God designed. This can affect them later on in life, until they resolve it. Then they can enjoy a relationship.
An adult who has had an abortion in the past (whether a wife or a husband) will, when they conceive their first child, have a difficult time emotionally connecting with that child, because of the guilt from the killing of another child. Thus the oldest child living, never gets anyone connected with them and that creates intense pain. This is another consequence of abortion, in addition to the sin of killing a child.
There are a lot of reasons why people don’t emotionally connect
1) Your parents never connected with you
2) You can’t open your heart because of damage in your heart and you can’t trust relationships and you put up a wall so that you don’t become vulnerable to someone pulling away from you.
There are 6 areas of emotional neglect
1) Abandoned
2) Neglected
3) Ignored
4) Disowned
5) Despised
6) Parents emotionally detached (can’t love).
Let's look at this topic from two perspectives. The first is if your parents (or someone) did one of these things to you. The second perspective is what we have done to our children, to damage them in one of these areas.
Generational Sin
Recently, I met a man who disowned one of his 8-children. He wrote his son a letter saying “From now on I will have nothing to do with you.”
When we went back to find out why, we found out that this man’s father had disowned him. This is how generational sin works. This father had five siblings in his family. His own father would pick a child, and only that child and their family would be allowed to come to their house on Christmas. And if that child ever hurt him, he would disown that child and go to the next one and make him the favored child. And if that child ever hurt him, he would disown that child as well and go to the next one. He did that all his life. The thing is, his son was doing the exact same thing to his children. We call that generational sin.
But there is a better way. Past hurts can be taken to Jesus for healing. No one was ever despised or neglected like He was. He understands, and He cares. We can take our hurts, our pain to Him and He will accept us. More than that, He will heal our hearts and in a short period of time we can respond in a relationship the way that God intended.
In Psalms 30:2 we read “O LORD my God, I called to you for help and you healed me. O LORD, you brought me up from the grave; you spared me from going down into the pit.”
During times of division in the Church, people can feel alienated at times. God cares about them and we do too. Stay close to Jesus this week. Let your heart seek Him, and let the Spirit intercede for you in times when you are weighed down with feelings of alienation. And ask God to bring people into your path who need your encouragement. He will!
Our world is full of people who have been damaged. Let me say this. It doesn’t matter how a person has been damaged. God has the ability to heal their hearts. And with Him, you will be a better spouse, and better parent and a more useful child of God.
With Him, you are never alone!
Hebrews 13:5
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