Embracing Our Emotions as God’s Image Bearers

11 Aug

The following sermon was delivered on 11 August 2024 as part of our ongoing Being Human Series. In it Tim Horman explores the vital role emotions play in our lives as image-bearers of God. Join us as we dive deep into understanding how our emotional experiences, both positive and negative, are not just human traits but divine gifts that shape our spiritual journey.

If you prefer to listen or read, you can find audio and text summaries of this sermon below - as well as a full transcript at the bottom of this page.

In our latest sermon from the "Being Human" series, the focus was on understanding our emotions as part of what it means to be created in the image of God. Emotions, often seen as unreliable or even dangerous, were given a fresh perspective as a vital aspect of our humanity and our relationship with God.

Understanding the Gift of Emotions

The sermon began with a reflection on how emotions are often taught to be unreliable, something to be mistrusted because they change and fluctuate. Many have grown up with the belief that what truly matters is what happens in our minds—the rational, logical part of us. However, this perspective misses the richness that emotions bring to our experience as human beings.

Emotions are not just fleeting feelings that can mislead us. They are a profound part of how we experience and express being made in God’s image. The sermon reminded us that our emotions, whether joy, sadness, anger, or fear, are gifts from God. They enrich our lives, help us connect with others, and enable us to express our image-bearing nature in a fuller way.

The Danger of Ignoring Emotions

One of the key points made was the danger of ignoring or suppressing our emotions, particularly the difficult ones like grief, fear, or anger. Avoiding these emotions is not only unhelpful but can be destructive. Just as physical pain alerts us to something wrong in our bodies, emotional pain signals that something needs attention in our hearts and souls.

Ignoring or drowning out our emotions with distractions or unhealthy habits can lead to breakdowns—whether emotional or physical. The sermon referenced the popular book The Body Keeps the Score, emphasizing that our bodies will eventually reflect the emotional issues we ignore. The message was clear: we must pay attention to our emotions and allow them to guide us in addressing deeper issues.

Balancing the Good and the Bad

While it’s crucial to pay attention to negative emotions, the sermon also highlighted the importance of enjoying positive emotions without idolizing them. Emotions like joy, happiness, and peace are beautiful gifts from God, but when they become the sole focus of our lives, they can lead to distorted desires.

The discussion included the shift in our culture from rationalism—where the mind and reason were elevated—to a current emphasis on subjective feelings. This cultural shift can lead to misunderstandings, where emotions are mistaken for absolute truth, causing unnecessary conflict and division.

The key takeaway here is that emotions should be seen as a part of our whole being, under the lordship of Christ. When our emotions are aligned with God’s will, they bring richness and depth to our lives. When they are not, they can become destructive, even demonic.

Emotions Under God’s Dominion

A major theme of the sermon was the idea that all aspects of our humanity—including our emotions—are meant to be under God’s dominion. When we submit our emotions to God, they find their proper place. This doesn’t mean suppressing or ignoring them but rather allowing God to shape them, so they serve His purposes in our lives.

The sermon referred to the concept of “crucifying the flesh” mentioned in Galatians 5. This involves surrendering our uncontrolled passions and desires to God, allowing the Holy Spirit to guide and transform them. The fruit of the Spirit—love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control—are all deeply connected to our emotional lives. When we walk by the Spirit, our emotions become aligned with God’s will, leading to true freedom and peace.

Jesus: The Ultimate Example

The sermon also drew attention to Jesus as the ultimate example of how to handle emotions. Jesus experienced the full range of human emotions—grief, anger, joy, and sorrow—and yet He did so without sin. His emotions were always perfectly aligned with the will of the Father.

Jesus’ example shows us that it’s not only okay to feel deeply but that doing so is part of what it means to live a fully human life. Whether it’s feeling sorrow in the face of loss, frustration with stubborn hearts, or joy in the presence of God, Jesus models for us a healthy and holy way to engage with our emotions.

Questions for Reflection and Small Group Discussion

How have you been taught to view emotions, particularly the more difficult ones like anger or grief? How does this perspective align with or differ from what was shared in the sermon?
In what ways have you experienced the impact of ignoring or suppressing emotions in your life? What steps might you take to address these emotions in a healthy way?
How can we enjoy positive emotions like joy and peace without turning them into idols? What does it look like to keep these emotions in their proper place under God’s dominion?
Reflect on Jesus’ emotional life as described in the sermon. How does Jesus’ example challenge or encourage you in how you handle your own emotions?
What practical steps can you take this week to bring your emotional life more fully under the lordship of Christ? How might this impact your relationships and your walk with God?

Final Thoughts

Emotions are a powerful and integral part of our humanity. They are gifts from God, meant to be experienced fully and expressed in ways that honor Him. As we continue in our series on Being Human, let’s strive to bring our emotions—along with every other part of our lives—under the loving rule of Jesus. In doing so, we open ourselves to a life that is not only richer and more vibrant but also more aligned with God’s will.

Let’s take the time this week to reflect on how we’re handling our emotions and invite the Holy Spirit to guide us in bringing them under Christ’s lordship.

Transcript

Below is the full Transcript (lightly edited) of Tim’s sermon.

Jumping Into Week Four: Our Emotions

This morning, we're going to jump into week four of our Being Human series. Today, we’re going to be talking about our emotions—our emotional lives as God intended them for us. We’ll explore how our emotions are a vital area in which we experience and express our image-bearing of God.

An Emotional 24 Hours

It's been an emotional 24 hours for me. Just last night, my eldest daughter had her presentation ball, her debutante ball, and she looked beautiful. It hit me right in the feels. That was amazing. But then, I caught the end of the Essendon and Gold Coast game. I’m an Essendon supporter, and that’s why I chose Psalm 42 this morning—because my soul is so downcast. Seriously, goal after the siren, end of the season for the Bombers… Pray for me.

Opening in Prayer

Let’s pray together right now.

Lord, we thank you for this opportunity to be together this morning, to open up Your Word and think again about what it means for us to be human—image-bearers of God, made in Your image and likeness. I pray that as we explore this topic of our emotions this morning, You would highlight for us the things that are important for each of us individually to pay attention to. I thank You that You speak to us corporately, Lord, through Your Word, but You also speak to us personally and individually. There’s a word, I think, for every person here this morning that You want to speak to them directly. I pray that we’d have open hearts to receive that this morning. Father, come, Holy Spirit, lead us into all truth, just as Jesus, You said the Spirit would do. We pray this in Your precious and mighty name. Amen.

A Heads Up: Blessing Sunday

Just a heads up—at the end of our service this morning, after the talk, we’re going to have an opportunity for a Blessing Sunday. For those of you who’ve been around for a while, you know what that is. We invite everyone to come forward and just receive a blessing. So, as you hear what I’m going to be talking about this morning, remember that, and if there’s something that you feel would be important to receive prayer for, you’ll be able to do that at the end.

Reflections on Inside Out and Emotional Responsibility

No doubt many of you have seen the film Inside Out. It's creative and fun. But wouldn’t it be amazing if we could just blame our emotional states—our emotional outbursts—on little people inside our heads? Unfortunately, I don’t think that’s quite how it works.

The Skepticism Around Emotions

I’m going to guess that many of you were taught, as I was (if you’re of a certain vintage, anyway), that our feelings and emotions are basically unreliable and shouldn’t be trusted. Our emotions change; they’re fickle, they come and go, and we shouldn’t base what we do, who we think we are, or how we understand the world and God on them.

I don’t think anyone ever said this to me explicitly, but the implication was that the most important thing about us—about our human nature—is what goes on between our ears, in our heads, in our brains. Being reasonable is how we make right decisions, how we form correct views that are objective, true, and real.

The Challenge of Embracing Emotions

If I’m honest, that’s probably my happy place. I like to think—I hope I have a fair degree of emotional intelligence (maybe ask the staff if that’s true!). Even so, for most of my life, I’ve tried to avoid experiencing too much emotion, particularly the so-called negative ones like anger, sadness, fear, or grief. Joy? Yes. Happiness? Yes. Peace? Bring it on—I’m comfortable with those.

But like many Westerners—and it seems to be a particularly Western problem, including in the church—we have a lot of knowledge, a lot going on between our ears, but we have a poor understanding of what it means to feel our emotions well and how to express them in a healthy way. Particularly with difficult emotions like grief, fear, and lament, we have very little vocabulary and practice at expressing or experiencing them well.

God-Given Emotions: Gifts We Don’t Know How to Handle

As I’ve gotten older, I’ve realized there’s a whole world of emotions given to us by God that are gifts of God—part of our image-bearing—that I don’t really know what to do with. And I know I’m not alone in this. Many of us are either deeply skeptical of emotions, frightened of them, or both, and so we work really hard to avoid them. Does anyone know what I’m talking about?

The Danger of Avoiding Difficult Emotions

Avoiding difficult emotions is pretty much what many people devote their entire lives to. But that’s extremely dangerous and destructive to our souls. It’s like leprosy—if you have no feeling in your skin, you can’t feel pain, and it leads to injury and great harm. I think the same is true of our souls. Pain and grief, for example, are invitations from God to pay attention to what’s going on in our hearts, souls, and bodies, and we need to slow down and take care of ourselves. These emotions are signs to us from God that something isn’t right.

The Consequences of Emotional Suppression

If you’re running a marathon and get a pain in your ankle, you need to stop running and rest because it could cause further harm. The same is true of our souls. When we feel grief, pain, hurt, or sadness (I’m focusing on the negative emotions here for a moment), they’re signs—gifts—from God that something isn’t right. We need to stop, slow down, pay attention, and do the necessary work for healing.

Now, if we drown out those emotions with noise, substance abuse, pleasure, or distraction, eventually something breaks. If it’s not an emotional breakdown, it might be a physical one. There’s a very popular book around right now that talks a lot about this called The Body Keeps the Score. If we’re not paying attention to what’s happening to us emotionally, eventually our bodies will tell us that we need to sit down—or they’ll make us sit down.

Experiencing Emotions: Both Negative and Positive

We either blow up physically or emotionally, and when that happens, we usually cause a lot of collateral damage to the people around us. Hurt people hurt people.

On the flip side, it’s just as important for us to learn how to experience and express positive emotions appropriately and to enjoy them as God’s gifts to us. Be careful not to make them more than they are. We need to see them as a part of the whole of what makes us human, but they’re not everything. We need to be very careful not to turn positive emotions—the so-called good emotions—into idols that we pursue. If they become ends in themselves, if they’re the things we’re devoting our lives to, they’ll also be distorted into something incredibly destructive.

The Cultural Shift: From Rationality to Subjective Feelings

If anything, our culture has dramatically shifted in the last couple of decades from the rationalist view that I was raised with—where the mind, reason, and knowledge are the most important things—to the point now where the pendulum has swung to the other side. For many people, the most important things are our inner subjective feelings. This is how we understand ourselves; this is how we understand the world—by what we feel on the inside, and that becomes our truth.

There was a word used a couple of years ago: “truthiness.” It’s not really true, but it’s truthy—it’s sort of true; it’s true for me, even if it doesn’t correspond to reality at all. It’s my truth, and therefore it’s sacred. This is why our culture now is driven by so much outrage. Have you noticed? It seems like everyone is angry all the time because people take any disagreements not as discussions of objective ideas, but as personal attacks.

The Problem of Emotional Extremes

We’re not just talking about politics or social issues without getting very upset, because all of those things now emerge from our inner sense of subjective truthiness. But just being a brain on a stick, where everything is about the rational and everything else is irrelevant, is a totally impoverished way to live. When we deny our emotions year after year, we become less and less human. We transform slowly over time into empty shells with smiley faces painted on them, and that is not God’s vision for our humanity.

On the other side, being completely driven by emotion—chasing feelings and experiences, building our lives on what feels good, always trying to avoid the negative, uncomfortable, or painful—is also a recipe for disaster. It’s a train wreck. You’ll destroy not only yourself but also all those around you.

Balancing Emotions with God’s Dominion

When it comes to our emotions, we need to learn to see them as both God’s incredible gifts to us—something that makes life rich, vibrant, meaningful, enjoyable, and beautiful, full of delight—but also something extremely powerful and dangerous that we need to handle very carefully.

Like all of God’s gifts—our bodies, relationships, sexuality, minds, and emotions—they are only intended to work properly when placed under God’s dominion, under God’s rule. When we bring our lives under God’s rule, then all the parts that make up our humanity, our image-bearing of God, fall into their proper place and can be expressed appropriately. But when we’re out of alignment with God and His will, these things start to pull us in all kinds of different directions and become destructive—they can even become demonic.

The Task of Discipleship in Emotions

So we are because He is. If we forget that, we cease to function properly as human beings. We said in week one that we are dependent on God for everything, right? But if we reject that and make anything in this creation—including our emotions—idols that we worship, if we give anything in our lives the place that should only be taken by God, then those things will destroy us.

I think the key task of our discipleship in regard to our emotions is to learn how to manage them with maturity and wisdom, to enjoy them but also to control them, and to listen to God and others through them. As Pete Scazzero says in his book Emotionally Healthy Spirituality, “You cannot be spiritually healthy if you are not emotionally healthy.” You cannot be spiritually healthy if you are not also emotionally healthy. It’s impossible. Or put it slightly differently, it’s impossible to be spiritually mature if you are not emotionally mature.

Emotionally Healthy Spirituality

So spiritually mature people have learned how to handle their emotions with wisdom. They feel them, they enjoy them—even the difficult ones. They know that they are important to listen to and to work through, so they deal with them with wisdom and maturity.

Think about it: someone who says they follow the way of Jesus but their anger is out of control, and they’re lashing out at people all the time—they're clearly not spiritually healthy. The same goes for other emotions like lust, resentment, pride, self-pity, and greed. If any of these things dominate our lives, then we haven’t learned to bring all of who we are under the lordship of Jesus. It’s not Christ who’s controlling you; it’s your emotions that are controlling you. These things are driving you, not the will of Jesus.

Exploring Emotional and Spiritual Maturity Further

There’s a lot to say about all of this, which I don’t have time for this morning. But if you’d like to explore this concept of spiritual and emotional maturity further, I recommend Pete Scazzero’s book Emotionally Healthy Spirituality and the course that goes along with it. I’ve done it a couple of times in my life, and it’s been a huge blessing to me.

Dealing with Emotional Health

Now, if we know—as probably most of us do—that our emotional lives are not as healthy and balanced as they should be, then we need to talk about that. How can we begin to deal with that? How can we begin to bring spiritual health into our emotional lives?

For some, there are significant mental health challenges that come along with this. I’ve experienced those as well, so I’m not talking about that here. If you’re struggling with mental health challenges, you need help—you need to seek the help of a professional. But as someone who has experienced some difficult mental health seasons, I’ve learned that managing my emotions in those seasons has been key to my own growth, discipleship, and maturity as a follower of Jesus. Even if we are struggling with mental health challenges, that doesn’t let us off the hook. We still have to put in the work to change, grow, and develop, bringing Christ into those areas. They’re not excuses we can hang our bad behavior on, but areas we need to bring under the lordship of Jesus.

The Fruit of the Spirit

I want us to listen to Galatians 5—a passage you’re probably very familiar with—where Paul speaks about the fruit of the Spirit. I want you to listen to this text and think about it through the lens of emotions:

You, my brothers and sisters, were called to be free. But do not use your freedom to indulge the flesh; rather, serve one another humbly in love. For the entire law is fulfilled in keeping this one command: “Love your neighbor as yourself.” If you bite and devour each other, watch out or you will be destroyed by each other. So I say, walk by the Spirit, and you will not gratify the desires of the flesh. For the flesh desires what is contrary to the Spirit, and the Spirit what is contrary to the flesh. They are in conflict with each other, so that you are not to do whatever you want. But if you are led by the Spirit, you are not under the law.

The acts of the flesh are obvious: sexual immorality, impurity, debauchery, idolatry, witchcraft, hatred, discord, jealousy, fits of rage, selfish ambition, dissensions, factions, and envy; drunkenness, orgies, and the like. I warn you, as I did before, that those who live like this will not inherit the kingdom of God.

But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, forbearance, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control. Against such things, there is no law.

Those who belong to Christ Jesus have crucified the flesh with its passions and desires. Since we live by the Spirit, let us keep in step with the Spirit. Let us not become conceited, provoking and envying each other.

Understanding “Flesh” and “Spirit”

The word “flesh” here that Paul uses doesn’t mean our bodies. The Greek word for body is soma. What we have as “flesh” here is the Greek word sarx, which often means the sin nature—these human desires that take us off course, away from God’s will. It’s that part of us that pushes against God’s purposes.

Look at the contrast Paul draws in this passage. In verses 19-21, you have someone who’s basically ruled over by their desires and passions, someone who has given in to the tyranny of their emotions. They’re not free, Paul says; it’s the opposite of freedom—they’re spinning out of control. But in verses 22-23, you have someone who’s in control of their emotions and is directing them toward what is true, good, and beautiful.

We talk about the fruit of the Spirit, but each aspect of the fruit of the Spirit has a whole host of emotional elements to it, doesn’t it? The person Paul is describing is someone led by the Spirit and not giving in to the desires of the flesh. They’re humble, they serve others in love, and they walk in step with the Spirit. Their minds are full of peace. They haven’t stopped feeling emotions—of course not. No, they feel emotion very deeply, but it’s the emotions that are fueled by and energized by the Spirit of God—goodness, peace, joy, and love. It’s that person, Paul says, who is free, who’s experiencing what it means to be free in the kingdom of God under the lordship of Jesus.

Desires and the Lordship of Christ

What Paul is getting at here is similar to what C.S. Lewis says in one of his sermons. He mentions that our Lord finds our desires not too strong, but too weak. We are half-hearted creatures, fooling around with drink, sex, and ambition when infinite joy is offered to us. Like an ignorant child who wants to go on making mud pies in a slum because he cannot imagine what is meant by the offer of a holiday at the sea—we are far too easily pleased.

What Lewis is saying, and what Paul is saying as well, is that when we give in to these desires and passions that move us away from God’s will, there’s a rush, a thrill to them. When you’re angry and you express that anger, there’s a rush that comes with it—it’s overwhelming and powerful, but it’s totally destructive. Even though there’s a rush that comes with giving yourself over to those kinds of emotions, in the end, they kill you. But Paul is saying that if you bring your life under the lordship of Christ, then the Spirit begins to work in you and form you in such a way that your passions and desires are directed toward God’s kingdom and the love of Christ. Everything else will start to fall into place and reach wholeness under the lordship and love of Jesus.

Crucifying the Flesh

The way to get there, Paul says in verse 24, is this: Those who belong to Christ have crucified the flesh with its passions and desires. What Paul means here is that the “flesh” in this context is a life ruled over by passion and desire—uncontrolled passions and desires, which is tyranny and death. But the person who wants to experience freedom and wholeness in Christ has brought their lives under Jesus, crucified themselves in Christ Jesus, laid their life down to Jesus, and invited Him to be Lord over everything—not just your body or your mind, but your emotions as well.

You’re continually praying, “Lord Jesus, let Your cruciform life—Your life, Your example, Your way—shape how I feel, shape how I behave, shape what I do with my body, shape what I think about in my mind.” This is what Paul’s saying. He’s not saying it’s always going to be hard, but he’s saying it’s got to begin with that decision: “I am no longer my own; I belong to Jesus. I give myself to Him—all of me, not just the part of me that I reserve for Sunday morning or the little spiritual bit. No, I give the whole of my life—everything that I am—my relationships, my money, my body, my emotions. I give all of that over to Christ.”

Emotions: A New Concept

This language of passions and desires is interesting because those two words really just mean our emotions. I discovered this week, as I was researching, that the concept of emotions as we now understand them is a fairly new idea. In fact, the word “emotion” has only been around since about the late 19th century. Before that, people spoke of their emotions as things like passions, desires, affections, longings, or sentiments. It struck me—I read a fair bit—and it struck me as I was thinking about it that in most of the novels I’ve read prior to the 20th century, they don’t use the word “emotion.” They use those kinds of words—affections, desires, passions, etc.

So that’s what Paul’s talking about here—our emotions. He’s not saying that our passions and desires are wrong, but they can go wrong. They can lead us to hell when they rule over us rather than Christ. I’m sure we can all tell stories of things we’ve experienced in our lives, dealing with other people who are not in control of their emotions, and how destructive, damaging, and toxic that can become. But when you’re dealing with someone who is wise with their emotions, who’s mature in their emotions, they still feel things deeply. They haven’t shut that part of their life off, but they’re able to handle themselves well, and therefore they’re able to handle the emotions of other people well.

Jesus Understands Our Emotions

We can bring all of these things to Jesus in this way because He understands. He understands what it’s like to be human. He understands what it’s like to feel the way we do. Jesus experienced all of this—both the positive and the negative.

In Matthew 26, in the Garden of Gethsemane, we’re told that Jesus began to be sorrowful and troubled, and He said to them, “My soul is overwhelmed with sorrow to the point of death.” Deep sorrow, deep anxiety, even perhaps fear. In Mark 3, He looked around them in anger—He looked around in anger and was deeply distressed at their stubborn hearts. So He’s distressed, He’s angry, and He’s frustrated. This is Jesus we’re talking about—He felt all of those things. He felt frustration. There’s a moment where we’re told in Luke 11 or Luke 12 that Jesus was annoyed with His disciples. This is God incarnate—God felt annoyance. In Luke 10, at that time, full of joy through the Holy Spirit, Jesus lifted up His voice. So He felt joy and delight, and He worshiped His Father from that place. In other moments in Jesus’ life, He wept at the grave of His friend Lazarus. He was moved by the woman who washed His feet with her tears. He was surprised and amazed at the centurion’s faith. He was cast into the greatest experience of psychological suffering a human can endure when He cried out on the cross, “My God, my God, why have You forsaken me?”

Christ's Empathy

Jesus knows what it feels like to be human, to feel the things we do. He has gone through it all. As the book of Hebrews says, “We do not have a Savior who is unable to empathize with our weaknesses, but we have one who has been tempted in every way, just as we are—yet He did not sin. Let us then approach God’s throne of grace with confidence so that we may receive mercy and find grace to help us in our time of need.” I find that passage incredibly comforting—that I know when I go to God in the midst of grief or fear or anxiety, or when I’m thankful for something in my life that’s going well, I can come into His presence, and He understands what I’m going through because Christ experienced all of that.

So you can bring your whole self into His presence and experience healing when you bring those things before Him, before His throne of grace. Or as Jesus said, “Come to me, all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you and learn from me, for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls.” I think that’s one of the most beautiful phrases in the whole of the Bible—“Come to me, and you’ll find rest for your souls.”

Do any of you feel weary in your soul? It’s one thing to feel physically weary; it’s another thing, particularly when you’ve gone through a long season of grief, to just feel weary in your soul. And Jesus says you can come and bring that to Him, and He will give you rest. Rest for your souls. He is gentle and humble with you when you come to Him with whatever you’re experiencing. He will not reject you, respond to you with anger, or lash out at you. He won’t do what other people have done to you. He will respond to you with gentleness and humility.

God will humble Himself with you in those places of vulnerability. I find that mind-blowing—that God would lower Himself to our level, which is exactly what He did in Christ Jesus through the Incarnation. But He does that every day we come to Him in prayer. He lowers Himself to our level so that He can meet us where we’re at.

Jesus Understands Our Emotions

We can bring all of these things to Jesus because He understands. He understands what it’s like to be human and to feel the way we do. Jesus experienced all of this—both the positive and the negative.

In Matthew 26, in the Garden of Gethsemane, we’re told that Jesus began to be sorrowful and troubled, and He said to them, “My soul is overwhelmed with sorrow to the point of death.” Deep sorrow, deep anxiety, even perhaps fear. In Mark 3, He looked around at them in anger—He looked around in anger and was deeply distressed at their stubborn hearts. So He was distressed, He was angry, and He was frustrated. This is Jesus we’re talking about—He felt all of those things. He felt frustration. There’s a moment where we’re told in Luke 11 or Luke 12 that Jesus was annoyed with His disciples. This is God incarnate—God felt annoyance. In Luke 10, at that time, full of joy through the Holy Spirit, Jesus lifted up His voice. So He felt joy and delight, and He worshiped His Father from that place. In other moments in Jesus’ life, He wept at the grave of His friend Lazarus. He was moved by the woman who washed His feet with her tears. He was surprised and amazed at the centurion’s faith. He was cast into the greatest experience of psychological suffering a human can endure when He cried out on the cross, “My God, my God, why have You forsaken me?”

Approaching God's Throne of Grace

Finding Rest for Your Soul

That’s what I find so beautiful about the Psalm we read just a few moments ago, Psalm 42, where David is willing to come into God’s presence with his grief, his anger, his sorrow, and his frustration. He’s wrestling with God in the midst of all that he’s feeling, and that’s okay. We’re allowed to do that. That’s one of the great things about the Psalms—they actually teach us how to pray and how to worship out of truth and honesty, not by putting on our spiritual face or trying to hide the actual emotional state we’re in, but by bringing all of that into God’s presence and dealing with those things with Him. We can be angry, vent, weep, and ask God, “Where are You in all of this? Why am I going through this? I need help here, God. Can You not see what’s happening in my life? I need help.” This is what we can do when we worship honestly and deal with our emotions honestly.

Learning to Pray Honestly

The problem for many of us is that we’ve not been taught how to do this. Or we’ve been told, in fact, that we shouldn’t do this, that we shouldn’t pray that way. You know, when I was taught as a boy how to pray, it was like the ACTS model—Adoration, Confession, Thanksgiving, Supplication. You pray in the formula. I was never told that it’s actually okay to get into God’s presence and vent your anger or to tell God how upset you are with Him, or to ask God, “Why are You doing this to me?” I guess I just imbibed a sense that there was something sinful about praying that way, that you shouldn’t talk to God like that. Well, the whole book of Psalms suggests otherwise. Actually, I’m allowed to come into God’s presence and be real, and that’s the best place for me to work out my emotions.

Bringing Emotions to God

We all have to deal with what we’re feeling. If we just stuff it down, push it down, say, “No, I’m not angry,” and shove that further down into some dark corner of our soul, eventually, you know what happens? That festers away down there, and then it emerges as something far worse. We have to deal with our emotions, and the best place to do it is in the presence of God. That’s why the Psalms are so helpful and why it’s so important for us to meditate on the fact that when we pray to Jesus, when we come into His presence, we are praying to someone who understands us, who knows what we’re going through.

There was a theologian about 100 years ago, a man named B.B. Warfield, a biblical scholar, who wrote an article called The Emotional Life of Our Lord. It’s an in-depth look at every place in the Gospels—Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John—where it talks about the emotional life of Jesus. We’ve touched on some of these already, but it shouldn’t surprise you that, as he analyzed it, far more than any other emotion, Jesus is described as a “man of sorrows.” A man of sorrows, acquainted with suffering, acquainted with grief. He’s our Savior, but He’s not stoic, right? He’s always weeping, always grieving, always being moved with compassion, which is just a kind of grief—compassion means to suffer with.

Jesus, God in human flesh, is okay with your sadness because He was sad too. He’s okay with your grief because He grieved too. He’s okay with your pain because He experienced that too.

And I think Christianity, uniquely in the whole world, celebrates as the core idea of our faith the suffering of its God. That’s the core of it for us, isn’t it? The cross of Christ. We are the only religion in the world that says the very heart of our faith is that we celebrate the suffering of our God, the humiliation of our God on the cross, the grief and pain of our God. Now, of course, it doesn’t end there. Jesus died in order to take all of our grief, our sorrow, our pain, our suffering, and our sin and transform it into life. And this is the beautiful thing: when we bring all of what we’re experiencing into His presence, we have the promise of the Resurrection—that God is at work in everything we’re going through to transform it into something that will give Him glory and will be for our good, something that will be shaped into life and victory.

The Process of Transformation

Even in the midst of the greatest darkness, suffering, and death, there is still victory and healing that is possible. That’s at the heart of it—Christ died to transform the suffering we’ve experienced into victory and into life. But that’s a process. It doesn’t happen straight away; it’s something we devote our lives to as we walk with Jesus, continually being conformed into His will, in obedience to His will. And that’s not just what we do with our actions, but also what we do with our emotions—how we feel.

Final Thought

Now, I have totally run out of time, but let me leave you with this beautiful quote, which will invite us nicely into a time of prayer together. This is from The Cry of the Soul by Dan Allender and Tremper Longman, and they say this:

"Ignoring our emotions is turning our back on reality. Listening to our emotions ushers us into reality, and reality is where we meet God. Emotions are the language of the soul. They are the cry that gives the heart a voice. However, we often turn a deaf ear through emotional denial, distortion, or disengagement. We strain out anything disturbing in order to gain tenuous control of our inner world. We are frightened and ashamed of what leaks into our consciousness. In neglecting our intense emotions, we are false to ourselves and lose a wonderful opportunity to know God. We forget that change comes through brutal honesty and vulnerability before God."

When we come into the presence of God and ask for help, what happens is that the Holy Spirit fills us, joins us, helps us, and begins to shape us. And the first thing He does, which is most important and leads to all other transformation, is that He captivates our hearts with the love of Jesus. Because that’s where all transformation has to begin—not with our best efforts, not with us trying to feel better, but by asking the Holy Spirit to set our hearts ablaze with the love of Christ.

Loving God with All Your Heart, Soul, Mind, and Strength

So, when Jesus was asked, “What’s the greatest commandment?” He said, “Love the Lord your God with all your heart.” First. I think the order is important—your heart first, which is something that God has to do in us. We can’t stir that up, so we have to ask the Holy Spirit to set our hearts ablaze with love. Love the Lord your God with all your heart. Then what happens? Then you can begin to love the Lord your God with all your soul, which is kind of your emotional life. And then you can begin to love the Lord your God with all your mind, with what you think. And then you can begin to love the Lord your God with all your strength, with your body, by what you do.

Now, we try to get change by going the other way. We think, “If I change my actions, maybe that’ll change the way I think, and that’ll change how I feel, and that’ll change my heart.” But actually, the way it works in the kingdom of God is the Holy Spirit has to come and fill you and set your heart ablaze with the love of Christ. And that begins to spread into every other part of us. All other parts of our life begin to fall into alignment and balance under the love of Jesus.

A Prayer for Transformation

Which is why Paul says—I'll finish with this, and then I'm going to invite us to come and pray—Paul says this in Ephesians 3. I'm going to pray this over us right now:

“I pray that out of His glorious riches He may strengthen you with power through His Spirit in your inner being, so that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith. And I pray that you, being rooted and established in love, may have power, together with all the Lord’s holy people, to grasp how wide and long and high and deep is the love of Christ, and to know this love that surpasses knowledge—that you may be filled to the measure of all the fullness of God.”

That is my prayer for you. That’s my prayer for me—that our hearts would be set ablaze with the love of Jesus by the Holy Spirit and that everything about us would be filled with the power of God for transformation.

One Church