CE 1 YEAR: 29 God’s Purposes for Your Good Emotions

Week 29

God’s Purposes for Your Good Emotions

Common but unbiblical views on the place of emotions in the Christian life

Unfortunately, there is a strong bias in Christianity against the God-given value of emotions. This has led to several unbiblical attitudes toward them.

First, it is common to deny that the fruits of the Holy Spirit include feelings. For example, one of the most respected, influential, and Evangelical authors today has written:

Love is not an emotion. It is an act of self-sacrifice. It is not necessarily feeling loving toward a particular person. It may not have any emotion connected with it.

This simply is not true. We warn you again that if your love does not include feeling compassion and sympathy, then it is not Christian love. Christian love is more than a decision or action. It always comes with the feeling of compassion and joy.

Secondly, a common Christian motto is: “Never be led by your feelings.” But if you are controlled by God’s Spirit, then God wants you to be led by your feelings. These include feeling compassion for people, a zeal for God’s honor, and a joy about your life. The Spirit-controlled life is being led by all of these feelings.

Thirdly, the deception that the Spirit’s virtues do not include feelings, has led to the equal error of believing that the sinful nature’s feelings (anger, anxiety, discouragement) are not sins. Your feelings, not just your actions, can be sinful.

Fourth, some believe that only our actions matter to God, and not our feelings. In other words, God wants us to obey Him regardless of how we feel. This has already been refuted in Week 26 regarding the Spirit’s joy.

Fifth, many Christians are deceived into thinking that the absence of feelings, or their suppression, is a sign of Christian maturity. But as noted below, God is an emotional God. Lacking emotion may indicate a great spiritual need in your life. In the next chapter you will read that God wants you to be free from negative emotions, not just suppress them.

Finally, the unbiblical and harmful suppression of emotion in modern Christianity has led to the excesses of “emotionalism.” This is the common practice of disparaging the place of the mind, truth, and reason in Christianity, and defining spiritual experience as primarily emotions.

The Charismatic and Pentecostal movements are especially guilty of whipping up people’s emotions in worship services and assuming this spiritually edifies believers. However, Scripture teaches that we are “transformed by the renewing of our mind” (Rom 12:2), not the mere stimulation of our emotions. Which is why many who practice such “emotionalism” often experience a severe spiritual “let down” when their emotions subside.

God created us with emotions, and it is important for us to understand His purposes for them. At least three of these are suggested in this chapter.

Imitating God with your emotions

There is an amazing command in the NT: “Imitate God in everything you do” (Eph 5:1). But there is something even more amazing. When the Scriptures say, “Imitate God in everything you do” this includes how you FEEL. Therefore, God does not only want you to ACT like Him in every situation, but to FEEL what He would FEEL in every situation.

What is more human than being emotional? But it may surprise you that there is nothing more divine. God feels something all the time.

For example, Paul describes God as the happy God twice (1 Tim 1:11; 6:15. The Greek word makarios means “happy”). Likewise, the Bible says God feels delight in you and sings over you with joy (Zeph 3:17). Stop. Look at that verse and imagine God doing that right now.

Of course, God also feels anger and sadness (Gen 6:6; Isa 13:9; Matt 26:38; Mark 3:5). Jesus was not only God, but the perfect human, and He often experienced strong emotions (Matt 26:38; Mark 3:5; Luke 10:21; Heb 5:7). And again, the Holy Spirit is constantly feeling joy and peace.

God is an emotional God. Our feelings are part of being created in His image. Of course, God created some people more emotional than others. Therefore, to disparage someone’s emotional nature is to disparage their Creator.

We are imitating God when His Spirit controls us and we exhibit His joy, peace, compassion, and zeal.

Glorifying God with your emotions

This world is full of people who are angry, fearful, and depressed. We do not glorify God by feeling and acting the same. We glorify God by imitating God, including the fact that He is never sinfully angry, fearful, or depressed. God always feels peace and joy and being controlled by the Holy Spirit.

In Philippians 1:27-28 the Apostle Paul taught that our emotions could glorify God. The opposite of “being frightened” by people is showing the Spirit’s love, peace and courage no matter how people are treating you. And this emotional response will be “a sign to them” that you have God and they do not.

Likewise, He told the same Christians to “Do everything without grumbling” (2:14-15). Why? because the opposite of “grumbling” is the Spirit’s joy. When you respond to difficulties with joy, you will shine among pagans like stars in the sky glorifying God.

Evaluating your spiritual health by your emotions

God has one more purpose for your emotions. They are among the best measures of your spiritual health and maturity. Why is this? Because a biblical measure of your spiritual health is how consistently the Holy Spirit’s feelings of peace and joy control you.

How do you know when you are being controlled by God’s Spirit? The answer may surprise you. The best way to know if your sinful nature or God’s Spirit is controlling you is how you FEEL. Your FEELINGS are the “voice of your heart” They tell you what is happening in your heart. But too many Christians ignore or suppress that voice and do not regularly monitor their emotions.

God counsels you to be careful to watch over your “heart” because it is the source of your life (Prov 4:23). This is why Scripture refers to your “heart” over 1000 times. What comes from your “heart”? Your desires and FEELINGS. Your FEELINGS tell you if your “heart” is being controlled by God’s Spirit or your sinful nature.

Many Christians do not even recognize that the fruit of God’s Spirit includes FEELINGS like joy and peace (Gal 5:22). Even “love” includes feelings like compassion if it is real love at all. What will you experience when you are controlled by the Holy Spirit? His FEELINGS. Why does the Holy Spirit have FEELINGS? Because He is a Person. And when He is controlling you, you will FEEL His love, joy, and peace (Gal 5:22).

Likewise, it is how often the powers of your sinful nature control you that tells you how spiritually immature and weak you are. How do you know when you are being controlled by your sinful nature? It produces desires and feelings that are the opposite of God’s Spirit. (Gal 5:17). This is why even feelings like anger, worry, lust, and discouragement are described as sins in the Bible (cf. Eph 4:31; Matt 5:28; Phil 4:4, 6). They are the opposites of the Spirit’s love, joy, and peace. It may be difficult to hear that some of your common emotions are sin. But recognizing this is necessary to overcome them.

God wants you to have an honest and accurate evaluation of your spiritual health and maturity (Rom 12:3). This is one reason He will allow painful “trials” and “tests” in your life (Prov 17:3; 1 Pet 1:7). The “heat” of “trials” reveals impurities in your heart, bringing anger, worry, depression, envy, lust, and frustration to the surface. We often just want to get through trials, but God wants us to recognize how they affect us, and therefore better understand our spiritual needs.

The best test of your spiritual health is how you FEEL when life is hard. It is easy to experience JOY and PEACE when everything in life is going well. But the real test of your spiritual health and power is how do you feel when bad, scary, painful, or disappointing things happen? Do you maintain the LOVE, JOY and PEACE of God’s Spirit living in you?

This is what God expects. This is what His Spirit gives you the power to do. This is why the Bible commands, “Always be joyful” (1 Thess 5:16; Phil 4:4; James 1:2).

If you never realize that you are supposed to always feel LOVE, JOY, and PEACE, then you will settle for something less than God’s will for your life. Stop blaming your bad circumstances for not experiencing the LOVE, JOY, and PEACE of the Holy Spirit. Otherwise, you will think the only solution is to change your circumstances. Remember that the living God lives in you. And no circumstances are more powerful than God the Holy Spirit in you. Anytime, anywhere, you are not experiencing the LOVE, JOY, and PEACE of God who is in you, then there is something spiritually wrong.

Unfortunately, Christians often evaluate themselves on many things that mean very little. For example, your Christian maturity may have nothing to do with how long you have been a Christian. Likewise, even if you are dedicated to consistent “quiet times,” and church meetings, and ministry, you may be a fairly young and weak Christian because you struggle so much with guilt, worry, fear, anger, envy, and depression. How much biblical theology you know is of little value, if you are consistently getting frustrated and angry with your wife, children, and coworkers.

It is not how much you know, or even how much you do, but what you are feeling, that truly measures your spiritual growth. How consistently you are experiencing love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, and self-control in your closest relationships and greatest challenges is the real measure of your spiritual maturity. It is the absence of anger, discouragement, worry, frustration, selfishness, greed, apathy, lust, and other sins that is the true measure of what kind of Christian you are.

There is a lot of challenging truth in this chapter and the next few weeks. Just remember that one truth is God’s great grace and love toward you. Nothing can separate you from God’s love (Rom 8:35-39). Not even the sinful desires, actions, and feelings of your sinful nature.

Practical Application: Try to notice today if you are being controlled by God’s Spirit. How will you know that? Repeatedly ask yourself if you are feeling His love, joy, and peace (Gal 5:22).

In your small group meeting this week, share praises and prayer requests and then discuss these questions:

1) What are some of the common misunderstandings about emotions in Christianity? Have these affected you?

2) Why does imitating God include our emotions?

3) Why does glorifying God include our emotions?

4) Why are our emotions a biblical measure of our spiritual health and maturity?

5) What was especially meaningful to you in this chapter? Why?