Should Christians Avoid Their Emotions?

Emotions, Suffering, and Looking to Christ

When we feel some type of way about things, we're grieved, we're hurting, we're angry, we're frustrated, I'm just discouraged by myself and by the ways that I continue to want this and feel that and I don't like any of it.

I'm discontent with my life, whatever. Whenever we're feeling all of those things, what is it that we process those emotions and those experiences through? It's that objectively, outside of me, not having anything to do with how I'm feeling or doing, outside of me, God is and He loves me.

I know He loves me because He sent Christ for me and here is who Jesus is. He is the one who seeks and saves the lost. He is gentle and lowly in heart. He is compassionate and merciful toward those who know they need Him and I know I need Him.

He is the forgiveness of my sins. He is my righteousness. He is my hope for eternal life and He says He'll never lose me. I can rest and now I'm going to process my life through that lens and through that filter and I'm going to come to Him over and over and over and over again when I am in the throes of the ups and the downs of my life.

To me, that's in part what it means to be a confessional Christian is I'm not looking in, I'm looking out and then in looking out to Christ, it changes everything in terms of how I process myself and my life, my emotions, my experiences.

Emotional Experience Is Not the Same as Dead Orthodoxy

I think that's so good because at times, our emotions can absolutely imprison us and we can be so controlled by them. I'm an emotional eater when I'm happy. I don't need to eat but when I'm sad, I eat all the time.

My wife will watch me walk in the kitchen. She goes, hey, you okay? I'm like, leave me alone. There can be in the Reformed world like this dead orthodoxy where the real mature people have no emotional experiences up or down.

Calvin's blood pressure never rose or went up. It's just like what's what I do. I appreciate it. Actually, in reading him, I don't think it's true. No, no. And Luther, man, you talk about an emotional wreck.

That's why you love the guy. He felt everything. Paul even uses this type of language like Philippians 1 .7, it is right for me to feel this way about you. He was feeling comforted and excited because of what was going on in the church of Philippi.

But then he would write to the church of Corinth and he was like, dude, whoa, I need to come preach to you guys the gospel because this is not positive. And even when he's in prison, he's describing an emotional state that he's in.

He's like, you please send somebody to me because I'm discouraged. I need to be uplifted. And discouragement is an emotional experience. To be discouraged is to look at circumstances and situations and feel the negative pressure.

And this is how God, to rejoice when it says rejoice in the Lord always. And again, I say rejoice, it's calling for not a fake shout for, because we think rejoice like no matter what, Justin, no matter how you're feeling, you're going to rejoice the Lord.

Again, I say rejoice. That's right. No matter what. And Paul, what I think is fascinating is Paul says, now, listen, I can find a reason to rejoice. And the reason he says rejoice in the Lord always. Right.

But he says, but the reason, and it goes back to what you're saying, it's our thoughts about God and confessional because confessionalism properly positions the truth of God to our heart. This is Christ for you, right?

This is his hope for you. This is the joy for you. And so when you look at it in the midst of my tears, I can experience then joy and it can bring me through my sorrows. This is why you and I think James and Peter say, hey, trials are a good thing because what a trial does is it knocks away that which we can tend to emotionally attach ourselves to.

You know, what does Romans say? It's like this, you know, we are, the whole world is groaning, including our bodies. Why? Because it's under a curse. And a trial comes and he says, hey, don't emotionally get attached to that, which is corruption.

So what are we going to emotionally? Because it's not like don't have emotions. That's not true. Joy, happiness, love, like all of that is part of the Christian life. What it's saying is attach your emotions to that, which is steady and firm.

And effectively attach yourself to God. Right. So we're encouraging emotion. Let their emotions be informed and controlled and protected by the King who never changes.