June 26, 2023 Show with A. M. Brewster on “The Doctrine of Emotions” (Part 1)

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Live from historic downtown Carlisle, Pennsylvania, home of founding father

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James Wilson, 19th century hymn writer George Duffield, 19th century gospel minister

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George Norcross, and sports legend Jim Thorpe, it's Iron Sharpens Iron.

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This is a radio platform in which pastors, Christian scholars, and theologians address the burning issues facing the church and the world today.

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Proverbs chapter 27 verse 17 tells us iron sharpens iron so one man sharpens another.

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Matthew Henry said that in this passage we are cautioned to take heed with whom we converse and directed to have in view in conversation to make one another wiser and better.

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It is our hope that this goal will be accomplished over the next two hours and we hope to hear from you the listener with your own questions.

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And now here's your host Chris Arnson. Good afternoon,

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Cumberland County, Pennsylvania, Lake City, Florida, and the rest of humanity living on the planet

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Earth. We're listening to you live streaming at ironsharpensironradio .com. This is

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Chris Arnson, your host of Iron Sharpens Iron Radio, wishing you all a happy Monday on this 26th day of June 2023.

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And I'm thrilled to have back as a returning guest someone to discuss emotions which will be our topic for two days today

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June 26th and tomorrow Tuesday June 27th. His name is A .M.

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Brewster and he has become one of the most popular guests, a favorite among the

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Iron Sharpens Iron Radio listeners. He is president of Evermind Ministries, a biblical counselor, author, podcaster, and conference speaker.

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And as I said, he's going to be addressing the doctrine of emotions. And it's my honor and privilege to welcome you back to Iron Sharpens Iron Radio, A .M.

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Brewster. I am exceptionally happy to be back. And just hearing you say a favorite among the

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Iron Sharpens Iron listeners, it just swells my heart with joy or it clouds my mind with disbelief.

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I'm not really sure which one it is, but I'm very glad to be back. Well, let our listeners know about Evermind Ministries.

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Yeah, my pleasure. So, Evermind Ministries, just really our whole goal is to keep

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God's truth at the center of the human experience. And when I say that, it sounds kind of a weird phrase, but you think about your experience as a human in this world and it's so multifaceted.

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And there's work, there's school, there's parenting, there's family, there's just so many things that happen.

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And we want to inject God's truth right into the center of all of that because it's really easy to segment our lives and to see church as one thing we do and home is another thing and work is another thing and our entertainment is another thing.

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But we want the truth to be right there injected into all of it because that's what God wants. And so,

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Evermind Ministries, we have a biblical counseling ministry. We have a ministry that is dedicated to speaking truth in the family.

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We have a ministry that's all about personal discipleship and worshiping God better this year than we did the year before.

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We have a ministry where I go out and I preach and I teach and I train and I do conferences and things like that, sometimes virtually, sometimes live.

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And it was really a fantastic opportunity to meet new people and to open God's Word. And I would say that if you want to know more about Evermind Ministries, this is a really great thing to do.

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Go to evermindministries .com and click on the link to download the app.

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We have a brand new app that gives you access to everything that is Evermind Ministries, tells you all about who we are, and you really need to check that out.

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That is really becoming quickly our go -to place to learn all about Evermind. So, I hope you guys will definitely do that.

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I think that one of the things that I'm really excited to talk to you guys about today is the fact that I am going to be having a partnership with another ministry you guys know called

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Striving for Eternity with Andrew Rappaport. And he and I have got some fun things in the mix that we're going to talk about more so in the future, but that's something

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I kind of wanted to announce first and foremost here today as well. Praise God, I'm happy to hear that.

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And today is a program that is in my, according to my gifts of prophecy,

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I'm just kidding folks, but I have a strong feeling as I think any biblically -based, open, honest platform should do, it's going to annoy people, because if you're always making people happy I think that there's something wrong with what you're saying.

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It's gonna annoy people on both ends of the spectrum of the evangelical

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Protestant experience. And I'm talking about on the one hand it may very well and will likely offend not only

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Pentecostals and Charismatics who put so much over emphasis on biblical emphasis on emotions, and that really has spilled over to mainstream evangelicalism even if they happen to be cessationist.

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Yes it has. But on the other hand, even on the other end of the spectrum, I have a feeling we are going to offend folks within our own theologically reformed camp, because we have been guilty of, at times, and depending upon what congregation and maybe even denomination your reformed church happens to be a part of, but we have neglected emotion.

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There have been worship services that have been rightfully described as being reminiscent of funeral services, and hymns singing, even the lyrics of which are clearly intended to create a sense of joy within us that should exude from us while we sing them, and very often sound like a funeral dirges.

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And sometimes our critics are correct, many times our critics are guilty of slander and exaggeration, but on occasion they are correct when they describe us that way or describe our services that way and perhaps our worship experience that way.

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And there are efforts to counteract that amongst the Reformed, especially those that want to bring an emphasis to experimental or experiential

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Calvinism, and that has had its critics even within the Reformed faith.

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But tell us about the doctrine of emotions. Well, I'm really excited that we're gonna have an opportunity to have this conversation over the next two days.

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Today, for those of you who didn't know, today and then at the same time tomorrow, I believe, we're gonna be continuing this conversation, so I don't need to feel the necessity to try to cram it all in today.

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But I do want to lay a really important foundation, and I want to field any questions that your listeners may have, because it really is an extremely important thing to understand.

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And I want to start with the fact that, honestly, where we are with the

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English language as a whole, you can't speak to a lot of other languages, I speak others of them, and I think they have their same problems, but to the

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English language as a whole, but then specifically the subculture of Christianity, we have completely lost a biblical understanding and even really,

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I'll go so far as to say a scientific understanding of what emotions really are. We've conflated the world's understanding, we've taken our own experiences, we've mixed that with a sloppy vocabulary and a lack of understanding about the scriptures, a lack of understanding about how our bodies are supposed to work, bad philosophy coming from every direction, and almost everything we say about emotions is, like, wrong to one degree or another.

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It's not completely true. So, I wanted to start with really a call to something that's almost impossible from a cultural perspective, but it is possible from an individual perspective.

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I've been doing this in my life, I've been trying to help my family to do it as well, to try to change our vocabulary, to submit the words that we use to reality.

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What is actual? Is what I'm saying right now actually biblically and scientifically true?

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Because if it's not, it's not valuable and all it does is confuse us. I'm going to give you some examples of what

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I mean by this, and I'm going to refer to this, this is kind of my point on my notes, is emotional discrepancies.

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So, I'll give you an example. Sometimes when we talk about feelings, we talk about feelings as feelings.

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So, for example, a person may say, I feel sore. I feel sick.

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I feel cold. Okay? Those are, those are, we're using words about, feelings words, and we're using them about actual feelings.

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What I'm saying is sensations, cold, sick, sore, that type of thing. But then we also use our, these feelings words to describe what

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I'm going to call pure emotion. And pure emotion actually is a feeling. It is a physical sensation.

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But oftentimes in our minds, we view it as something very different. When we say, I feel happy, in our minds, that's a different category of feeling than I feel sore.

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I say, I feel sad. That's different than I'm feeling sick. I feel afraid is different than I feel cold.

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The reality is, and we're going to learn this, hopefully, over the next couple of days. But the reality is, is that actually, that feeling that we associate, which is bodily experiences, and that quote -unquote feeling that we associate with an emotion per se, are actually far more similar than we like to think they are.

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However, there's another category. And it's this feeling as religion, which you've kind of alluded to a little bit,

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Chris. Someone says, I feel like God is talking to me. Or they say,

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I feel the Holy Spirit's presence. Or I feel the peace of God.

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Now, none of those are physical feelings, not physiological feelings like the emotions and the other physical feelings are.

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And yet we use our feelings terminology to describe those things. I feel like God is talking to me.

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I feel the Holy Spirit's presence. And of course, some people may base those statements on physical feelings.

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They have goosebumps on their arms after they hear a Christian song sung at a worship service, or after they hear a preacher.

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They feel goosebumps. They have a feeling, a physical feeling of euphoria of some kind.

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And they will base those statements on the Holy Spirit's presence. Yeah, definitely.

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And we're going to find that too. Very often, it's not just one of these things.

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It's multiples of these things. When we talk about feelings, we're talking about so many different facets of what we're experiencing in our spirits and in our bodies.

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So, that's going to also be a big part of what kind of makes us mushy and really hard to understand and hard to find agreement on.

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And the last category is feelings as thoughts. Someone might say, I feel like she doesn't like me.

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Or I feel like you're mad at me. Or I feel like this isn't the best decision.

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And really what they're communicating, they could just say, I think she doesn't like me. I believe you're mad at me.

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I think this isn't the best decision. But we're using, we've taken these feelings words and we've substituted them for our thinking words.

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A good example of this is Thomas Sowell said, quote, the problem isn't that Johnny can't read.

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The problem isn't even that Johnny can't think. The problem is that Johnny doesn't know what thinking is.

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He confuses it with feeling. Really powerful observation he made.

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And that's, a lot of us, we don't know what thinking is. We do so much of our life based off of feeling.

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And oftentimes, you know, we communicate our thoughts as feelings and our feelings, we think our thoughts. The movie

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Inside Out, a movie that came out a while ago through Pixar was a really good example of that. They basically, all humanity had emotions at the helm of their life.

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Every thought they had, everything that they did was being controlled by their emotions.

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Another piece of the puzzle that shows us that we don't really get what's going on in our emotions. But the key

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I tried to make earlier is that whatever our vocabulary consistently tells us makes up the most integral part of our existence.

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Whether that thing really is the most integral part of our existence or not, because our vocabulary tells us it does, it will become the single most important concept in our lives.

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And if you have the news on for any period of time whatsoever, you will see without a shadow of a doubt that people are absolutely just controlled by their emotions.

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Everything that they do, they're pursuing certain feelings, they're running from other feelings. If something doesn't make them feel good, they melt like a snowflake.

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People are being triggered and we have all of these concepts that we're facing based off of feelings.

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And so, we've really, I mean, right from the get -go, there are so many discrepancies. We have made this massive hodgepodge that really very few people actually agree on what they're talking about.

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We all just kind of have this consensus that feeling is whatever I say it is, which is super, super dangerous.

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Well, I'm going to give our listeners our email address in the event that they have a question of their own on emotion, the doctrine of emotions.

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Our email address is chrisarnson at gmail .com, c -h -r -i -s -a -r -n -z -e -n at gmail .com.

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Give us your first name at least, your city and state of residence, and your country of residence if you live outside the

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USA. Please only remain anonymous if your question involves a personal and private matter.

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Let's say you have a strong disagreement with your own church and their view or their practice of emotions in a worship service, a level of practice, and a meaning and an importance assigned to emotions that you disagree with, and you'd rather not draw identity or you'd rather not identify yourself at this point.

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And perhaps you're in a reformed church that appears to be devoid of emotion.

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Well, we would understand that you would be compelled to remain anonymous. We would not want you to identify a church when you are being critical of it, unless you're in a cult of some kind, like some kind of a

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Mormon cult or Jehovah's Witness cult, but a specific evangelical congregation we wouldn't want you to identify it when you're critiquing it, because we would want to have both sides of the story when criticisms are made publicly.

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But if you're just asking a general question, please give us your first name at least, your city and state, and your country of residence.

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This topic is extremely vital, more vital than people might think, because they may trivialize this discussion to be involving nothing more than the manner and specific aesthetic taste of a specific congregation or denomination when it comes to the expression of emotions.

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But there are more serious things involved in this. You have, on the one hand, people making theological assumptions and attaching doctrine to a certain kind of expression of emotion, such as something that we just mentioned.

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Somebody who is a preacher, a pastor, a congregant, who is convinced that what is being taught in this congregation during a specific worship service is true and from the

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Lord, just because of the way people feel when they hear it. And on the other hand, the lack of emotion present in the heart of a preacher, pastor, or congregant throughout their typical

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Christian walk could be a very frightening sign that they are devoid of the

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Holy Spirit, that they may be dead in their trespasses and sins, because they are not excited by the things of God.

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They are not driven to rejoice and praise and thanksgiving because of the things that they believe and so on.

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Am I off -base here in my two analogies there? Jared I think there are very few people who really are devoid of emotions, and I think when we communicate that way,

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I mean, I agree with you. I mean, I've been in churches where I look around and I'm like, wow, these people don't have the joy of the

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Lord, but even that statement right there shows a misunderstanding of what emotions are, because the joy of the

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Lord is not an emotion. The peace of God is not an emotion. The love of God is not an emotion.

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And so, again, we're conflating these concepts. And so, yeah, these people look like they're not enjoying themselves.

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They look like they're having a bad attitude. They look all, you know, solemn and not – not solemn, the solemnity is not bad. They look depressed, you know, which, by the way, isn't always an emotion.

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And that's, I think – they express their peace and joy in different ways.

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I understand that. But although you said those things are not emotions, they are expressed by human beings through emotions, when they are experiencing them and when they are worshipping and so on.

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They can. They can. They don't always, but definitely they can. And that's where we – I think a really good, important step to take in our discussion is to move to the next level where we really try to understand from a,

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I'll say, a physical, scientific basis what emotions are.

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And then specifically from a biblical perspective, what emotions are, we will start to be able to see a clearer picture of what's actually going on in our bodies.

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I just want to start with a big like an anthropology, okay? So, if you have listeners who know what, you know, the dichotomous position is and the trichotomous position is,

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I'll just say right off the bat that I consider myself a modified dichotomist. The – oftentimes the dichotomous position is that there's body and spirit, or they'll say body and soul, but in their minds, soul and spirit are basically the same thing.

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In the trichotomous position, there's the body, there's the spirit, and there's the soul. And the spirit and the soul are seen as being two different things, and so we're made up of three parts.

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I disagree with the trichotomous position, but I also slightly disagree with that dichotomous position

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I just put forward because I believe that what we see in the scriptures for the most part is that God created us with a body, he breathed into us the spirit, and at that time we became a soul.

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So, those two parts, body and spirit put together, creates the whole, and the whole would therefore be then the soul.

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And so, that's how I'm approaching this understanding. Honestly, if a person were to disagree with me on that, it's not going to really necessarily change our conversation too much here.

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That's just, I wanted to put that out there right off the bat. And yet, there's this unique link, okay?

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So, we have our physical bodies and we have our spiritual spirits, and there's this thing, there's this, almost like this unique bridge between the two that is partially organic and natural and physical, but also there seems to be very much a spiritual element to it, and that is this concept of emotions.

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Well, what's going on there? Well, again, unfortunately, the scriptures don't give us a really robust answer of how those two things are synthesized to any more degree than it does how our bodies and our spirits are synthesized.

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How is it my spirit is attached to this body and where my body goes, my spirit follows and I can't have an out -of -body experience, right?

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And yet, you know, this body could die and my spirit will live on. How does all that work? We really don't have the answers for that at this particular point.

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However, we need to do our best to understand it with the information that we have. And so, what I want to do is

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I want to transition to a secular description of what emotions are.

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I think it may surprise some of us because really, the secular description isn't too far off. It misses some key things, but it actually is pretty right on in some degrees.

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Most psychologists, in particular, will agree that an emotional response requires three things, the first of which is an external experience.

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So, something happens, somebody jumps from around a corner and goes boo. At that moment, there's an internal physiological response.

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Now, notice what they're saying here. There's an internal physiological response. This is coming from people who don't believe that we have a spirit.

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Our mentality, our mental states, our minds, that to them, though they don't understand it, clearly is a biological process that says what they believe anyway, though even though they don't necessarily understand what that biological process is and how it works.

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And so, to them, they say, you know, the emotional response is a physiological response, which then produces the third thing is an external behavior.

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So, somebody jumps out and says, boo, I have this physiological response inside of me and I might scream,

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I might run, I might pass out, I might punch a person in the face. You know, it depends on who you are and how your response is.

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But for the secular psychologist, secular scientist, secular doctor, for the most part, that's really what emotions are.

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And I want to point out that they got some of this right. It does require an external experience, but there is more to the experience.

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There is a physiological response, and that's really important. Christians, please understand when we're talking about emotions and we're talking about what

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I'm going to refer to as pure emotion, we are referring to a physiological response in the same way that you feel hungry, you might feel afraid or feel sad.

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It's a physical thing. It's not some other level of something. Now, I'm not suggesting that God as a pure spirit doesn't have emotions, okay?

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However, I am suggesting that God the Father, God the Holy Spirit do not have the experience of what we have of the physical, the physiological response.

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Now, Jesus, 100 % God, 100 % man, he does. He's experienced the physical response.

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So, God does understand physical emotions and to the degree that Jesus has a physical body, he experiences emotions of that physiological response that produces emotions.

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Again, the union of Christ with spirit and his body and Godhead, we don't understand it all, so I'm not going to pretend that I understand it all either.

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But these are things that we accept to be true, part of Christ's experience, able to be our substitutionary atonement.

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He was tempted in all ways that we are. He has had and still does have, I believe, in his perfected body, these physiological responses that produce what we call emotions.

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And then, yes, those, of course, produce an exterior behavior. But in order to really get a biblical understanding of what emotions are, we need to look to the scriptures to find out what the

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Bible says about them. What we can learn from the scriptures about what these emotions are. And the first of the three points that I'm going to put out today, and there's really three parts to this understanding, is that emotions are a gift.

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They're a gift. In fact, can you pick up that emotions are a gift after our first commercial break? Definitely.

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Anybody, once again, if you have a question of your own, submit it to ChrisArnson at gmail .com.

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ChrisArnson at gmail .com. Give us your first name at least, your city and state, and your country of residence.

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Don't go away. We'll be right back with A .M. Brewster right after these messages from our sponsors.

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So go to royaldiadem .com and mention Chris Aronson of Iron Trip and Zion Radio. We're now back with A .M.

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Brewster, president of Evermind Ministries and we are talking about the Doctrine of Emotions.

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This is part one of a two -day discussion that will continue tomorrow, Tuesday, June 27th.

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So make sure you mark your calendars for that. But before the break, Aaron, as you know, you were just about to list some of the main discussion points or elements of the

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Doctrine of Emotions. Yeah, super happy to have this opportunity.

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By the way, I just want to let everyone know that if you go to truthloveparent .com

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forward slash iron, then you can see a bunch of other resources that I've curated specifically to come alongside and help you to learn a little bit more about this particular conversation.

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As an example, I've done a number of episodes, podcast episodes about parenting children through various emotional struggles.

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We have a general one called Emotions and Parenting. We also have a series called Parenting Angry Children.

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We have a Parenting Fearful Children. We also have a series called Children and Shame.

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And then the Parenting Angry Children series, I also wrapped it up and did it for the

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Celebration of God podcast, really for us to look introspectively at our lives if we struggle with anger.

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And that series is called the Merciful Life series. And so, those will be there as well as a number of other articles and podcast episodes and things like that that I've pulled from other trusted sources.

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So, go to truthloveparent .com forward slash iron to be able to see those resources that I've curated for you as well as find a link to download the

35:48

Evermind app for free. So, I hope you guys will do that. Now, to the question at hand about the doctrine of emotion, what does this look like?

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Well, the first one is that emotions are a gift. They're a gift to three different groups.

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They're, first of all, a gift to the individual. So, God has gifted you with emotions.

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Really, emotions are really awesome because they give humans a dynamic, passionate experience in this life and the life to come.

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Emotions allow us to, again, the English language really is kind of really bereft of the ways to communicate this in the best ways possible, but it really gives us a way to feel, to experience things in a very different way.

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I don't just see a sunset. There's oftentimes an emotion that can be attached with that.

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Sometimes a simplest experience. I went into a mall recently, a mall in Greenville, South Carolina that I had not been in for many years.

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I used to work in that mall. I walk into this mall and I didn't make it too far into the mall where I was overcome with these emotions because I had spent so much time working there in the past and I had so many different experiences, some really hard and some really amazing while working in that mall.

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Just walking into a mall, I mean, other people weren't struck with the emotions with which

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I was struck, but I was tearing up just walking through this place and being hit with all these memories.

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And so, there's this really great gift that God gives us to experience life on a unique level because of emotions.

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Ecclesiastes 3 .4 tells us that there is a time to laugh and a time to weep. God has scheduled it out in his divine timeframe that there are specifically times for this and he's given us the ability, the capacity to laugh and to weep.

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Romans 12 .15 tells us to rejoice with those who rejoice and to weep with those who weep.

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Both of those, we might call positive or quote -unquote negative emotions, they were both created by God for a purpose.

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He wants us to worship him with those emotions, just like we're to worship him with everything else in our lives.

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But God, by Christ honoring emotions are also to be enjoyed and though we can revel in emotions like happiness, we can also appreciate

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God pleasing grief. There's a time for that. There's a space for it. So, emotions make our lives more meaningful.

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This one's really the easy one. I mean, if I were to ask any Christian in the average church, why did God give you emotions, most people would be able to come up with an answer similar to this.

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And so, I praise God for the genuine happiness and passion and excitement and exhilaration that we experience.

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But the second, sorry, the second and third responsibilities of emotions are, emotions being a gift are oftentimes overlooked because emotions are also a gift to the body of Christ as a whole.

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Galatians 6 .2 tells us to bear one another's burdens. As I read earlier, Romans 12 .15

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commands that we rejoice with those who rejoice and weep with those who weep. We see Jesus doing this exact thing with Mary and Martha.

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So, emotions aren't just a gift to the individual, they're a gift to the church because though, yes, my emotions help me to experience life in a dynamic way, my emotions can also be utilized to help somebody else experience life in a dynamic way and specifically a

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Christ honoring way. And so, God's gift of emotion is a gift to the individual as well as to the body of Christ.

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But in even a more unique way, God's gift of emotions is a gift to what

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I'm going to call spiritual authorities. We include spouses, parents, pastors, counselors, disciplers, you know, whatever term you want to throw on there.

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And I'm going to use a parenting example. I do that a lot. If you don't have kids, you'll still, you'll get it. In the same way that our children's emotional responses can help us as parents determine the best way to parent them, a spouse's emotional responses can help the other spouse know how to best minister to them.

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The same is true for pastors and counselors and teachers and friends and any other disciplers in a person's life. So, it's a gift.

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Like, I, as a biblical counselor, when I see my counselee and they're having a certain emotional response, that is a gift to me because it communicates to me very important truths about who they are and what they believe and what they're experiencing and that helps me to do my job better.

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Same thing for, again, spouses and friends and so on and so forth. Anybody who's in the other person's life to have influence on them.

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So, the first part of our doctrine of emotions is that emotions are a gift of God.

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They are beautiful and wonderful, but like any gift, and we'll talk about this later, we can take it and we can twist it and we can use it for our own purposes.

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And boy, oh, boy, do we do that far too often with emotions. But beyond being just a gift, emotions are also a tool.

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So, again, like I mentioned briefly earlier, just like everything else in our lives, including our words and our actions, our emotions,

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God wants us to glorify him with them. 1 Corinthians 10 .31, whether therefore you eat or drink or whatsoever you do.

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That whatsoever you do, we could say or feel or emote, we could then say do all to the glory of God.

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Now, some people may argue, Aaron, I don't do emotions. Ah, but you do, okay? And we'll talk, we'll clarify that a little bit more later.

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Whether therefore you eat or drink or whatsoever you feel, we could say do all to the glory of God. God wants us to give him the preeminence in every facet of our lives, every slice of the human experience, and that includes how we feel.

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Our emotional responses, we don't just get to set aside and that's just something that we get to enjoy. It doesn't really have to please

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God or not please God. No, no, no, no. It must glorify God and it is a tool to do so. God also, as he commands us to be salt and light in this world, he wants us to do so so that other people will see our good works and do what?

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Glorify our Father who's in heaven. What does that mean? Think differently about God. So, here's the question I have for us. Do our feelings cause other people to think more highly about your

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God? Stop and think about that for a second. Pete Oh, yeah. Jared Do your emotions cause other people,

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Christians and unbelievers, to think more highly about God? Oh man. What were you going to say,

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Chris? Chris I was just thinking of all the times I have been a bad testimony in public because I lose my temper over things, whether it's with a waiter or waitress in a restaurant who keeps screwing up an order or whether it is being impatient on line somewhere.

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It could be a whole host of things and I have repented more times than I care to mention over this sin of losing control of my emotions in a negative way and being a very poor testimony for Jesus Christ.

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Pete And I've done the exact same thing, not only in public but also in my home with my wife, with my kids, with my friends, in a church business meeting.

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There are so many ways that we cause people to think incorrectly about our

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God because of our emotional responses. But other people should think more accurately about God because of the way we feel.

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In fact, they absolutely must. It's God's expectation for us. It's a tool that he's given us to please him, to worship him, and if it's not doing that, we're failing him in that way.

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We're not using the tool correctly. Now, he also gave us tools really to make our lives easier.

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Believe it or not, emotions oftentimes can make it easier to accomplish tasks.

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Not every time, some emotions in particular. So, you know, think about this.

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I used to be a school teacher, right? So, I would have students, I taught speech. I've also been doing things on stage for a long time.

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And so, people, you know, people, they talk about stage fright, right? Oh, you know, I can't speak in public.

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I'm afraid of speaking in public. In fact, I've heard, I'm not sure if the statistic has changed at all, but they say that, like, the fear of public speaking is second only to the fear of death.

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And then for some people, it's actually flipped the other way around, right? Are those people actually experiencing fear per se?

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Well, we'll talk about this more later, but I would argue that oftentimes they're not really ultimately experiencing fear.

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What they're experiencing is an adrenaline rush. That adrenaline rush, God has given to them as a tool.

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Adrenaline is given to us to be able to fly from a situation or fight to meet head on a situation, to be able to think clearer, to act better, to be more decise.

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People oftentimes talk about how they're stronger and they can see better and hear better when that adrenaline is surging through their systems because God's given it to us as a tool to help us overcome certain things.

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When we wrongly interpret that, we don't see it as the tool God gave us, it actually ends up working against us.

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Instead of a screwdriver that we can use to apply to the task in front of us, we're stabbing ourselves with the screwdriver, not accomplishing the task in front of us and making it hard for ourselves to do what we have to do.

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So, first of all, emotions are a gift. They're a gift to the individual, the church, and to authorities.

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But emotions are also a tool. And when we start seeing our emotional responses as a way to glorify

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God, a way that He expects us to worship Him, and when I say worship, I'm not talking about the corporate setting,

45:35

I'm not talking about singing songs, I'm talking about everything we do in this life needs to give God the honor and glory, needs to exalt

45:42

Him in all things. Emotions are one of those things. Were you going to say something, Chris, before I move to the third one?

45:48

No. No, I was not. Can I ask that question so I could take a drink?

45:54

I was feeling thirsty. So, the last one is this, emotions are – so, the first one was emotions are a gift, emotions are a tool is the second one.

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The third one is emotions are a gauge. Emotions are a gauge.

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What do I mean by that? Rebecca Hanna, a woman who is a biblical counselor who's done a lot in this particular realm, written and said a lot of great things about emotions, says that emotions are a gauge, not a guide.

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If when Disney says to follow your heart, they're talking about following your emotions, which they are, you know, basically follow whatever makes you feel happy.

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If it feels good, do it. That's the Disney version of it feels good, do it. They're saying that emotions are a guide, and no, no, no.

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For the Christian, we recognize that emotions should never be our guide, but emotions though are a gauge.

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What do I mean by that? Well, in the same way that a smoke detector in your house is there to warn you of a problem, your emotions can help you see at times when there's a spiritual problem in your life.

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So, here, let me give you an example. If you're experiencing a strong emotion in line with God's will, if it's time to weep and you're weeping, if it's time to laugh and you're laughing, all is well.

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Do you enjoy what God says is good? Are you righteously angry about sin?

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Are you jealous for God's glory? Well, then God is going to be pleased by that.

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And in a way, our emotions can help you as a small gauge.

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I think there are a lot of more important things, you know, speaking the truth in love, making sure that our words are truthful, our, everything about how we're doing it is falling within the constructs of biblical love, that everything that we're doing is clearly submitting to the truths of scripture.

47:53

That's the best way to determine whether or not we're glorifying God. And yet, though, when our emotions are also following in step with what

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God says we should be experiencing, then that is a sign that we're on the right path.

48:06

However, if you're experiencing strong emotions out of sync with God's prescribed will, there's a problem.

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Do you enjoy your sin? Are you angry about something that God has brought into your life?

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Are you jealous for your own way? See, in those situations, your emotions,

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God wants to use them as a way to warn you that there's a problem.

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Like the light on a dashboard or a smoke detector in a house, a big neon flashing sign and a large foghorn saying, there's a problem.

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Alert, alert, alert. You shouldn't be enjoying this. You shouldn't be feeling this way. The Bible's very clear.

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Do not feel this way. Do not respond this way. And yet, you are. There's a problem.

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And so, praise God that we have this thing built into our systems that if we're thinking biblically, if we're making

49:03

God's truth preeminent, can be a really huge help to us, a way to gauge whether or not we're responding correctly to the situations that God has in our lives.

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Now, I'm hoping that these observations we've made, at least if nothing else, can help us see that emotions are, in fact, a really important way that we can glorify

49:26

God. In the same way that our actions are to glorify him and our words are glorify him, our emotions need to glorify him.

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They're not some amoral thing that we just kind of experience and they are what they are. No, we need to make certain that they are actually pleasing him.

49:43

Now, no doubt your audience, Chris, is coming up with lots of different stuff because their minds have been filled with pop psychology that, and again, we can't control our emotions.

49:54

What if someone has a mental disorder and they feel depressed or they have a mental illness and they're feeling anxious?

50:01

You know, that's a, we've been told that that's a physiological problem and we can't do anything about that.

50:06

We're going to get to that. We're going to discuss those things either today or next time. We're going to start that conversation so that we can understand those things within the context of biblical reality, biblical truth.

50:19

But for right now, stick with me, just follow me piece by piece. I want you to see the biblical logic and the biblical truth supporting this foundation that we're laying in our understanding of the doctrine of emotions.

50:30

To this third point, emotions warn us that when there's a spiritual problem.

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So, let's say that I'm doing something and I feel a rush of adrenaline that leaves me feeling excited and exhilarated.

50:42

Well, let's say that the stimulus in my life, you know, we talked about that from the secular perspective, there's an external stimulus, right, that comes before the physiological response.

50:54

Let's just say that this physical, this stimulus in my life is that I'm having an inappropriate interaction with a girl.

51:00

Well, because our world puts so much stock in their emotions, whatever they feel becomes right as long as they like what they're feeling.

51:07

If they feel good doing it, it must be okay. But the fact is that I need to be happy doing, if I'm happy doing something that God condemns, that reveals a much deeper heart problem in me.

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And it needs to, if I'm having this inappropriate interaction with this young lady and I'm having this emotional response that is incongruous with God's truth, that needs to be a huge warning to me.

51:35

I need to be having truth coming to my mind. As Job says, I've made a pact, a promise, a covenant with my eyes not to look on a maid, right, to not to think lustful thoughts.

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Jesus has told me that to think lustfully about a person is to commit adultery with them. And so, if I've got that lustful type of physiology, those chemical responses that are going in the wrong direction, that should be a huge blaring warning to me.

52:03

And a mature Christian is going to go, whoa, this is a problem. Proverbs tells us that a wise man sees temptation afar off and hides himself.

52:10

A wise man also sees himself in the middle of temptation and does something about it. And like Joseph, when he's been confronted with Potiphar's wife,

52:18

I don't know what Joseph felt in the moment. No doubt he had an adrenaline rush. And I don't know if that adrenaline rush was a temptation to him because he got really excited about what was happening, but he definitely used the adrenaline rush in a good way when he ran out of there, leaving his clothes behind him.

52:34

And we need to do a similar thing to utilize those emotions as a gauge. And in fact, let's pick up with the story of Joseph right after our midway break, which we have to enter into now.

52:48

Please be patient with us, folks. The midway break is always a little longer than the other breaks because Grace Life Radio requires of us to use the middle break for their public service announcements and other local things that geographically localize

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Also, send in your questions to ChrisArnzen at gmail .com. ChrisArnzen at gmail .com.

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If you have a question for A .M. Brewster on the doctrine of emotions, give us your first name at least, city and state, and country of residence.

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01:08:12

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01:12:32

A .M. Brewster, and we are discussing the doctrine of emotion, and the email address again is chrisarnson at gmail .com.

01:12:41

Give us your first name at least, city and state, and country of residence. Before we go to any of those questions, Brother Aaron, I would like you to continue where you left off.

01:12:50

You were talking about Job, and how he fled seduction from Potiphar's wife, and was able to appropriately combat emotions that may have been overwhelming him, sexual desire, and so on.

01:13:07

So just pick up where you left off there. Yeah, it was Joseph though, not Job. I mean,

01:13:13

I don't know. I thought Job. I thought I said Joseph. I didn't say Joseph. I think you said

01:13:20

Job. I don't know, maybe one of your audience members can break the tie, but I thought you said Job. Maybe I misheard it.

01:13:25

Okay. Either way, we know who we're talking about. We're talking about Job, you know, Joseph. Yeah. So in that moment when he was approached by Potiphar's wife, no doubt there was an adrenaline rush in his body, and we're going to talk about that really soon.

01:13:40

We obviously want to get to your questions, and hopefully we'll have a chance to get to this before the end of our show today. If not, we'll definitely talk about it tomorrow, a biblically accurate scientific description of what is going on when we have an emotion.

01:13:52

But no doubt there was something inside of him. And I can't say, the scriptures don't really give us any way to know whether or not he had an emotion that was the product of wrong thinking, or if that adrenaline rush or whatever he had was purely a tool from God to do what he needed to do.

01:14:12

But in that moment, he had a decision to make. His body potentially was flooded by this hit of adrenaline.

01:14:18

It's what kind of makes us start to shake and so on and so forth. And what did he choose to do with that emotion?

01:14:24

How did he choose to use that tool that God had given him? He applied it correctly.

01:14:29

He spoke truth. He said, how can I do this sin? And it's funny, he didn't say against you,

01:14:35

Potiphar's wife, against your husband, against myself. He said against God, how could I sin against God and do this great wicked?

01:14:44

And we know that he fled from her and she was holding onto his clothes and he was so passionate, left the clothes behind.

01:14:51

He did the right thing. He used that pure emotional response to do something that was going to please the

01:14:58

Lord. And that's what we need to do. So, if I'm going to just summarize the doctrine of emotion in a few words as possible, then those three main points are the ones that God has given us emotions as a gift to really, to experience life and eternity in a really amazing, dynamic, wonderful way with the highs and the lows and in ways that please the

01:15:23

Lord and benefit us. But then also our gift to the gift to other people in our lives as they know how to interact with us and how to best help us.

01:15:32

But they're also a tool, as we said, to please the Lord in all things. And they're a gauge when they are not lining up, when they're incongruous with reality.

01:15:41

That needs to be a huge flashing neon warning sign to us that there is a gigantic problem.

01:15:47

And that really is what we have. Now, again, so many questions popping up in our minds.

01:15:54

Before I get to the biblically accurate scientific description, I want to ask Chris, you know, do we have any questions that we can field?

01:16:00

Chris Oh yeah. Let me go to someone who obviously loves you and your ministry because it seems at least the last several times we have had you on, he always submits a question.

01:16:15

And we are thinking of, or we speaking of, I should say, the world -renowned

01:16:20

Ramon, Ramon of Taguig City in the

01:16:25

Philippines. And I hope I am pronouncing that correctly, Ramon. He has two questions.

01:16:30

Ramon Ramon and I are still playing chess. I can't remember who's winning right now, but we still have a chess game going.

01:16:37

Well, his first question is, what is the difference between man's emotions and God's emotions?

01:16:45

Now, you touched on this earlier. I think it bears repeating because,

01:16:50

I don't know if you are aware of this, but amongst confessional Reformed Baptists, there is an unfortunate inside feud going on.

01:17:03

In fact, it's been sad to see how it has destroyed long -lasting friendships, has separated churches that had fellowship with one another.

01:17:15

And it's just, I think, the way that folks have reacted to this controversy is quite sad.

01:17:23

But the controversy lies in the way to interpret a passage from Chapter 2 of the 1689

01:17:35

London Baptist Confession of Faith, the primary confession of Reformed Baptists worldwide.

01:17:43

And that is where we read, The Lord our God is but one, only living and true

01:17:51

God, whose substance is in and of himself, infinite in being and perfection, whose essence cannot be comprehended by anybody but himself.

01:18:03

A most pure spirit, invisible without body, parts, or passions, who only hath immortality, dwelling in the light which no man can approach unto, who is immutable, immense, eternal, incomprehensible, almighty, every way, infinite, most holy, most wise, most free, most absolute.

01:18:26

And the key areas here, you have one side of the feud amongst

01:18:35

Reformed Baptists who say that the other side is defying or failing to comply with the statement about God having no passions.

01:18:57

And the other side, the one that believes that there is an exaggerated view here being presented, which almost makes

01:19:11

God an eternal Mr. Spock, if you will, uh, they would, they would say of that side that you're violating the aspect of this chapter where it says that God's essence cannot be comprehended by anybody but himself, by any but himself.

01:19:34

And it also says that he is incomprehensible. And the claim is made that there are

01:19:40

Reformed Baptists claiming to have too much knowledge about the essence of God.

01:19:46

And of course, this further is connected to statements in the

01:19:53

Bible about God, about God having anger, about God having joy, that kind of a thing.

01:20:03

And one side will say this is purely anthropomorphic language.

01:20:09

And then the other side will say, well, if it is, what exactly is it supposed to mean? So I don't know if you have a side in this dogfight.

01:20:20

I hate to call it that because I'm talking about my brothers in Christ here. But perhaps you can respond to Ramon's question, his first question, and connect it to this dispute, which you may not have even been aware of this dispute,

01:20:37

I don't know. Ramon Yeah, well, I'm going to definitely say from the get -go that I'm not going to be foolish enough to proclaim that I am able to comprehend the totality of God.

01:20:47

That's obviously not for sure. I also want to say that Scott Anuel of G3 Ministries has done a lot of really great work on this, this topic of emotion, specifically within the concept of worship within the church.

01:21:01

I would encourage anyone, any of your listeners to read what he has written. One of the things that he has been really good at is helping us to understand the evolution of language and the evolution of worldview and philosophy to see that when ancient scholars or ancient writers, ancient peoples talked about certain things, they weren't talking about it the way we talk about it.

01:21:21

The idea of affections and passions, oftentimes being very understood in a very different way than we would think of those words today, as we've talked about the same things and emotions and so on and so forth.

01:21:34

In fact, the idea of emotions really, as we understand it, doesn't show up in scripture too much.

01:21:40

I mean, I know that I brought in Ecclesiastes and Galatians and so on and so forth, Romans, but the idea of emotions are not discussed so much in the

01:21:50

Bible as primarily the opposite side of these things. So, the question Ramon had was, you know, what are

01:21:57

God's emotions versus our emotions type of a thing? And I would say, again, I have to state this, if we're going to be precise in our language, then

01:22:06

I would have to say that the first and third person of the Trinity do not experience emotion.

01:22:12

Because emotion, and in a moment I'm in my biblically accurate scientific description of emotion, emotion is still an internal physiological response.

01:22:21

Is it a physiological, biological, chemical response? And not having a body, the

01:22:28

Father and the Holy Spirit do not have emotions. Now, God is omniscient, so he knows what – it's not like he doesn't understand what emotions are, okay?

01:22:39

It's just he doesn't have them, God the Father and God the Holy Spirit. However, again,

01:22:44

Jesus having a body in his 30 -some years on this earth, he experienced those physiological, chemical, biological responses that we define as emotion.

01:22:55

He had that. And there's nothing in the scriptures that will lead us to believe that in a glorified, eternal body that we will cease to have those physiological responses.

01:23:05

So, that is an interesting observation to make. So, I do believe that, again, with the hypostatic union of Christ, that he potentially still experiences what we would refer to as human emotion.

01:23:18

So, what would be the difference between, let's just limit it to Jesus for the moment. What would be the difference between Jesus' emotions now and our emotions?

01:23:25

I would say, well, he's functioning in a perfected body at this precise moment, and so I can't begin to necessarily completely understand how his emotions would compare to ours.

01:23:37

But the key thing is, and we're going to see this really soon, he interprets all of his emotions accurately.

01:23:45

And this is, if I could just, like, huge spoiler alert, I tossed it out there, this right here, this idea is the key that will unlock all of our emotions for us.

01:23:55

God, Jesus Christ in particular, specifically interprets his emotions correctly. We do not.

01:24:02

So, let's just, for sake of argument, say that Jesus experiences the exact same type of emotions we do.

01:24:07

Let's just say that he and I, and I'm not trying to be sacrilegious in any way, shape, or form, but he and I were in a room and we both experienced the same, just a really loud sound or whatever.

01:24:18

We could argue that Jesus would have that adrenaline rush that would go through his body. Nothing wrong with that.

01:24:24

Adrenaline rush is not inherently sinful. It's a physiological response to an external stimuli. But he would definitively interpret that adrenaline rush the exact right way, and he would use that tool in a way to glorify the

01:24:38

Father and to get the job done, whereas we might not. So, I would say that would be the real big distinction.

01:24:45

And of course, when he was on this earth in a state of humility, there was a voluntary limitation on his omniscience.

01:24:59

It appears that he did not know everything as a man, such as when the date and time of his own return.

01:25:13

But now, the omniscience of Christ, even though he is still the

01:25:20

God -man, is unlimited. Am I correct in saying that? Yeah, I would say that's accurate.

01:25:27

I struggled really understanding and comprehending the scope of Jesus's understanding and comprehension of times and events.

01:25:34

I mean, he specifically said what you said. I would definitely say that was the one piece of information to which he was not privy.

01:25:40

Even in the garden, there seems to be a hope that God the Father would pass the cup from him, and it seems as if he was not certain that would not happen in the way he put it.

01:25:54

Jared Yeah, and that, yeah, and it's super tough as we try to grapple with how to respond in those situations the way

01:26:02

Jesus did, because it's hard for us to understand why he responded the way he did. But yes, I think that the key difference is as we conceive of God, and we oftentimes think of him not necessarily as Jesus Christ in particular, but the

01:26:15

Godhead, the Trinity, two -thirds of the Godhead do not, sounds wrong to mathematically say it that way, but you know, one being, we understand that, does not experience emotion the way we do, for certain.

01:26:30

And again, I think it's really helpful for us to kind of understand, again, this biblically scientific accurate description of emotions to truly be able to wrap our brains around it.

01:26:40

But I want to get to any other questions that may be coming up here too. Well, Ramon's second question is, how do you control your emotions when doing biblical counseling?

01:26:50

Can a counselor empathize with a counselee? And obviously you don't want to be verbally saying out loud what might be in your brain, like, what an idiot!

01:27:03

Sometimes I do, I think maybe I do. All right, so how do you do that as a counselor?

01:27:11

How do you control your emotions? I mean, wasn't it Sproles, like, what's wrong with you people, right?

01:27:17

So I mean, maybe it's appropriate. Well, he was saying that to a large crowd, not in a private counseling setting.

01:27:23

Sure, sure, sure. Okay, so now I knew this was going to happen. I guess, let me step through this definition of a description of emotions first, and then answer this question as we go along.

01:27:35

And I think because every single question that's being asked, I'm going back and going, oh, I should have just described it.

01:27:41

Okay, a biblically accurate scientific description of what an emotion is. First of all, there's an external or internal experience.

01:27:49

I can have an internal response to something in my mind that produces an emotional response.

01:27:56

That happens all of the time. Like, two people look at the exact same thing. One person sees it as being hopeful and good.

01:28:02

The other person sees it as being scary. And the emotional response, right, was it because of the external experience?

01:28:09

Not really. Not everybody who, like, for example, I would say that everybody who loses, it would be inappropriate to say that everyone who loses a loved one is sad over that.

01:28:19

A lot of people are. Some people are very happy. Some people are relieved. And those of us who would be sad at the loss of a loved one can understand that.

01:28:26

But in order to say that an emotion is, like, you have to feel a certain way, you would have to be able to prove that in 100 % of external stimulus situations that everyone has the same emotional response, and they don't, in part because of the internal response.

01:28:41

In fact, the internal response is actually a far bigger precipitator of emotions than the external ones are.

01:28:47

So, the first step is there has to be an external or internal experience. There has to be a stimulus, okay? Number two, there is then an internal physiological response.

01:28:56

That is accurate. We're talking about the pure emotions that come about as the chemical reactions of adrenaline, dopamine, serotonin levels, things like that.

01:29:04

These things cause these feelings in us. But this is where the world's definition missed it, and this is where I kind of already gave us the key to all of this.

01:29:13

Following that, there has to be, there always is an internal, we can call it a mental response.

01:29:20

I prefer an internal spiritual response. There is an interpretation of the situation.

01:29:28

I gave an example of that a few minutes ago, seconds ago. Two people experienced the same thing. They have two different emotional responses to the situation.

01:29:38

Why is that? Because they interpret it differently. We'll get into some specifics later. Then following after that, you have that external behavior, okay?

01:29:48

So, there's the external or internal stimulus that produces an internal physiological response that is then interpreted via an internal spiritual response that generally works itself out in an external behavior.

01:30:07

But then, because of that interpretation, that internal mental response

01:30:14

I had to the physiological response, there then oftentimes are subsequent internal physiological responses to the previous four steps.

01:30:21

And this is how oftentimes we see people just, they spiral downward in their emotions. One incident, one situation, an initial response, but then it just, the situation doesn't change, but the emotional response grows.

01:30:35

The emotional response isn't growing because the external situation changed necessarily. The emotional response is growing in that moment because of all the other layers of the internal responses to what's going on, the external thing as well as the physiological responses.

01:30:49

And so, our emotional, how we interpret life, how our emotional responses to this can not just add to our situation, but literally multiply it.

01:30:58

I've been meeting with a group of guys recently who all have a stage four cancer or various cancers of different types.

01:31:06

And by the way, on the Evermind app, all of those sessions have been put together into a online course called

01:31:11

Suffering Well. And you can go through and you can see all this. And we talk a lot about emotions in that. And I tell people that a wrong response to suffering ends up not just adding to our suffering, but multiplying our suffering.

01:31:26

And this is an example of that. So, and when we understand that, we understand this key thing.

01:31:33

So, let me walk through an example. The example, perhaps, of the individual having to stand up and give a speech, or perhaps, you know, you're driving and my son just got his learner's permit, right?

01:31:43

So, he's doing a lot more driving. And his response to being in the car is very different than my response to being in the car, which is very different than my wife's response to being in the car.

01:31:51

We all have the exact same external stimuli. My son is driving a car down this road and everything that we see, the weather, the other cars, the time of day, it's all identical for each of us.

01:32:02

And yet, we each having a different emotional response, different physiological response, potentially, or we're all having very similar physiological responses, but we're interpreting them differently.

01:32:15

So, that child gets up or that student gets up to give their oral reports and they have that emotion, that adrenaline surging through their bodies, and they interpret it as fear, stage fright.

01:32:26

What will be their external behaviors? They're going to freeze, not going to know what to say, there's going to be a lot of shaking, there's going to be a lot of, a seasoned public speaker will get up and will have that same adrenaline.

01:32:41

How will they interpret that? They will interpret that as a gift from God, a tool to focus that energy, have the right volume and have the right gestures and to accomplish the task that God has given them.

01:32:55

The thing about adrenaline is really interesting. Adrenaline is interpreted in many different ways. Adrenaline can be interpreted as fear.

01:33:04

Adrenaline can also be interpreted as exhilaration. Two people sit down in a roller coaster, one of them is like, yes, this is going to be great, adrenaline surging through their bodies, the other person is freaking out, same physiological response, different interpretation.

01:33:18

What's interesting is that adrenaline is also a key component in affection and in sexual arousal.

01:33:26

Really interesting, same chemical thing going on in our bodies, but very different interpretations.

01:33:34

And so, as well as adrenaline is also a big part of anger, right? A person who's really angry and adrenaline surging through their bodies, they wouldn't say that they're afraid, they wouldn't say they're exhilarated, they wouldn't say that they're aroused or there's an affection in them, they would say they're angry.

01:33:48

And yet, this very similar physiological response. To this point, I'm hoping to, as I expand this and I work with others and I continue my research to be able to step through and understand to the degree that we can, science is very limited on this particular point, but to be able to understand what physiological responses produce what types of feelings inside of us, and then to be able to look at how people overall interpret those various ways, those various things that they're feeling.

01:34:17

Because again, the interpretation and the subsequent external behavior that grows from that, oftentimes different people will have the exact same physiological responses, they interpret it differently and therefore they act differently.

01:34:31

That's a really key thing. So, with that said, with that foundation laid, as I said earlier about Jesus, He is going to perfectly interpret

01:34:40

His emotions, His physiological responses, and He's going to use them the right way every single time. That's a big thing that separates

01:34:46

Jesus from us, because we do not do it the right way. To his second question, will you read it again for me, Chris? All right,

01:34:52

I have to look it up again. Let's see here. Oh, sorry about that. How do you control your emotions when doing biblical counseling?

01:34:59

Can a counselor empathize with a counselee? Yeah. So, when

01:35:07

I'm in a situation, it's not really a question of controlling my emotions. It might be a question of controlling my responses, but it really starts with an appropriate interpretation of what's going on.

01:35:18

I'm dealing with somebody, and let's just say this individual is really in a state of, you know, this is one of those moments where I'm bearing somebody's burden, right?

01:35:26

I'm weeping with those who weep. They have lost. And yes, we should empathize with people.

01:35:32

Definitely should do that. I will say, though, that in Galatians chapter 6, it tells us that we need to meet people, right?

01:35:40

If anyone's caught in a trespass, you who are spiritual, restore such a one in the spirit of gentleness, each one looking to yourself so that you too will not be tempted.

01:35:49

If I'm looking at my counselee's emotional response, I'm realizing that there's, yes, there is legitimate chemical response going on here, but there's also sinful thinking that's multiplying their experience of suffering.

01:36:03

It would not be wise for me to empathize with that side of things. I can empathize with the loss. I can empathize with the legitimate suffering in their lives, no problem.

01:36:11

But I can't just look at it part and parcel and say, oh, they are breaking down, they're freaking out, they're crying, whatever it is. And yes, it's completely appropriate for me to feel everything that they're feeling.

01:36:19

Not if what they're feeling is inaccurate, is not appropriate. So, it's on me to be able to say, okay, what does scripture say about my response?

01:36:29

What's an appropriate emotional response in this situation for them and for me? What would be an inappropriate response for them and for me?

01:36:36

And then to make certain that I'm moderating my own, like I'm not, you know, I'm not, I'm looking to myself so that I too will not be tempted, so that I therefore, the second verse, bear one another's burdens and thereby fulfill the law of Christ.

01:36:49

So, therefore, I can actually help them in that moment and not be overwhelmed in the same thing that maybe they're tripped up in, and yet I can still empathize.

01:36:56

Now, Chris, to your point about God, the Father and the Holy Spirit and whatnot being this, you know, the Spock -like, stoic, emotionless individual,

01:37:05

I think you hit the nail on the head. And again, I don't, I'm not going to answer it all here and I'm not going to have everyone who disagrees with me go, oh, that makes sense.

01:37:12

I agree with him now. But I will say that the Bible is very filled with the terminology that you use, that God rejoicing in something,

01:37:20

God being pleased by something, God being angry, angered by something. Is that an anthropomorphism?

01:37:26

If it is, what's he really communicating? What is his experience? All of those things are hugely important, but I think one of the key things for us to understand, again, is that biblically speaking, oftentimes wrath is not actually an emotional thing, not even for human beings.

01:37:44

It can have an accompanying pure emotional chemical response like adrenaline. But wrath is a decision in the same way that joy, the

01:37:53

Bible teaches us, is a decision in the same way that the scriptures teach us that peace is a decision.

01:38:01

Contentment, gratitude, these are decisions, these are not emotions. And so, God can be wrathful at something and that had nothing to do with an emotional response.

01:38:13

God can joy in something and that not inherently have anything to do with a physiological response because even for us human beings, joy is not an emotion.

01:38:23

Joy may produce happiness. I explain it to somebody else this way. Joy is basically looking, choosing to look at something and having it in its right place.

01:38:34

Petey In fact, we'll pick up right where you left off because we have to go to our phone number. Jared I knew that was coming. Petey Don't go away, folks.

01:38:40

We'll be right back. James White of Alpha Omega Ministries here.

01:39:00

I'm very excited to announce that my long -time friend Chris Arnson of Iron Sharpens Iron Radio and I are heading down to Atlanta, Georgia again for the

01:39:09

G3 National Conference. That's Thursday, September 21st through Saturday the 23rd on a theme that I've been preaching, teaching, writing about, and defending in live public debates for most of my life, the sovereignty of God.

01:39:22

I'll be joined on the speaking roster by Steve Lawson, Voti Baucom, Paul Washer, Virgil Walker, Scott Anuel, and Josh Bice, founder of G3 Ministries.

01:39:34

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01:53:14

Aaron, you had something to say about joy before the break. Yes, joy.

01:53:23

So, basically, we were talking about the fact that joy is simply mentally acquiescing, if I can put it that way, that something, recognizing that it is exactly where it should be, putting it in its right spot.

01:53:37

You know, we have that picture, we put it up our wall, and when it gets to just the right spot, it's like, ah, yes, that's where it needed to be.

01:53:45

The truth of the situation is that God is here and he's using this situation for a reason, to glorify himself and to be for our ultimate good.

01:53:55

I have joy when I put those things in the right spot. That's when

01:54:00

I experience joy. And that joy can happen in a moment of overpowering negative, you know, physiological responses, you know, fear, adrenaline rush, or just the stresses of life, or whatever the case may be.

01:54:14

We see this all throughout scripture and David in the Psalms, we see this a lot, a lot of physical, external stresses, and yet he's joying in God.

01:54:23

Now, in those difficult times of suffering, the emotional response of joy, the happiness, we might say, or that what could flow from having, rejoicing in God, oftentimes is not able to overpower the very real external stresses in our lives, and we wouldn't expect it to.

01:54:43

And next time, I really hope that we can use some, I want to share some very real examples from my own life of times that I have had physiological responses in my body that were completely uncontrollable, and yet how during those times,

01:54:57

I could still glorify God by responding correctly. And that's really what joying is.

01:55:03

Now, all things being normal, right? You know, if we put the picture up on the wall and, you know, life is good, we're like, ah, that gives me so much joy, and we start to feel happy because of it.

01:55:15

But if the house is burning down around us, putting that picture on the wall in just the right spot isn't really going to produce the same amount of happiness.

01:55:21

Why? Because there are other things that are a little bit more important at that moment. And so, joy, wrath, biblical hatred, biblical love, biblical joy, biblical contentment and peace are not truly emotions, though sometimes in certain situations, just like, again, you know, my physical emotions,

01:55:43

I have a physiological response to an external stimuli, I can have it to an internal stimuli.

01:55:49

So, there are times when I'm rejoicing in God and I feel happy. There are times when I have peace in God and I feel happy.

01:55:59

And there are times when I can join God and be at peace and not feel happy. That's a very real thing, a very real possibility.

01:56:07

And again, so much of this makes sense, so much of this becomes accessible to us when we overcome the language barrier, really, we have in communicating these ideas and start to put things into their correct places and understand them for what they are.

01:56:22

We have an anonymous listener who says, can we truly, as Christians, put a time limit on grief after losing a spouse, a parent, a child, anyone that we love who is near and dear to us?

01:56:38

There are some Christians who seem to think that there must be some kind of a time limit on how long we mourn over that person.

01:56:48

So, I'm going to start by saying that it's probably a very subjective thing, you know, the level of the relationship with the individual, the person mourning,

01:56:57

I mean, there's just so much involved. So, if there were a time limit per se, it would be a subjective time limit.

01:57:03

We might all have different time limits, not everyone having the exact same time limit.

01:57:10

Chris, as most of us know who followed Chris for any amount of time, you know, by God's providence, lost his wife.

01:57:17

How long ago was that, Chris? 2010. 2010, okay. And so,

01:57:23

Chris' experience in that likely was not identical to any other person's experience, and I can't speak to that for him.

01:57:32

However, what I can say is this, sin is sin is sin, and it's never appropriate.

01:57:37

If a person in their legitimate, what we're going to call like a daily sorrow, the sorrow that comes as a result of living in a fallen world and people sitting against us and having physical issues and losing people, the suffering that results is loss, okay?

01:57:52

If we're glorifying God in that loss, then however long that loss lasts is probably appropriate.

01:58:01

But the moment I'm not glorifying God in how I'm responding to that loss, that needs to stop.

01:58:07

And so, sometimes we have that normal daily sorrow that's mixed with a sinful sorrow.

01:58:14

And we kind of look at it all as part and parcel. We say, well, you know, some people will say that sorrow's wrong, and they're looking at the whole thing and they're missing the fact that no, there's a legitimate sorrow that should be part of that.

01:58:23

Other people look at it and go, well, it's completely okay. All of it's right, when in actuality, no, there's a facet of that sorrow that's wrong.

01:58:29

And we need to get our brains on, we need to open up our Bibles, we need to compare and contrast what we're experiencing with scripture, and we need to make certain that we're lining up with him.

01:58:36

So, yeah, there is a time limit for sinful sorrow. It needs to stop as quickly as possible. And I don't know that there's necessarily a time limit for that daily sorrow.

01:58:48

Yeah, and obviously, if someone is reaching the point where their mourning and grieving has become their slave master, and it is crippling their lives in some significant way, they need to have patient and gentle brothers and sisters reaching out to them in a correct way.

01:59:11

But we are out of time right now. And don't forget, folks, we are going to have part two of our discussion on the doctrine of emotions tomorrow with A .M.

01:59:20

Brewster. That is Tuesday, the 27th of June.

01:59:25

And we hope that you tune in and send in your questions. I want to thank you so much, as always, for being an excellent guest.

01:59:32

I want to remind our listeners of your website. It is TruthLoveParent .com,

01:59:38

and also EvermindMinistries. what? EvermindMinistries.

01:59:46

what, brother? EvermindMinistries .com. Yeah, EvermindMinistries .com. Okay. And I want to thank everybody who listened, especially those who took the time to write in questions.

01:59:56

I want you all to always remember for the rest of your lives that Jesus Christ is a far greater