Worshipping at the Alter of Emotionalism

This is Apologetics Live. To answer your questions, your host, from Striving for Eternity Ministries, Andrew Rappaport.

You are not Andrew. You're a liar. But you're not

Andrew either. I'm offended. Well, you know what?

I'm offended that you're offended. Oh, I see. So if you want to play this game, two can play at that game.

That's it. I'm out. Welcome everybody to Apologetics Live.

Andrew Rappaport is not here. It is myself, Drew, from Matter of Theology, and A .M.

Brewster, one of Striving for Eternity's podcasters and speakers. So here's the thing.

If you would like Aaron to come to your church and speak, all you have to do is...

What's the email? Send an email to info at strivingforeternity .com and request him to come speak.

And he can speak on anything. He can speak on dinosaurs. He can speak on eschatology.

He can speak on all forms of science. You're going to get me in trouble, man. I was padding your resume.

Yeah, yeah, great. I appreciate that. I got to live up to it. I guess

I don't have to since I'm not a Striving for Eternity speaker. And also you can just go to Striving for Eternity and there's a form there as well.

That's something they can do. That's right. Yes, that's true. You can do that.

But where would the fun in that be, you know? Sending emails is so much more fun.

Sending emails is so much more fun. But we want to welcome you guys tonight. We've got an interesting show.

I don't think something we haven't really discussed on this show, at least as long as I've been a part or I've been associating with the show, which has been probably, what, two, three years -ish around there.

But first, hold on. I got to pull this up. Chris Honholtz is in the comments.

Yeah, he is. What's up? He's taking a break from Twitter. I mean, X, and he's hanging out with us tonight.

That's right. That's right. Plus, he's a Christian podcast community podcaster, so you can head on over, listen to Voice of Reason radio.

You will be edified. I love Voice of Reason. I mean, who doesn't?

I mean, I don't know. Chris comes up with some of the greatest episodes. I just love listening to them.

So we were trying to discuss, trying to find something about the news to talk about in the opening, and we kind of landed on something that I think is absolutely true, and it came from all people of Mike Tyson, pretty much.

And I think we need to discuss this and open this up more because I don't think this is going to get us in trouble at all.

No, definitely not, definitely not. Well, it started because I made an observation that there are these videos going around, and you'd seen them where women are getting up in men's faces, like people are videoing this.

This is supposedly happening in real life, God forbid. And these men are just sick of it, and they're hauling off, and they're just decking these women or pushing or kicking or whatever, which

I'm just going to say, somebody's already asking a martial arts question in the chat. I'll say, as a martial artist, a woman's going to have to do an awful lot before I'm going to put my hands on her.

Likely the chances of me ever punching or kicking a woman is exceptionally slim, and it's nearly impossible to justify.

I'm leaving a tiny crack open because I can think of some situations where it would be. But none of these videos is a justify.

It's wicked, and it's awful. But people are talking about not whether or not the guy should have punched her, but whether or not she deserved it because of all the garbage she was saying.

And Mike Tyson, it was a number of months ago. I can't remember exactly when. He was commenting in the way that only

Mike Tyson can, which I would never do to his face because of what

I'm about to just share. I'm glad you said that before I took my drink because it would have hit my nose.

He's talking about people. They say all this stuff on the internet because there's no fear of reprisal.

Not really. What's a person going to do? Want me to block you? He said, back in the day, though, you say that to someone's face, and you just get punched.

He's basically saying more people need to get punched. And I think, in a way, we're seeing the fulfillment of that months later because people are saying the same stupid things that they say online in the real world, and they're getting punched, whether they should or not.

So that's the news item. How long ago was it when they did the

Oscars, which I did not watch, but I heard about it after the fact. Maybe it was earlier this year.

I want to say last year, but I think it was this year. I think it was. Chris Rock makes an offhand joke about Jada Pinkett Smith basically being bald.

She has alopecia, and so she doesn't have any hair. You can argue it was a tasteful joke or not, but Will Smith just gets up in the middle of the show, steps up there, and just slaps

Chris Rock. Just boom, right? A huge fallout that happened from all of that.

Why is this happening? What are we seeing? People are justifying burning down cities.

That epic meme when Trump was proclaimed President of the

United States, and there was that individual that, no, that scream of utter despair.

Emotions in this country in particular, I'd say lots of places in the world, but emotions in this country are absolutely at a boiling point.

It is everywhere. It's online. It's in person. We're seeing the looting that's going on in a lot of the liberal cities and the retaliation sometimes that's coming as a part of that, and the political stuff.

I mean we have so many, and never before in my life have I seen so many political politicians stooping to using such vulgar language in their impassioned tirades.

It's like it used to be that certain words, that's for the sailors, right? But nowadays it's just everybody, be a president, say whatever you want.

So this… You can also be a pastor and say whatever you want as long as you're in Acts.

Yeah, as long as you're in Acts 29. Well, I have to say the King James Version does make it difficult for some people.

You just can't preach certain passages if you're not going to use certain words. True. So I did not come up with this title.

I think it's a great title. It's perfect for this show because it takes a concept and really, really – but I have to say there is a misspelling.

There is a misspelling. Andrew did all the spelling. I just came up with the name of the title. Oh, Andrew, A -L -T -A -R, altar,

A -L -T -A -R, Worshipping at the Altar of Emotionalism. Oh my word. I think just to simplify that though, what we're seeing – and that's accurate.

Worshipping at the Altar of Emotionalism to a certain degree is definitely accurate. But what we're seeing is just an absolute – an utter explosion.

I mean human sacrifice on the altar of emotion, and it's insane.

I do want to say here real quick something, kind of a funny observation into more of a serious note, into a little bit of a shout out.

So this is my fourth time on this show, and all four times I've appeared from a different place. This is my fourth place in my second state that I've been on this show.

This time we're in Indiana. We just drove up today. My kids and I were in the van.

Actually, it's going to sound strange. My wife flew. She has a medical condition that makes eight hours, nine hours in the van almost unbearable.

So my kids and I were driving, and we just got here. We had a little bit of time, and then I cruised over here for this.

But we're here because a week ago on Friday my wife's grandfather died. So we're talking about emotions, right?

The emotions running high around a funeral. Some bittersweet, some very sad, some joyful, right?

Emotions all over the place. That's where we are right now as a family, experiencing that, preparing for the funeral tomorrow.

So I'm in a different place, but I do want to show you a little bit about where I am because of its tie to the gentleman who passed away.

So many years ago an evangelist, Ford Porter, wrote a tract, a salvation tract that some of you may be familiar with.

It's called God's Simple Plan of Salvation. This was actually one of the original ones, but then there was this one that was a very familiar design during my years in the 80s and so on and so forth growing up.

And then they came out with this design here, which looks like this one there. It's God's Simple Plan of Salvation.

So my wife's great -grandfather wrote this. His son,

Robert Porter, who just died last Friday, and then my wife's father,

Mark Porter, run the LifeGate tract ministry where they produce

God's Simple Plan of Salvation, but they also have other tracts that they've produced. And I know

Andrew is huge on using various tracts and is a very huge street preaching ministry and handing out tracts.

So I'm kind of sharing this because I know a lot of his viewers are potentially going to be familiar or should be familiar with LifeGate tract ministry.

They have tracts in over 125 languages. And the ones that they know about, their tracts get printed by a lot of people.

They're not always the one printing them, but the ones they know about, over 660 million copies have been printed over the life of this tract in just all over the world, again, over 125 different languages.

So it's been a significant ministry for a long time. So again,

Ford Porter wrote the tract. His son took over the ministry. He just passed away. It's his funeral, his life that we are celebrating tomorrow.

He was a born again believer. And then his son, my father -in -law, still runs the ministry to this day.

So when I landed at his house, he said, you should go over to the office and you have the whole place in quiet there.

So that is where I am tonight. So a lot of information there, something silly. Well, we got a lot of people in the comments saying that they're going to be praying for you and your family.

I will likewise. Thank you very much. I appreciate that. So, I mean, wow, that's awesome.

Just to think about that many tracts that are being printed and going out, right, being put in the hands of people.

That's mind -blowing. Huge, big number. A lot of years, a lot of sacrifice, big number.

But praise God that his word doesn't return void. And that's one thing that the original tract, all their tracts really have a lot, just tons and tons of Scripture and put into a easily -to -consume format that people can encounter

God's word and have the Holy Spirit work through that. And it really is a powerful medium. Yeah.

You know, just when you were mentioning gospel tracts and handing out tracts, it just brought this to my mind, which was kind of funny.

If everyone, Drew's not feeling well. If you hear him sniffle and you hear him cough, he is not feeling well.

You need to pray for this man because he is under the weather. The sinus infection, absolutely.

It is the pressure all around here. So if I fall out, that's why.

I just passed out. You'll have to take over the show from there.

But so yesterday we had, because G3 started today, the G3 conference. Well, there was a pre -conference rally at one of the abortion mills in Atlanta.

And OSA, Operation Save America, was putting it on. And I was one of the speakers.

I was one of the prayer leaders. So we had guys like Jeff Durbin, Luke Pearson, Zachary Conover from Apology and End Abortion Now that came to speak.

And so we spoke on some different topics. And I mean, there was a lot of people there, more than I was expecting.

And I was one of the prayer leaders for that. Well, we get done, and we're doing some ministry afterwards.

There was some ministry that took place before, ministry that took place afterwards, just calling out to women, trying to get them to come talk to us and not to kill their baby.

And one of the things that's encouraging is when I was looking out, I'm standing on the ladder and I'm doing my prayer.

But before that, I'm looking out and kind of surveying the crowd. And I noticed there's a lot of teenagers and people just in their 20s, like early 20s.

I'm like, wow, a lot of young people are getting into this fight against abortion.

And that's encouraging. But it was towards the end, and we're doing ministry.

And some of the younger folks there were from Praise Mill Baptist Church, Josh Bice's church.

And one kid was wearing a God is Sovereign shirt, which is the theme of the conference this year, God is

Sovereign. Well, a lady was pulling out of the abortion mill, and she had her window rolled down, and she was going to receive a gospel tract.

And this kid with the shirt, he jumped out to give her a gospel tract just as a car was turning in, and he wasn't paying attention to the car.

And I was like, this kid is really trusting in the sovereignty of God right now.

Or just not paying attention. As he is trying to give this woman a tract.

Lift the shirt. Yeah, but it was encouraging yesterday to see that. A lot of young people out there trying to save babies.

But getting back to our topic of emotionalism. Now, how do we define emotions?

If we had to put a definition on emotions, I think that's a good place to start.

How would we define emotions? It's an almost good place to start. I want to get there really quickly, but there's something else

I think would be good to point out because the reality is emotions are not easy to define.

That's part of the reason we are where we are. If we dive into that, there will be a lot of people going, that's just a lot of information.

Wait a second. What I like to do, anytime I discuss this, and I discuss this frequently because this is such a huge deal.

As a biblical counselor, this comes up a lot in counseling. I work a ton with parents.

Emotions and parenting from both sides is huge. One of the things I like to start off with is what I call acknowledging the discrepancies when we talk about emotions.

Sometimes the best thing we can do before looking at something the right way is to acknowledge that all of these are the wrong way.

Some of the discrepancies we see, and there's really four main ones, is that, first of all, we talk about feelings as feelings.

These aren't all wrong, but it's just what we do. Oh, what's up? Andrew Rappaport, he's coming in.

Are you in a sauna? I think he's in a sauna. No. Actually, this is the cabin.

I'm in the camp of the woods. Ooh, nice. That sounds cool. Wait, here.

For proof, since I'm here. Here's my pillow. Oh, yes. See, I brought my pillow.

I'm up in the air. Is that a word that you have to say, my, my pillow? Yes, I brought it. Yes. So, Andrew.

I think you can come up with a better name of the company. So, Aaron, notice a spelling error in the title that you put there.

I didn't know it was you. I was blaming Drew for that. Wait, there's no way you copy and pasted that for me.

So, what did it say?

Nope, because in mine, it was lowercase A. You typed that in there as uppercase

A, so you had to put it. It's Altar, A -L -T -A -R, not E -R, but it's okay.

It's okay. I thought I was making fun of Drew, but then he threw you under the bus, and I was like, oh, I shouldn't have said anything. It probably was me.

I think I thought all I did was capitalize them to make it a title, but hey, oh, well, sorry.

Somebody asked if you're at the Overcoming Evil Conference. Yes. Here, I'll turn it this way so that we're all in.

Yes, I am at the Overcoming Evil Conference. John Harris spoke tonight, just doing a good job encouraging men to be men, to not be afraid to, you know, to be men.

It's a crazy idea. But I know that you guys are going to be talking a good topic that we'll have on emotionalism, so I'm looking forward to hearing that later.

So, it should be good. Keep forgetting that we have to be good because he listens to this later.

Keep forgetting that. That's right. Thank you for reminding me, Andrew. Yes.

You know, you have to behave yourselves. But, yes, so, you know, maybe,

Aaron, I'm going to try to get you out for this event next year, we'll see, if he wants to talk. But, yes,

I just figured I'd pop in real quick. We're going to go, all the men are going to get together for a bonfire. I don't know who

I'm throwing in as the, oh, wait, we're not supposed to do that. No, okay. But I was talking about tonight's topic at church

Wednesday night at our prayer meeting, so a lot of people seem interested to hear about it. And, you know, my pastor,

I don't know if I told you, Aaron, but he's an ACBC counselor, he and his wife, so they were looking forward to last week's.

Very cool. Well, Chris is joining us today in the comments. So, I mean, everybody's here.

He's been, like, absent for a long time. Hello, Chris. He's here tonight. He's here tonight. Yeah. Howdy.

He says, howdy, Andrew. Howdy, partner. Get along, little doggie.

Well, okay, that's what I'll do. I'll get along. I'll see you guys later. Look forward to the discussion.

All right. All right. All right. So we're about to talk about the discrepancies we're having.

And the first thing I was pointing out is the fact that we talk about feelings as feelings. We say things like, I feel sore.

I feel sick. You feel sick, right? Don't you? You feel sick. I feel cold, you know, people will say.

We also talk about, though, like, feelings as emotions. I feel happy. I feel sad.

I feel afraid. So there's a difference, right? There's feelings, but then there's emotions, feelings.

But we also, especially in the church, we talk a lot about feeling as religion. I feel like God is talking to me.

See, not feeling, not emotion, something very different. I feel the Holy Spirit's presence.

I feel the peace of God. That one's kind of close. Maybe sometimes we think it would be emotions, things. So in feelings, there's both a subjective aspect and an objective aspect, right?

So the I feel, which physically I feel cold or I feel sick.

I feel those symptoms. And then that would be the objectively. And then subjectively is kind of in the abstract.

I feel like God is saying something or moving. Yes, that's an accurate delineation.

But I still think even that objective reality is different too.

So we were joking earlier, you being from Georgia, I used to live up in the north woods of Wisconsin.

You and I feel cold differently. I feel cold at a very different temperature than you.

I mean, I'll just say you feel cold way earlier than I feel cold. So I think one of the important things we're going to see as we go through here is we're going to learn to understand the subjective nature of feelings in general.

Okay. For sure. But there are even some things that are even more subjective than others.

And this last one I think is really rough. So there's feelings as feelings, feelings as emotions, feeling as religion. But then there's also feelings as thoughts.

I feel like you're mad at me. I feel like this isn't the best decision. I feel like there's another way.

Thomas Sowell, a philosopher, a brilliant man, he says, quote, the problem isn't that Johnny can't read.

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

He confuses it with feeling, unquote. And so since we use this word feel in all of these different ways, nobody has any consensus on what we're talking about.

And this is why it's super important for the Christian to say, okay, well, what are feelings?

What are emotions? Biblically speaking, how did God create us? How does all this work? Because whatever our vocabulary consistently tells us constitutes the most integral parts of our existence, that will become eventually the single most important concept in our lives.

So if everything is identified as feelings, that becomes central in our lives. And I think we're seeing that definitely in the world today.

And when we look at the scriptures, we see that actually feelings are very periphery, very periphery when we understand what they really are.

So that's one of the discrepancies. There's a discrepancy in vocabulary. There's also a discrepancy in perception.

And this kind of goes to what you were saying earlier. The world has told us a couple things. Only you can know your feelings.

Only you can accurately interpret your feelings. You will always accurately interpret your feelings.

I just have to laugh at that one. Yeah. Well, that's the case. You can't tell me how

I feel. Well, yeah, I'm not sure that you can tell you how you feel. But then the really scary one is that feelings are reality, which means that because feelings are reality, feelings are more important than anything else.

Those are the perception that we have about feelings. And then there's questions about discrepancies in the authority, like who gets to decide how important emotions are, who gets to decide the purpose of emotions, who gets to decide what emotions mean.

So there's all of these discrepancies, all these things that we need to push all that off the table for a moment.

And we need to kind of start from scratch by opening up God's word and saying, okay, Lord, what do you have to say about emotions?

And it's now that I find once everyone sits back and goes, you know what, I haven't thought about it. But I rarely ever say

I think anymore. I say I feel. And man, oh, man, there are some people

I know, they never say I want, they never say I think, they never say I believe. They've just substituted the word feel for all of it.

And if they stop it and if they're honest with themselves, they realize that they use that word in so many different ways that there are two great dangers.

Number one, that the word doesn't mean anything anymore. It literally carries no meaning. But then there's the other danger that I take this definition of feeling that's appropriate when

I use the word over here and I cram it into this one. The perfect example of this is the whole idea of the peace of God.

A whole generation of Christians believe that the peace of God is a feeling. Now I believe with all my heart that there are feelings that accompany the peace of God, oftentimes, not always.

But the reason that they believe that the peace of God is a feeling is in part because of our sloppy usage of our vocabulary.

We talk about feeling God's peace. Are we really feeling it? Is that the right word that we should be using?

Is that how the scripture is? So we take all these ideas that are accurate about emotions, and then we cram it into this usage of our word feeling, and we think it's appropriate, and that just completely messes up this understanding that we're supposed to have over here.

So there's just so much danger if we're not going to do it the way the scriptures say we should do it.

Yeah, that's a... I think you just gave a lot of information.

Right? It's true, I do that. That was all the negative stuff, like what we shouldn't be doing. Right, right.

That was a lot of information. Melissa has a good comment here.

Transgenders base their identity on their feelings. So sad. And when you were talking about the discrepancies, right,

I think this was in the perspective. They have a feeling, and they say,

I feel this way. I feel like I'm this gender. I don't feel like I'm this gender.

Like my assigned gender. I don't feel like that. And so they do everything they can to try to change into that gender based on their feeling.

And if you don't accept my feeling, you're bigoted, right? You could be a racist if it's someone, a person of color, right?

And so you have to, no matter what the cost, you have to accept my feeling because my feeling trumps what you think or my feeling trumps reality.

I think it was in the discrepancy in reality that you were talking about. Yeah, the person says that if I feel this way, it must be true.

And you can't understand it. So I have to explain to you and then you have to accept it as true because obviously it is true.

Like I feel like, but what's interesting is that some transgender people feel as in they have an emotional thing that they're dealing with.

Some people feel as in it's a physical thing that they're dealing with.

And some people feel as in it's just a thought process that they're dealing with, that they all feel like they're in the wrong body.

But even those three different people feel they're in the wrong body for three very different reasons.

Which one of those is emotions? Right. You know? Yeah. Yeah. This girl's uncomfortable in her, in her blossoming pubescent body.

That's a physical, oftentimes a physical, yeah. Emotions get mixed in with that too. But oftentimes that's very physical.

This person just thinks that they'd be happier as a boy. But this person right here is having this emotional turmoil caused by, you know, the popularity of this movement in the world caused by, you know, confusion in the, in themselves.

And it's not a physical thing. It's not a thought thing. It's actually there and having emotional turmoil, you know? Yeah. What's the real issue there.

And each person's going to be a little bit different. Now, you also brought up a point as well, that you don't hear people say,

I think. You hear them say, I feel. And so, and so they're confusing thoughts and feelings or they're not, or they're being led by feeling and not actually thinking about what they're feeling.

So in that is, is our people just not being taught how to think and are they being taught how to be led by emotions?

And that's why they're, they're, they're not resulting to, well, hold on.

Instead of me responding, or instead of me reacting, you know, maybe

I should stop, slow down, think, and respond accordingly. I'm just going to react according to my feelings.

Yeah. We, I think it's safe to say that most people do kind of feel their way through lives.

Even, even intentional. I mean, born again, believers, I put myself into this category. I was, you know,

I was driving up here. How much of that driving was on autopilot? How much of that just kind of goes into just brain off, doing whatever kind of feels right.

Seems right in the moment, you know? Yeah. So, yeah, I think that's a human thing, right?

The question about whether or not we don't think right is 100 % true. I actually, I, I have a free podcast series called teach your children to think because though we, though God created us to think and he commands us to think and he capacitates us to think we don't naturally think well, we actually have to be taught how to think

God's thoughts after him, have to have the mind of Christ. If we just assume that our children think and they think, okay, we're, we're handicapping them because the reality is we all need to grow in our thinking as we are maturing and becoming discerning and wise and submitting to the scriptures.

So no, people don't think well and it's a lot easier just to feel. It's also a lot more fun. Sure. It's way more fun of an experience just to kind of feel happy.

And so throw myself into it. Right. And to be honest, sometimes we just really like feeling negative feelings too.

Like I've ever been in a bad mood and you, someone tried to cheer you up and you didn't want to be cheered up. Yeah. Because there's a certain enjoyment that can happen there because of the nature of what emotions are.

And we'll get to that soon. You know what, what our emotions now could enjoy that. What you're, what you're saying with that in the feeling negative could some of that be,

I want to continue to feel negative because there's a tension that comes from feeling negative.

I'm getting attention from people because they're always now they're coming to me and saying, what's wrong, how can

I help you? And I'm enjoying turning them away or something like that. There are so many dynamics.

I think the key though, comes down to the very nature of what emotions are like, what an actual emotion.

And I, I try to stray away from the word feeling. I try to use them. They're a little interchangeable, right?

We talk about like tactile feeling, right. Versus a feeling in here. Yeah. But when

I'm talking about a pure emotion, I'm talking about what's actually happening in the body. And that is a gift, a wonderful gift from God designed for many purposes that when we misunderstand it can become a horrendous tool for evil.

So if you think it's a good idea, this is where we, this is where we get to your original question about what's the definition, you know, what are emotions?

You think it's a good opportunity for that? Do you want to dig into this other stuff? Well, let's, let's pull up some comments here. Dee says, feelings are being exalted above critical thinking in our culture.

I think that's absolutely right. I mean, even to the point where even if you're able to get someone to think they're actually, if you listen closely, they're not able to think incorrect categories.

So things are all over the place, even in what they're saying. I mean, I don't know if you've noticed that in some, in some people.

Oh no, for sure. Yeah. It's like, actually Natasha crane. I've interviewed her a number of times on my show.

She's a wonderful apologist. She talks about the fact that it used to be something where you in a debate, you would win if you were able to prove that you were more logical.

Right. Nowadays, that's not the case. In fact, you're made fun of if you're trying to be logical because all anyone cares about is the emotion you're able to drum up.

I am a, an anonymous Facebook user. Maybe you can put that one up there. It says so many are deconstructing their faith because of this very issue.

Maybe there was a void of solid beliefs because their whole faith system was built on feeling in many cases. And that's also super true.

It's like sometimes, I mean, I obviously anybody who truly deconstructs their faith was never born again.

Right. So what was their, what was their initial experience built on the vast majority of the time?

Those, those experiences are built on an emotional experience. I felt something, you know, right.

And, and so therefore I, I, I believe that something had happened. Yeah. And we see that.

I know being someone who was in the charismatic movement, who played worship in the charismatic movement, played all the songs, the

Bethel's, the Hill songs, mainly because I just wanted to play those guitar riffs, right.

And be the guitar player that everyone looked at, but it's eliciting an emotional response.

That's the whole purpose. And so when you go to these concerts, you go to the conferences, everything is emotion driven.

And even at their churches to where the right, the Bible's not taught. They're not taught how to think about who

God is. It's the, it's emotionalism that's put forth. And so when, when they have a call to, to accept

Christ or something, they don't know what they're doing because they haven't even been presented a

Christ. They've just been presented emotion. I think we may have talked about this last time, but having been on the music industry on the secular side of things,

I, I, I mean, obviously you wrote songs to make people feel a certain thing. We, we had a parody song that we wrote.

The song was called no jumping. And, but the song was written that that's exactly what you'd want to do.

What, when listening to it, you'd make you want to like hop up and down, right. And then jump around. And then partway through the song, there'd be this guy and like this speaker going, no jumping because we knew what we were doing.

We wrote songs, you know, ballady love songs are driving power chords because we wanted a person to feel something.

And, and the, and the secular music industry isn't hiding that for a long time.

Contemporary Christian music. They did hide that, you know, it was about worship and God, but even nowadays more and more, they're just coming out and saying, no, we have to create this emotional experience because they equate that emotional experience to the presence of God, which is that discrepancy of feelings as religion, which are really super dangerous.

Yeah. Yeah. Which, which kind of gets into this comment here by was lost, but now I'm found dopamine.

And what is that word? Endorphin. Endorphin. See, I can't read inducing.

I'm a guitar player, right? So I can't read music, right? I can just read, read tab. That's it.

Well, that, and so what that, that person just said the dopamine, the endorphins that we're actually getting to what pure emotion actually is.

And when you were saying sometimes we'd like, we just like to be upset. A lot of people don't can't understand somebody who would cut themselves, who would actually create physical pain to themselves.

We don't get that. But what the person who does that knows is that there is an endorphin hit.

There is that there is that, that reward stimulus from the body when that occurs.

And so that, that person who just wants to be grumpy and mad at the world.

And that person who is cutting themselves or that person who is just always on this artificial high, they're all getting an artificial chemical hit from their bodies, which continues to reinforce that.

so here's the big question that has to be asked that we need to, as Christians need to come to a consensus on what, what our emotions.

And I want to start with the killer description of, of a pure emotion, because I think that this secular description actually gets it partially right.

Okay. This, this secular description gets it far more right than many Christians do. They break the emotional response into three main things because it can't just be broken into one.

They say there's a subjective experience. The state most often described as being external.

And by the way, this, this is just coming from like wow, this is psychology today or something.

It was, I should have, everyone agrees. They all said the same thing. Sorry, I didn't, I didn't cite them properly, but most psychologists will say these three things are the key, a subjective experience, generally external and internal physiological response.

And that's key. There's a biological chemical physiological response. When we're talking about emotions, or I should say pure emotions, we are talking about that chemical response in our bodies.

Okay. And then the psychiatrist said, then there's an external behavior that follows from that, that three pronged thing is what is defined as the emotion.

So somebody sees a spider, they have that feeling and they freak out and they extend on the chair and they start screaming emotion, right?

Right. The problem is the, those three things are accurate. There are some other things that they're missing.

And this is where we turn to the scriptures to start to understand the full picture of what emotions are.

And I'm gonna go through these quickly. I'm gonna go through them quickly because I have other resources.

Available. Like if we've got a truth, love parent .com and you click on the podcast series, I have a whole podcast about emotions and parenting.

And I D I dig into these things a little bit closer. I'm actually doing an ACBC workshop. A week or so in California, we'll be talking about these things in more detail, but emotions.

And we look at in the scriptures, we see a couple of things. First of all, emotions are a gift. I mentioned that earlier. Okay. God has given us emotions.

He's gifted the individual. He's gifted the body of Christ and he's gifted friends and, and authorities.

He, the fact that I can enjoy life, the fact that we're not just robots, right.

That is a gift from God. We have these highs and we have these lows and they have purpose. I'm not going to go into the gift to the body and the gift to the, the spiritual authorities at this moment.

But the big part of that is as we interact with each other, you know, they are a gift. I can,

I can be a blessing to you with my emotions and you can be a blessing to me. And so on and so forth. Secondly, though, emotions just aren't a gift for us to use.

However we want. It's kind of like sex. It's kind of like all the other things in the world that we've perverted a gift from God that we've taken and twisted because God intended for emotions to also be a tool.

Okay. First Corinthians 10 31, whether therefore you eat or drink or whatsoever you do, we could insert, you know, or feel do all to the glory of God.

God is supposed to have the preeminence in everything. When people look at our lives and they see our good works, they need to glorify our father.

Who's in heaven. And our emotions are part of that package. What we say, what we do, what we feel, those things that outer the, even though emotions happen on the inside, as we said earlier, the external response is a big part of it.

It's something that people see. It motivates a lot of what we do and what we say. And so those things need to point people to Christ.

And that's a huge part of the tool that God has given us. And then the last thing that God has given us emotions for is, is that emotions are a gauge.

Hannah, sorry, Rebecca, Hannah, a biblical counselor with ACBC has said numerously, emotions are not a guide.

They're a gauge. And the old illustration is very simple. Like, you know, I just drove up here and a number of times driving up here.

My, my gas light would come on. I don't fix that problem by taking a screwdriver or a knife or a hammer and breaking out the gas light that doesn't fix it.

Right. Right. I fixed the problem by putting gas into the car. It's telling me that there's a problem somewhere else that I need to investigate.

Okay. And in a similar way, our emotions are a gauge for us of our spirituality.

And I like, I just, I sum it up this way. If God says, this should make you more mourn.

And I'm not mourning. That's a problem. That's a problem. Yeah. God says you should rejoice over this.

And I'm not rejoicing. That's a problem. Conversely, you know, if I'm, you know, if I got, you know, it goes both ways.

I'm either feeling something I shouldn't be feeling or not feeling something I should be feeling. Right. Both of those omission or commission ends up being an issue.

So we see that there are three main reasons that God's given us emotions. One is a gift. It helps us do many different things to it's a tool ultimately to give him glory, to point people to him.

And three, it's a gauge for us to be able to determine, are we where we need to be?

Right. We look at our behavior. We look at our words, we look at our feelings, and that is a good picture.

And by the way, that's what biblical counselors do. When we meet with people, we're, we're gauging the fruit, what they're saying, what they're doing, what they're feeling as a view into their spirits.

So with that understanding, we can round out our definition. And unfortunately, again, like I said, it's not simple.

The secular definition had three parts. The more biblically accurate definition has five parts and there's overlap.

So it starts with an external or internal response, right? So I see a spider or I have a dream about a spider.

I see a spider or I thought I saw a spider. So sometimes it's external.

Sometimes it's internal. Then there's an internal physiological response. So there's that, there's that rush of whatever, which is then followed by something that the psychiatrist miss.

It is an internal mental, or we would say spiritual response to the chemical response.

What do I mean by this? It's very interesting. You can take three different people, give all three of them the exact same chemical, physiological response, and all three of them will define that response differently.

Let me, let me help you out with this. A person walks coming into October, right?

Person walks into a scary house, right? A haunted house, right? They have a surge of what they have a surge of adrenaline.

Adrenaline. Yeah. And they say, I'm freaking. I'm afraid. I'm scared. Another person gets onto a roller coaster.

They love roller coasters. What happens in their body? Surge of adrenaline. What do they say?

I love this. This is awesome. They say, I'm exhilarated. I'm excited. I'm pumped. Third person finally out on a date with that person.

They've been wanting to go on a date with for a long time. They feel that surge of adrenaline. How do they interpret it?

Attraction. Now, scientifically, medically speaking, the actual chemical response in the fear stimulus, the adrenaline, the exhilaration stimulus, and the attraction stimulus are nearly identical.

Sometimes they are exactly identical. And yet there's a further mental component, which is interpreting that response.

I used to teach. I used to be an actor. I used to teach people acting and speech.

And I would oftentimes have students who say, you know, I have stage fright. I would say, no, you don't. You have what everyone has.

You have what I have. It's a gift from God. It's called adrenaline. And it's a tool to help us focus our minds and to speak loud enough and to gesture in the positive ways.

That's what you're experiencing. The problem is you've had people tell you and you've told yourself that that feeling that you're feeling is fear.

It's not right. It's adrenaline. And I want to teach you how to use that tool.

And so we convince ourselves that I'm feeling fear when

I'm not feeling fear. I'm just feeling adrenaline. And that piece right there can free.

I've seen it free so many people. Yeah. When they recognize that I'm not actually mad.

I'm not actually afraid. I'm actually just having that natural reaction that God wired into my body, that adrenaline reaction, which accounts for a lot of the emotions that we encounter in a day.

And I just need to learn to take that and to use that into Christ honoring way in this situation.

It kicks open doors for understanding how God designed us and how we're supposed to work in this life.

And we're almost done with this definition. I know I'm saying a lot of things. You probably want to go back. Well, I mean, it's just that part because you said that that's an overlooked part.

Right. The internal mental response to the adrenaline.

Right. We feel the same feeling of adrenaline, but it's being interpreted differently based upon the situation.

Yeah. And so we have to be able to interpret it correctly. And then I'll say, parents, parents, you teach your children how to interpret their emotions.

Right. Which is really scary considering that you don't actually know what they're feeling. You just kind of assume you know what they're feeling. Yeah. But you see your child and they pull away like this.

And what do we do? We reinforce and we call that fear. Why are we doing that?

No, they're not feeling fear. Not technically fear is it's it's almost like like fear is a real thing.

Like Jesus says, fear not. Right. Which, by the way, that's the emotion that's most talked about in scriptures and it's talked about in the negative.

Don't do it. Which means we have control over it. Right. Fear is not so much the adrenaline response.

Fear is the inappropriate response that we have to the adrenaline response. Right. That's what God's telling us not to do.

But we're telling our child that they're feeling this and we're telling them that it's OK. And then we come to them and we try to remove the elements, whatever else.

We are handicapping our children and we're lying to them. And so you just said that, you know, we're interpreting things correctly.

And I just want to put our I want to point our fingers at all the parents out there because we're the ones helping our children get an understanding of what they're feeling.

And we're oftentimes lying to them. We're giving them a false understanding of what's going on in their little bodies.

And and we need to we need to go back to a biblical reality and teach them to see experience those emotions as God would have them experience them.

Yeah, there's a let's see a question here. Kathy, can you speak to the heart used in scripture is more about the mind as a man thinks in his heart?

Yeah, so people are going to point to different passages where like heart and mind are used in the same passage.

And so therefore we're talking about different things. And in our society, people like to talk about, you know, what we do, what we think, what we feel.

Right. We talk about the person's heart and mind. In reality, the

I think the best understanding, the most simple understanding of what we see is that the word, the idea that was translated, you know, heart in the

Greek and oftentimes even in the bowels. Right. In the Hebrew language. Right. Sometimes was referring to that emotional response that the bowels in particular oftentimes dealt with that little bit of that emotional type of a thing.

But that heart concept more so dealt with the center of a man, the core of a man, their decision making part of them.

Really, it's synonymous with the idea of their spirit, their heart, their spirit, their mind, all nearly identical concepts in the scriptures.

And when we allow ourselves to take the emotion drenched language of our world, and every time we see the word heart in the

New Testament, we cram all of that into it. We get this super emotionally, you know, idea of what it is to be a

Christian. Oh, heart this and heart that. When in actuality, well, no, it's talking about how we are thinking.

It's talking about our core, our center, where we're making our decisions. The best way to understand that.

Yeah, yeah, because in reading this, this question, it takes me back to something

Bode Bauckham said a number of years ago where people were talking about how they feel.

Right. Everything is through the heart. I need to shut off my mind and I need to just feel my way through Christianity and through life.

And he was referencing Romans. I think it was Romans 12, 1 and 2, where we are to be renewed in our mind.

And so everything that for the Christian comes directly through the mind.

The heart itself is just a muscle that pumps blood, is what he said. But our mind is our knower and our feeler and what moves us to action.

So we have to have the correct mindset. Well, the mind is in order of the feeler.

Right. And that's the key. The mind is where we're going to look at this emotion and we're going to say, this is what this emotion means.

Right. Which is why if our mind is not tuned to correctly recognize the emotion, we're just lying to ourselves and setting ourselves up for disaster.

Right, right. And that's that third part we were just talking about, the mind interpreting the response.

So now there's two more, right? Yeah. So as we're talking about the phases of an emotion, there's the experience, the stimuli.

There's a physiological, biological response. Then there's the mental slash spiritual interpretation of that response, which then leads to the external behavior.

That leads to whether we stand on a chair, we scream or we freak or whatever else. But then really the fifth one is that it wraps back around because oftentimes we plunge ourselves into emotions.

We don't feel the way we feel because we saw a spider. We feel the way we feel because we feel the way we feel because we feel the way we feel about the spider.

And we can ramp up. We've done that. We've had something that bothered us. But the more we mulled it over, the more angry we got.

That oftentimes is a feeding on our own emotional loop going on. The original incident didn't change.

When it originally happened and we realized what happened, we were like, that's wrong. That shouldn't have happened. We had an emotional response to it, whatever.

But over time, when we continue reliving the exact same events, no new information, we keep reliving the exact same events and our emotions multiply and multiply.

It's not because of the original thing. It's actually because of, I'm now feeling because of my feeling.

This happens a lot in parenting. We see our child doing something. Don't do that.

But then that I had recently, my son and I went on a hike to this beautiful spot where we live in North Carolina called

Looking Glass Rock. And the entire rock faces like a 45 degree angle, right? Some are more, some are less.

And it's super high up. It's a beautiful vista. And my son who's like, he's 16 now and he's competent.

He's traipsing along this ledge. And I'd have these shots of adrenaline just surging through my legs.

It was interesting that it was my legs because my body was preparing to lunge or to leap if I had to grab him or something like that.

So I see my son doing something. I'm like, hey, be careful. But then there's that adrenaline response and I respond more.

Same situation, but now my response is really more geared to the fact that I'm responding to my emotion more than I am the situation itself.

So that's where it loops back on itself. There's the stimulus, there is the physiological response, the spiritual mental response to the physiological response, which then creates the behavior, but then wraps back around oftentimes on itself.

And now we repeat that cycle, only now we're responding to our response instead of to the original thing.

And that really is a biblical, scientific description of what is happening in an emotional response.

And like you said earlier, the key is that middle step. Recognizing the fact that, no, you don't just feel something.

You think you feel something. And being able to identify what you're really feeling, being able to identify how

God expects you to respond to that feeling is the key to freedom. The truth really does set us free.

Just feeling our way through lives is a damnable path that will lead to destruction because it never informs itself.

You never come to clarity. You never come to truth because of how you feel. You must take the truth and apply it to the situation in order to know how to respond.

You know, there was that fifth point that you were talking about. And I'm taking notes, right?

Because I'm like, man, this is good. I'm feeling because of my feelings.

And so I want to apply that. Let's say

I've heard something about someone, right?

I don't know the someone, the person. I don't actually know the situations or anything like that.

I heard something about someone with a situation. You're YouTube and you heard that Russell Brand has been accused of something inappropriate.

Right. Yeah, yeah. Good one. Now, I have a feeling about that.

But then I have a feeling about that feeling. And I'm responding based upon that feeling because of something else that gave me a feeling when

I don't know anything that's true. It could be true.

It could be false. Right. And so I'm just thinking about that in terms of someone said something or did something that caused a feeling in me.

And now I'm having a feeling about that feeling and responding to that feeling.

This is even more fun. I come to you to tell you about what that person did.

What I heard that person did. You're having a feeling about what you're hearing about what that person may have done.

But I come to you and I have a feeling. Right.

Some people, they don't like conflict. They don't like being in certain situations. So now they're feeling because, wow, what if that thing about that person is true?

And, well, this conversation is so intense or some people are very empathetic. They leech off of other people's emotions.

It's this huge twisted knot. What are we feeling anymore and why? Very rarely do we stop and try to figure that out.

So now I have a feeling about a feeling about someone else's feeling. About what somebody else may have done or not.

Exactly. It's a never ending. It's just a never ending cycle. Now you brought up empathy.

And I think that's a good place to try to transition because we were talking about empathy before we started.

And so what is empathy and how does empathy relate to sympathy?

Are they the same? Are they different? Are they similar in ways? And how do we distinguish the two and then respond accordingly?

Sure. I think sometimes we need to get a little bit, again, defining terms.

Voltaire said something to the effect of, you know, you want to converse with me, define your terms. And that's super important.

I think that in English, where we borrowed terms from so many different places, that a lot of these words had similar meanings.

I think that in a way, sympathy and empathy are almost interchangeable. But I also think you can parse them out a little bit more.

I think generally speaking, you guys in the chat can kind of back us up on this. If you agree with what

I'm about to say, I think most people see sympathy as I understand what you're feeling.

Some people see sympathy and empathy as the same thing. Some people say,

I understand what you're feeling. And then they would say that empathy is, I feel what you're feeling.

So I don't just understand it. I'm actually experiencing your emotion. And I think that's probably, think about that in the chat and tell us what you think about those definitions.

But I think that that's how a lot of people view it. Again, I tend to be the person that sympathy and empathy,

I think tends to be very similar concepts for me as I use the terms.

But so the idea, the question that the Christian needs to ask themselves is, well, should we do that at all?

And if we do it, which side of it should we do? Is it okay to feel what a person's feeling or should we just understand?

And my old go -to is this. Never laugh at a person until you've walked a mile in their shoes.

Because then you're a mile away and you have their shoes. Which is a stupid dad joke.

But that whole idea of walking a mile in somebody's shoes, we would say that that would be empathy. That would be the person experiencing what the other person experienced.

And I think we see in the scriptures, we see both concepts played out.

I think that sympathy is definitely required of us as we're discerning.

We know that a man of understanding draws out what's in a person's heart as if it were deep waters.

So I think a person needs to be able to be wise and discerning to look at somebody else and to understand why they're doing what they're doing.

For example, I understand why people want to abort their children.

Now, does that make it right? No. But I understand how a blinded mind who is so absorbed in their own self -worship and who has believed the lie that that child is not a child but a clump of cells.

I completely understand how they can come to a place like they feel they have no choice but to abort their child.

I can sympathize with that even though I understand that that is completely inappropriate.

Therefore, if we're going to delineate the differences in sympathy and empathy, I could never empathize with them because what they're feeling in that moment is completely inappropriate.

They shouldn't be feeling any of that because they're not thinking correctly.

If they saw the situation the way that God saw it and saw themselves, their responsibility to him, their responsibility to their unborn baby, they would never feel what they're feeling that would make them think that they need to get an abortion.

They would have truth that they could battle with that. So we don't empathize with that, though I can sympathize.

And yet there are times that we are to empathize with people. I think we see that in scriptures, weep with those who weep.

We see that, I referenced it earlier and I should have brought it up in my Bible, but I didn't because oftentimes

I find that when I try to quote things, I just butcher them, which is terrible. In Galatians chapter 6, it says, you who trespass, you who are spiritual, restore such a one in the spirit of gentleness, each one looking to yourself so that you will not too be tempted.

That is that idea of that sympathy, not being tempted, not giving in where they've given in. But then there's verse 2, bear one another's burdens and thereby fulfill the law of Christ.

So I think we do see examples in scripture where Jesus, knowing full well, having told his apostles what was going to happen to them, knowing full well what was going to happen, he still wept.

And he shared the grief of these women who had lost their brother, knowing that really in just a few minutes, there would be no more reason to grieve.

So I think the key thing for a Christian to be able to determine, I think, yes, we should always be able to sympathize.

We should always be wise enough that we can see how a person got to their wrong conclusion.

That's called wisdom. I think any Christian says, well, I don't need to sympathize with some wicked person. I think you're being foolish because then you can't help that person.

You don't know what they're thinking. You don't know what got them to that place. How are you supposed to help them work back toward the truth of God's word if you don't even understand how they got there?

That's dangerous. We're all supposed to sympathize. But how do we know if we're supposed to empathize?

The question is, should that person be feeling what they're feeling? This is a conversation

I've had with many people. I've had people say this to me. They'll be explaining something to me in counseling. And I'll stop them.

And I'll be like, this is not constructive. And they'll say something like, what's wrong with me telling you how

I feel? And my response to them will be, well, the issue is that you shouldn't be feeling that in the first place.

Really? If you're thinking right, if you're thinking truth, you're not going to be feeling that emotion.

And therefore, we're not going to be talking about it. So instead of continuing to talk about an emotion that you really shouldn't be feeling anyway, let's talk about how

God would have us really respond to this situation. Yeah. So we can empathize with somebody if they should be feeling what they're feeling because then

I have the opportunity to weep with those who weep or joy with those who joy. But if they shouldn't, neither should

I. Yeah. I think that's a good question to ask. And I think that's one that gets overlooked.

We don't think to ask that question. Okay. Is this appropriate? Is this an appropriate feeling for this person in this situation?

And I think... Biblically appropriate. Biblically appropriate. Correct. Yeah. I think that's a question we don't seem to ask.

Because we believe the lie that only you can understand what you're feeling. Right. And that what you're feeling is truth.

It's reality. Right? And we Christians buy into that as well. We feel very uncomfortable to come up to somebody and say, listen, listen, based off of what the scriptures say, what you're feeling right now is unnecessary or even wrong because...

A physiological response is a physiological response. Is it technically sinful? No. But if I am not putting my hope in Christ, I am not trusting

His sovereignty, I've got a lot of things to be afraid about. And I don't have to fear.

Right. If I trust God, I know His sovereignty. Right. So to be able to say to somebody in fear, fear not, is the recognition of the fact that I can say to another person, what you're feeling you shouldn't be feeling.

And there's hope for change. Yeah. Yeah, you're talking about truth. Chris Honholdt says, letting their emotional state dictate what they want the truth to be rather than letting the truth inform their emotions.

Yeah. We all do it every single day. It's crazy. So crazy. And let me see.

Melissa says, sometimes as Christians, we let our feelings or emotions dictate our assurance of salvation or our assurance in our salvation.

And I think this is getting to what you were just you were just talking about biblically. Am I, is this an appropriate feeling?

Right. Fear, right. Fear as opposed to fear not. Right. Well, I have a fear that I'm not saved.

Okay. Well, is that an appropriate feeling that you should have? Well, let's ask some more questions.

Okay. Maybe it is. Maybe it isn't. Right. Right. Maybe it should be a servile fear.

Right. That you're not saved. But maybe you're just not understanding.

You need some help with your assurance. Right. Let's talk about who Christ is. Who do you say Christ is?

And then let's work from there. Mm -hmm. I used to work at a boy's home for at -risk teens called

Victory Academy in the north woods of Wisconsin. Great ministry. And I had boys who they could,

I mean, meltdown, nuclear explosion, whatever terminology you want to throw out there. It really did not describe well what these boys were capable of doing.

But every single one of them would always start calming down the moment they started honestly interacting with truth.

Because you can't believe something true. You can believe a lie and be all emotional about it.

But you can't believe something to be true that is actually true and have an inappropriate emotional response to it.

Right. You can't. One example was a boy was picking up acorns and throwing them at other boys.

Well, they thought it was just him having fun just playing a game. So they started picking up acorns throwing them at each other and at him.

Well, the moment the first acorn hit him he was in a great tirade. These guys are throwing acorns at me.

I mean completely forgetting the fact that he was instigating it. Right. But of course when he was doing it he was just doing it in fun.

But obviously that guy hit me with an acorn because he's a jerk. You know, all of the lies that justify that response.

But when I was finally able to get him and able to get him to see two things. Number one, they were just doing what you were doing for the same reasons you were doing it.

He was like, yeah, that was pretty stupid of me. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Well, it was. And now you're going to have the consequences of that. You know, so let's make sure we respond the right way to that.

You know, the truth sets us free in so many ways. Not just free from sin but free from the consequences of sin which include all of those wrong interpretations of emotions and all those unnecessary emotions that come when we're not thinking truth.

Yeah, there's a there's a comment here. Shamish Shamish Shamish Shamish Could we have empathy

Could we have empathy for someone about having feelings that we shouldn't have but not have empathy for the specific feeling one shouldn't have

If I understand the question

I think maybe it's a little picky maybe if I understand the question and I may not be if empathy is feeling what another person is feeling then the question is is it going to glorify

So again I'm going to a funeral tomorrow My wife lost her grandfather Now I've met him

I've spent some time with him Wonderful man very sweet man I don't have the years of memories He was

I lost my grandmother earlier this actually at the end of last year That was a very different experience losing my grandmother than it was my wife losing her grandfather for me right so I understand sympathize with her of her loss but is it valuable in Christ honoring for me to empathize with her in her loss and then maybe maybe this is what

Seamus was getting to in some ways it could be very beneficial for me to experience that emotional experience and to sit there with my wife in her appropriate

Christ honoring grief and to share that with her but it also might not be necessary sympathy at that moment might be all that's necessary I'm there for her

I'm caring for her but I don't actually have to experience what she's experiencing in that moment

I think it's gonna be impossible to say for sure one way or another you must absolutely empathize or just sympathize in this moment and I think at least if nothing else

Seamus asking the question is really valuable because we need to stop and think you know instead of just feeling our way through a response what should

I be feeling in this moment what is an appropriate response to this and I'm sorry if we didn't answer your question well enough

I blame Drew well I mean you can blame me because I saw it and I was like it sounds like a good question but I don't know it is

I was like maybe you'll understand it but I really like what you're getting at there as opposed with empathy right

I and I think this is a good way to kind of kind of address it will it glorify

God for me to feel this as well is this something that if if someone is suffering and like will it glorify

God for me to suffer with them in this whatever they're feeling right like we'll say like a funeral to suffer with them as at the same time right will it glorify

God I think that's a good way to look at it oh definitely yeah

I mean that's that's how we need to approach everything in life the question is how do we know you know yeah how do we know if in this moment that's where we have to turn in the scriptures we have to look at the commands and the principles and the illustrations and be able to say you know this we believe this to be the most

Christ honoring thing in this moment I do think it's valuable to say that that the word that we the

Greek word from which we get our word sympathy does show up two times in the Greek New Testament and it has you know to feel with somebody both times it's either translated showed sympathy or to sympathize with somebody one usage was in Hebrews 10 34 for you showed sympathy to the prisoners and accepted joyfully the seizure of your property knowing that you have for yourselves a better position and a lasting one that's one picture there of sympathizing with somebody and the other usage also comes earlier in Hebrews book in which this particular word is used

Hebrews 4 15 where it talks about for we do not have a high priest who cannot sympathize with our weaknesses that's again you know that's a really powerful verse talking about Jesus Christ and what he's doing with our weaknesses is he empathizing is he sympathizing and I would argue that Jesus definitely sympathizes with us but having never sinned having never experienced the emotional consequences that come from sinful thinking that no he didn't empathize with us in our weakness he definitely sympathized with us in our weakness for sure there's a question here was lost but now found says are you lying to yourself emotionally if you empathize with someone

I don't think so I mean I guess I guess maybe this is coming from the standpoint of well it's it's not my emotion to feel but I'm kind of putting it on like it's a like it's an outfit right the idea of lying to yourself emotionally is really fraught if we dive too carefully start using that kind of terminology

I think we're really in danger of maybe having some misconceptions about it if I'm feeling something

I'm feeling something that person is feeling this because they lost their loved one I'm feeling this because they lost their loved one it's a real feeling coming from a real truth a real actual fact so therefore

I'm experiencing that in a

Christ honoring way then that's also going to point to other truths truths of the sovereignty of God my wife's grandfather was born again believer so there are a lot of joyous truths that also come from his home going as I'm empathizing with them

I'm going to be sharing that with them as well that will help them to make sure that their emotional responses in line with truth so it's lying to yourself emotionally if you empathize with somebody no

I don't think so because you can't really experience that emotion unless you're doing so for a reason that you've decided is valuable it is you know it's accurate gotcha well

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Logos right did we talk about this last week I have used it I'm not currently using it I have used it and I have loved it for sure okay yeah

I've started I've started using it more but I only use it really for the word study that's my favorite thing that's what

I love to do because when you when you go and you're you're looking at a word it gives you the lexical form but then it also gives you how it's used and it gives you all the parts of speech so it gives you the mood it gives you the tense and it's so helpful when you're when you're trying to do sermon prep or you're doing a

Bible study and this is kind of a key word for you to explain to whoever you're teaching how this word is being used in order to open up the text more

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Bible software people need good Bible software Bible study I mean we have so many tools available to us that people didn't have in the past and we we feel our way through the scriptures as you're reading we're looking for some emotional response but we're not doing the hard work of truly understanding the the facts about what

God was actually writing when you know when we are communicating when that was written mm -hmm yeah now

I see you said good question Charles do you want me to bring that up oh yeah

I think that's a great thing to talk about okay Charles Lowery here's what he said he says it's my understanding that feelings are never commanded in Scripture which would tell us that our feelings need to be subservient to belief is that a proper view yeah so I would say that I see why he says that never commanded in Scripture like we're not commanded to feel adrenaline we're not commanded to feel dopamine or norepinephrine or endorphins we're not commanded even necessarily to be happy we're commanded to be joyful which a good good

Bible study knows that joy can oftentimes have feelings associated with it but is not inherently a feeling and neither is love and neither is peace okay however

I'm also gonna slightly disagree Charles just because when God says fear not he is commanding my emotions he's can telling me how not to fear and when those fears when those feelings aren't present other feelings are going to be present

I mean I think it's safe to say that there are times when we're not really feeling anything and we say that because we've we've kind of reached what for us is kind of our standards not super high it's not super low there are still chemicals pumping through our body for some people you know they can they can handle a higher level of adrenaline than another person can so their normal feeling would be a little bit higher than this person's feeling so I'm just saying we kind of we always have these things ebbing and flowing in us we're always feeling something so it's so when

God says do not fear he actually is commanding the the opposite side of that and so people would ask well what is the the opposite of a feeling of fear and that's a fantastic question because the answer is not peace because again

I mean yes in English I think it's people we've obviously created an idea that there is a feeling an absence of fear that we define with the word peace but I want to save that word for for the biblical context so we don't convolute it and misunderstand you know what the scriptures are talking about when it tells us to pursue peace so what is the absence of fear well it is no because even joy again we had to be careful because we're biblical terminology designed to mean something else right right

I think maybe in English if we're not using trying hard not to use biblical terminology that clearly is intended to communicate something else

I don't know that there is a fantastic thing this word fearless I fear I feel fearless it's the absence of fear but I'm still feeling it so yes

Charles you're 100 % right the Bible actually doesn't spend a lot of time talking about how we feel it tells us a ton it's all about what we should know what we should understand and what we should believe it has to do with what we think that's what the scripture spends the bulk of its time on and when it talks about our feelings it does so in relationship to those three things what do you know what do you understand and what do you believe okay well therefore act accordingly and acting accordingly means what you do what you say and what you feel and so when

God tells us to not be afraid because we need to be trusting him we need to be anchoring our minds on him then that is one of those things that is

God is commanding us about our emotions for sure now let me throw something out there and you can correct me if I'm wrong or you can you can kind of take it and you know do what you want with it so so when you're talking about God telling us fear not right obviously that's

I would say it's we are not to have that servile fear right that we feel the fear that we fear we see the fear that we feel at the hands of a tormentor okay when we when we think of God or when we go to God or when

God reveals himself to us in the scriptures and things like that but would the opposite of that be a holy fear a reverent fear which would be a trust in my

Lord that I don't want to displease my Lord yeah and that's where again

English you know always in English doesn't borrow from other languages it follows other languages down dark hallways beats it up and goes through its pockets looking for loose grammar that's what

English does yeah and so yeah okay so I would encourage people to check out the evermind app go to evermindadministries .com

you can create a free login there's a lot of free stuff on there and there is a series

I did called suffering well you can imagine that you know in suffering there's a lot of emotional upheaval going on so we talked about suffering well you know glorifying

God with our anger with our fear with our depression with our sorrow okay so we talked about those things because we're very real feelings that we have and we find that there is a biblical replacement for each of them what's interesting is that the biblical replacement is never an emotion the biblical replacement is a truth right so in this particular situation

I have a an adrenaline surge that my mind is interpreting as fear because I'm not trusting

God but the choice to trust God is a mental it's a it's a choice I'm looking at this fact

I'm choosing to believe that it is factual and I'm responding accordingly so how do

I overcome this emotion of fear by choosing to fear choosing to honor and reverence and trust

God the same thing true is true with anger there were how do we replace sinful anger emotional responses is to anger in a

Christ honoring way which is to which is again requires us to focus on the truth that God communicates about what

Christ honoring anger is right that same is true about sorrow and the same is true about depression and this is really interesting this one actually just kicked the door open for me in dealing with this concept of depression because depression is a legitimate feeling it's actually an under feeling if you can put it that way in some ways and one as we look to the scriptures we see that one of the best ways to overcome a depression which isn't a word that you find in the in good translations very often but you see words like that that are just literally left my brain hopefully they'll come back to me other words are used that that that we could kind of put into the same category as depression and what is the answer to that well it's humbling ourselves it's prostrating ourselves the actual

Greek words refer to depressing ourselves under the hand of God right we have an emotion which has a very similar concept that is a choice again it comes down to a choice when

I humbly put myself under the truth and the sovereignty of God even if I'm feeling depressed and I have

I had the kovat depression thing when that went through that was a very real you know

I had this I had this feeling going through my body and it would it would start to influence my thinking my thinking

I would lie to myself which would feed the feeling but then I needed to self -counsel and I needed to say no what is true doesn't matter how

I'm feeling I need to trust God I need to humbly trust that he is you know that he is in control of the situation

I don't have to freak out about this and I don't have to be all I don't have to feel any way and so that natural biochemical feeling of depression that I had you know was

I guys I got better and I got over kovat that feeling went away but I didn't multiply that feeling with all of my wrong thinking so back to the point is that you know how do we overcome the sinful emotion we focus on the biblical choice to fear

God to submit to God's rules about anger and sorrow and to humbly depress ourselves underneath his hand so as to fight off the sinful tendency we have to feed our you know our when we're feeling depressed

I did realize there was one really great passage early on I completely forgot to mention it that actually does talk about feelings it comes shortly after the very first sin which we see in Genesis chapter 3 you know it doesn't really talk too much about I mean it does talk about Adam and Eve's feelings right

Adam says he was afraid so there we see that fear being one of the first negative emotions growing out of sin but I love in Genesis chapter 4 we see that Cain and Abel are born

Cain and Abel offered their their offering to God God didn't have didn't regard

Cain's offering and it says but for Cain and for his offering he had no regard so Cain became very angry and his countenance fell okay that physical consequence of the emotion he was feeling on the inside then the

Lord said to Cain why are you angry why has your countenance fallen he didn't bother affirming people say he affirmed

Cain's anger no he didn't he got to the root of it he asked the why do you feel the way you feel right super important he says if you do well if you do what is righteous and good and holy will not your countenance will not your emotions and and the subsequent consequences of those emotions won't your countenance be lifted up and if you do not do well sin is crouching at the door and its desire for you but you must master it so God got to the heart of this emotional issue right off the bat by saying it's not about what you're feeling is about why you're feeling it and Cain you're feeling the way you're feeling because you're sinning yeah and if you want to feel differently you gotta stop sinning right yeah yeah so I usually bring up Cain and Abel when

I'm talking about worship right the the first murder occurred as a result of false worship and so why is

Cain feeling the way he's feeling because he worshipped God in a manner that God didn't require didn't ask for it didn't want and he thinks

God should have accepted his offering of worship right so he's feeling a particular way and God's getting to the root of that and saying you shouldn't be feeling this way because you did not do what

I asked you to do right your feeling is in the wrong place you should you should understand why why your sacrifice wasn't accepted because you didn't bring what

I wanted mm -hmm right so and then and then you see what we talked about earlier

Cain's anger multiplied not because the situation was any different the offering had already been accepted and rejected right

Abel's accepted Cain's rejected God comes to Cain and says Cain this is the problem you're not believing truth you're not thinking you're not doing right you're not thinking right

Cain had an opportunity at that point to address what his thinking was but instead of focusing on truth and having his countenance be lifted and going okay you know

I was taking responsibility I was wrong I'll bring them the right sacrifice next time he ends up murdering his brother his brother who did nothing to Cain right who's in this obviously you know

Abel was fallen he sinned against his brother I'm not gonna pretend that Abel was sinless but it's clear in the scriptures that Cain killed

Abel because of the situation which it was completely irrational his anger focused on his brother that he would go and he would take his brother's life because of this situation shows how our we have emotional responses to our emotional responses all tied up in that tangle of lies so what we need the most is that we keep coming back to this truth everyone please listen so carefully you can change your emotions did you catch that people tell us we have no control of our emotions like movies like inside out that Pixar movie from inside out comes out and tells us that everything we do and say is controlled by our emotions and we have no control over our emotions not true you do have control over your emotions it has it completely affected by what you're focusing on what you're thinking on and what you're believing to be true is if Cain had said no

God you are right I was wrong I shouldn't have done that Cain would have been feeling something very different he would have been feeling remorse right he would have been on his knees before God saying please forgive me

I have sinned but he he was angry he was angry at God he was angry at his brother and he murdered his brother because he was lying to himself and we can change how we feel when we change how we think we need to know

God's Word understand it and believe it and our emotions will follow suit every single time right and that's and even in Cain and Abel where you see the exchange between God and Cain where you see

God's grace being extended right yes I rejected your offering but let me give you grace to say if if you do what

I command you command of you will your countenance not be lifted there's the chance for repentance you know what the

Lord you're right I repent and so that Cain's emotions clouded his thinking where he wasn't even able to hear what the

Lord was saying in order to come to repentance and we see that cycle happen again in the chapter so Cain does that God approaches him about his sin right he gives

Cain his consequence which was gracious he didn't kill Cain for what he did gave his consequence

Cain still not thinking right still not focusing on his sin against God and his sin against his brother he goes first words out of his mouth my punishment is too great to bear right still wrapped up in his motions mm -hmm

God's still gracious you know everyone who finds me is gonna kill me still focusing on all the stupid lies

God still gracious and then when we read in verse 16 then Cain went out from the presence of the

Lord he convinced himself and I see this in marriages I see this in parenting

I see this in churches we we we sever ourselves we step away from things we break off relationships we walk away from God we walk away from the church we walk away from our spouse we whatever because of how we feel because we've convinced ourselves that's the only way to escape when

God is saying over and over again no reconciliation no truth

I am being gracious to you I'm giving you what you do not deserve can you see it and Cain was just all focused here right he couldn't see it yeah you know

I like that you brought up Cain's response my punishment is more than I can bear right now let's contrast that with I believe it's

Psalm 38 I think it's a Psalm of David where he's talking about his sin and he he's receiving discipline from the

Lord for his sin but he doesn't say he doesn't say the consequence is more than I can bear but he's appealing to the

Lord's grace and his mercy and and essentially he's saying yes you're disciplining me I deserve discipline but please do not discipline me out of your wrath right do not discipline me beyond what

I can bear so he's accepting the discipline just just don't kill me okay yeah so true so true oh this this has been this is speaking on this is really it's it's glorious but it's so difficult because I know

I know how I fail in this I know what a hypocrite I am I mean people sometimes hear me you know talk about things like this and they see me in certain situations and I've been called a robot a

Vulcan you know a rock people have dared to dream that I'm not a very emotional individual that is so not the case

I am a very emotional person in fact fear is one of my goats if I'm angry I'm generally angry because I'm afraid it's another thing to like emotion different emotions that spin off of other emotions right so this has been just a journey in my own life coming to realize in fact what one of the things that actually opened my eyes and it's so sad that this is what it took

I saw my anger and my lack of emotions because of Cesar Milan familiar with Cesar Milan the dog whisperer you know

I mean I've heard of a dog whisperer but the dog whisperer Cesar Milan he works with I worked with dogs and he is really great because he doesn't try to get the dogs to think the way humans think he says hey humans this is how dogs think you can help them be the best they can be by by understanding their psychology right really fantastic training my sister trains dogs and she uses a lot of his stuff and I had a dog new dog in the family that was an adopted dog and I was trying to utilize his techniques and what's interesting is that animals dogs in particular when when we get all upset and we're yelling at the dog you stupid dog don't do that get out of here all that kind of stuff right the dog does not interpret that as oh he's mad at me because I was bad in the dogs mind the dog looks like that and goes that guy's unstable he needs someone to put him in his place the dog doesn't view you as being in charge the dog views you as being the opposite of that like underneath the dog like you're you're

I'm like I'm cowering because I'm afraid of you in a way like I don't want you to hurt me but there's no respect there right so Caesar Milan talks about the fact that you really need to you need to be well balanced as a dog trainer remove the emotions from it just completely remove the emotions and deal with the dog the way the dog understands and so I'd be working with this dog and this dog would not be doing what

I want to do it I would get so frustrated so angry I did okay okay bring it back and bring it back in it's just again

I don't want the dog to think I'm unstable and so I'm trying I was failing hardcore and I don't know how many times

I had failed I had had a tirade just put the dog in the kennel and was yelling at the dog and I stopped and I had this moment of brokenness where it all finally came crushing in on me that Aaron you are out of control even an unsaved man as far as I know

Caesar Milan is not a follower of God even an unsaved man recognizes how stupid it is to try to train an animal when you can't control your emotions and here you are and I saw that it wasn't just the dog

I did that with in fact I was doing a better job trying to contain my control my emotions with the dog than I was with my kids with my wife with the kids at school and it was just a it was a crushing beautiful moment for me so I say all this to say

I'm not sitting on some lofty hill looking down at all the hoi polloi saying come on guys get your act together

I'm saying no we're in the trenches together this is a very real human problem I deal with this on a daily basis with me with my kids with my wife with my counselors with my friends this is something that we all need to come together bear one another's burdens and recognize the fact that our emotions are killing us now killing the efficacy of efficacy of the church it's killing the impact we can have on this world because we are we're really not worshiping at the altar of emotions what we're doing is we're taking emotions and we're offering them as a sacrifice on the altar to self yeah that's what we're doing

Wow and anytime that we're worshiping self it doesn't matter what we're putting on that altar that is going to end in destruction yeah we've got to take our emotions and we have to set them on the altar to God just like everything else in our life yeah so so I have a problem with emotions but it's not in terms of showing too much emotion it's

I have learned how to detach my emotions from from situations and from conversation right so and and a lot of that has come through really doing apologetics almost talking with Mormons or Jehovah's Witnesses in because you're you're you're basically destroying worldviews and so you don't people really emotional it's people emotional and so you don't want to respond emotionally or even if you're talking about Calvinism Arminianism right those things come with a lot of emotion so I've learned to kind of detach my emotions so I can think clearly about the arguments that are being said the problem is and my wife notices it as well is reattaching those emotions to be emotional in certain situations where emotions would be appropriate right so so to save my wife's going through something to be able to sit with her and and comfort her and feel with her whatever she's going through or anyone else in the family right

I haven't learned how to reattach those emotions so that I can be present with people in in their suffering or or even in their joy sometimes maybe you can speak to that yeah

I would say that I don't think the situation necessarily is as dire as you think it is that perhaps maybe you've done something else

I'll clarify when you have that heckler or that person in the crowd right there they're getting all hot and bothered right that's a temptation to us to be equally annoyed frustrated hot and bothered right it's a it's completely appropriate you need to remove those and there won't be an appropriate time for sinful anger there's never an appropriate time for sinful anger that's just off the table forever not allowed to come back and there's never gonna be a time to use that same thing with simple fear same thing with simple depression so on so forth um what you've actually done is you because you're managing your adrenaline is what you're doing right again you haven't really shut down emotion so much is that you you're just managing your adrenaline response you start to feel that you know you calm yourself down because you know that if you're not careful you'll use that that extra boost of energy in a sinful way you want to use it a powerful so you use it to clearing your mind and the thinking of the correct argument and to speaking truth and love right technically emotion is there the adrenaline is there right the pure emotion of the chemical reactions are there you can't make them go away what you're doing is you're setting aside the simple responses right the simple interpretations and the simple things that would come if I'm if I'm not believing truth so now let's say well now

I'm in a situation with my wife and I'm not being outwardly emotional or whether the case may be why is that well

I'll just speak for myself if this is true of you you can give me an amen oftentimes in a situation with whether it's my wife or somebody else where they're being emotional and I'm not sympathizing definitely not empathizing

I'm tempted to like this is this is a waste of time this is unnecessary this is too much yeah yeah and I start to feel that adrenaline mm -hmm which

I know if I if I were to build off of that and I were to get angry at her for how she's feeling right that's all wrong mm -hmm so I push that aside as I should as I should the issue is that in that in that moment it's not that I'm not feeling anything it's that I'm not using that the right feeling in the right way right because of the thoughts yeah thoughts were wrong there's that annoyance we have a lot of words that we use

I'm annoyed frustrated agitated aggravated we have all of these words that are really convenient comfortable ways of dancing around I'm angry right yeah right yeah as long as I don't say

I'm angry I'm not angry I'm just really okay well the issue is technically well no

I'm actually I do have a sinful I have a sinful response I shouldn't be impatient I shouldn't be annoyed at what's happening right now

I should I should be here for the for even if they're in sin I should still lovingly help this person and so it's not that I have no emotion it's that the right emotion isn't there yet or better yet I'm not believing the right truth which will then produce the right and again we're not we shouldn't be doing anything for a physiological response okay

I'm not everyone has the same physiological responses you know if you're in church and you're not crying you are no worse off than the person who's in church and who is crying because the person because let's be honest the person who is crying can be doing so out of self -worship the person who isn't crying could be doing so the glory of God not everyone's gonna have identical emotion we shouldn't be going for that I will say your wife or whoever your friend who you're with shouldn't shouldn't be looking for an emotional response from you if they are they're not looking for the right thing they should be looking for truth in love from you right and you should be looking to give them truth and love and at that moment as you're speaking truth in love to each other you will feel what is

Christ honoring regardless of what that feeling feels like regardless of how it manifests itself it will glorify

God in that moment so to go back to your original thing what you're doing is you're managing adrenaline which is great it's a wonderful tactic to be able to do to make sure you're using it correctly mm -hmm you're not really an emotionless individual in that moment it's in these situations we have to ask ourselves as we said earlier in the show what is the most

Christ honoring thing I can do right now mm -hmm how can I use my words my feelings and my actions to glorify

God and to love this person and whatever I'm doing in that moment whether it seems really emotional on the outside or not is gonna please the

Lord gotcha that's super helpful to okay you know and I was thinking about just adrenaline the other day because we're talking a lot about managing that adrenaline you know we there was my wife's biological dad lives with us because he's got some health issues well we had to call 9 -1 -1 on for him the other day he's fine now but we had to call 9 -1 -1 and I did have this kind of rush of adrenaline but when my wife was on the phone with the operator you know the operator kind of made a point to say well you know you it doesn't seem sound like you guys are panicking or doing anything but and while I wasn't panicking

I was walking around and that walking around was the managing of adrenaline yeah so I couldn't sit down you'd be shaking if you did right so so I was up but I was walking around until that adrenaline really kind of calmed down a little bit yep and it's the people the panicky people are the people who are using that adrenaline in foolish ways more than you know let's be honest if I see a spider okay the vast majority of spiders in America I'm not gonna kill you and I'm gonna hurt you right they're super small any person could kill us a child could kill a spider right if you're screaming and you're freaking out and you're getting on a chair and you just refuse to go near it please if you're getting all emotional because you think

I'm stepping on your holy cow here stop um the reality is that is an inappropriate response that is irrational that is not a response based out of truth it's based out of a lie you have nothing to be afraid of right okay you've been taught that this kind of response is cute or appropriate or all right or or completely justified but it's not it's a lie you kill the spider or you walk out of the room or you do what my kids do you collect the spider and let it out outside it you know that's that's that's a correct response and so we need to stop lying to ourselves about what

Christ honoring responses are and what are yes you're gonna feel adrenaline if you're caught off guard as you as you as you take my words and like you know what he does have a point it is really silly when

I overreact to a spider and you're like yeah but Aaron it's a spider that just proves that you that you're not speaking truth to yourself because that doesn't mean anything yes it's a completely harmless spider you're right just like a completely harmless ant no because it has eight legs not six are you hearing yourself right okay so you say all right

I recognize you know he has a good point it is irrational I am overreacting I want to try to overcome this well guess what the next time you see a spider you habituated yourself you're gonna have that adrenaline response because it's a spider this time take that adrenaline response and focus it on an appropriate action based out of truth there are any number of things that that ways that may work itself out that doesn't need to be screaming and climbing up because guys because freaking out on a chair is far more dangerous than that spiders yeah there are plenty of YouTube videos of people falling over on chairs hurting themselves and people getting hurt by spiders well according to Chris Han holds his truth is that flamethrower is the only appropriate response to eight -legged little demons yep yep

I love this because it's funny and it's it's tongue -in -cheek and I love it and he would never do that but the irrational but let's just step back for a moment and appreciate the irrationality of that response is let's burn my house down by overcomes obviously

Chris doesn't believe that but here's the thing and this is where I'm gonna kind of pick on Chris here for a second how many of us how many of your pastors and hopefully they don't but growing up in the 80s and 90s

I heard this way too much you would hear these people like say these these jokes in their preaching about husbands and wives right you know these you know men don't understand women and they would just have these little jokes right like kind of like Chris says here the only appropriate response to it at least ain't like a little demons the flamethrower right um the problem is is that oftentimes in our joking we actually are like I said earlier we're like how we teach our children how to interpret their emotions in our joking we actually inform people about what to believe and and that response that people have but it's a spider but you know everyone freaks out because it's a spider well the only response to a spider is to burn it down you know all of those things that we say actually are just reinforcing this kind of stuff so what is

Aaron Brewster and this is totally Aaron Brewster what is Aaron Brewster's response that says Aaron Brewster never joke no

Aaron Brewster jokes Aaron Brewster is very careful when he jokes if I'm with Chris Honholtz I'm totally gonna joke we're gonna have a great we've had a great time together in our limited interactions with each other having fun about different stuff and he's been lighting it up in the chat with different people already it's been fantastic but we need to be careful especially those of us who stand up in pulpits and say thus saith the

Lord because when we're up there making some joke about something that is only reinforcing cultural lies we're teaching people what to think and therefore what to feel about certain things and when their wife when their husband doesn't understand them again my my you know oh my my my aggravation is completely appropriate right right because men just don't understand women and I as the biblical counselor and the one who years down the road are is dealing with a failing marriage not because the pastor made a joke about men and women from the pulpit but because their entire experience in the church in their family from their parents from TV everything was building a wedge between the husband and their wife and instead of finding

Christ honoring reconciliation they fed into their emotions and fell out of love and so I love

Chris's thing there but I think why why is he hammering so hard on this I'm hammering so hard on this because men and women we have to speak truth we have to guard our speech and we need to be careful who we're talking to lest we say something that we think is funny or cute or whatever else but we actually reinforce really bad thinking in that person yeah yeah that's right now let's see we've got a couple of minutes spiders eat mosquitoes good point thank you

Dio Tarot you know we eat mosquitoes yeah we had we had a conversation in our house about spiders the other day because we have some outside you know that you some orbed weaver we have an orbed weaver over here and I know you know maybe some over back there but the good thing about spiders right like you said the vast majority of them are harmless to us they're not going to bother us they look scary but they're not gonna bother us but they help us by keeping away all of the all the insects that we don't want in our house like ants and roaches and flies and things like that so they they do us a service by by keeping them around so you know when

I was cutting the grass the other day and I saw this big orb weaver running up the thing you know my at first I was like oh ick right but then

I was like well he's probably keeping that section of the house clean you know so well and probably in Georgia too but snakes are a big one too like people just people just legitimize being afraid of snakes you know freaking out about snakes

I've got a I do have a story and so so be in Georgia we do have we have two real poisonous snakes right copperheads and cottonmouths yeah we ones here in North Carolina and but a rat we in this in this house we did have a little issue with mice we were having some mice problems so a couple months ago

I think it might have been April maybe yeah I think it was around April maybe

May I saw a rat snake outside and I killed it and then after doing it

I go okay we've gone like two or three months without having any mice and I just killed you

I just killed my mice getter yep yeah yeah when people like the black snakes those big long thick ones

I mean they're big and so people go after them but the black snakes are like some of the best snakes to have around your property but that's just again just but and here's the thing

I mean there are there are people out there who hate snakes who think we're ridiculous for saying what we're saying and then there are first of all let me address this let me address this

Drew needs cats okay no because cats are a result of the fall okay just let me deal with that heresy that's right yeah no we it's easy for people to dismiss the fact that you know well of course black snakes are good and you shouldn't kill them people who are afraid of snakes are dumb but here's the thing and I can say that right

I because I agree but the reality is the same irrational lie motivated sinful response that results in a certain emotional feeling that people have about snakes and spiders

I do the exact same thing when when I don't get what I think I should get when

I've worked hard for something and I haven't gotten my due when I when

Lord I've been I've been giving I've been working I've been killing myself and provision isn't coming or I I do all these things and people aren't recognizing me at church and all the other ways that we lie to ourselves we think that we deserve to have children act a certain way we have all of these things and when all of our negative emotions are gauges they're pointing to the problem in our lives they're pointing to the fact that we are believing a lie about something and we've got to root that out and it's really convenient and for us to look at everyone else who gets scared about spiders and snakes and all those silly people we need to deal with the log in our own eyes first we need to let our emotions do what

God created them to do they're a gift to us yes but they're a tool and we need to glorify him and when they're not glorifying him they're engaged to show us where the problem is and the problem is always going to be that we're believing a lie we need to root out those lies we need to believe the truth and then our emotions will fall in step with that and that's where we really need to be focusing our energies is you're looking to ourselves yeah yeah so real quick let's see if we can see if we can tackle these in the church obviously especially if we look at the church broadly through America the most popular ministries are ones that rely heavily on the manipulation with emotion how or even can we how do we combat that how do we how do we help people that are that that we know that follow those ministries because sometimes trying to even talk to those people about truth brings the emotional response that's that's irrational yeah that's it's a huge question to ask in the time we have left and I just there's no the answer is that we have pastors who equip us for the work of the ministry the work of the ministry is speaking truth and love so that we are all building each other up into Christ okay that is what we should be doing and that is we are we are tearing down strongholds we're attacking the thoughts that lead to those sins right that lead to that the wrong feelings and the wrong words and actions and so that's where it always comes back to we have to slowly over time show people with his we're not

I will say this too a lot of people say you know well conservative music and conservative you know whatever tradition you know they're non -emotional right we get that you're you're a robot you're you're you're a

Vulcan well the reality is no we're not and we shouldn't be we shouldn't be pushing for non -emotionalism we should be pushing toward worshipping

God in truth which elicits a correct emotional response yes and whatever emotions come as a result of worshipping

God in truth are appropriate and they will be different need to stop fighting the emotion and like everything else in life whether the person's an unbeliever and has to be introduced to God or their person who's a believer and is believing a lie that's always going to be coming back to the truth of God's Word and really focusing on that not fighting the issue focusing on the the element of truth that God has in his

Word yeah yeah I was talking to someone a couple years ago about worship and why we should sing hymns rather than modern songs you know like the

Hill songs and the Bethel's and such and their response was well hymns are just too wordy and I said well they're wordy because they have a lot more theological truth than oh whoa whoa whoa whoa whoa whoa whoa yeah so so when

I'm hearing the hymn and I'm and I'm singing it and I'm ministering to those around me and those around me are ministering to me about the truth of who

God is through the theological declarations in this hymn I should have a proper emotional response rather than getting caught up in the the music that the sounds of the music and then the the the vocal cadence of whoever's singing the whoa whoa whoa's that's trying to draw me in and manipulate a response yeah and there are a lot of people who unfortunately they've been taught that their love for God is directly proportional to how they feel they've been lied to and they do truly love the

Lord and they do truly have very strong emotions some of those as a result of their love for the

Lord and some of those as a result of the emotional manipulation that's happening in their church and I praise

God that those people love the Lord and what we need to do is we need to grow in our understanding of truth you know 2nd

Peter Peter lifts out for us you add to our faith moral excellence moral excellence knowledge right that comes really early on as we learn more things we exercise self -control as we exercise self -control we are persevering and persevering and what we're persevering in godliness and what does that godliness look like brotherly kindness and love and so again we're coming back to the importance of recognizing truth and I think that that needs to be again where we come on this the

I know we're at the end can I give one last little illustration yeah yeah sure so I as a way to help people to see that they don't have to be slaves to their emotion

I use the the cake illustration I have this in a podcast episode as well if you want to go check that out the idea is very simple if I have two pieces of cake in front of you and one of them is nasty it's one that you wouldn't like and the other ones exactly what you like and I you know

I said which one do you want you can eat one before you leave here you're obviously going to take the one that looks delicious it's the one you want and you're going to you're gonna talk about it you're going to feel good about what you're about to do and you're gonna get ready to take a bite until I tell you oh wait

I'm sorry I forgot to tell you something that cake right there I poisoned it if you eat it you're gonna suffer torturous agony for 30 seconds and then you're gonna die but the other piece of cake is totally fine you can eat that one's good everything that comes next everything you feel is going to be dictated by what you believe in that moment you were excited to eat the cake if you believe what

I say about the poison you now are disgusted like that if you don't believe what

I said oh Aaron you're just you're just saying that you wouldn't poison cake you're still excited and now maybe you think it's funny but like that you change how you feel based off of what you believe and if ladies and gentlemen if you get nothing else from this today please get this please get this you're just like what you say and what you do your feelings are tied to what you believe and you can control them and you must submit your emotions to God's truth you need to know his word understand it and you need to believe it and that is the only way to have victory over your emotions the only way to help your friends your children your spouse and everyone else that God has given you to disciple and to influence in your life to have victory over their emotions don't believe the lie that our emotions dictate what we do or that we just you know that all of those things that we said at the beginning none of those things are true what's true is what

God says in his word about our emotions and that's really all that matters amen yes thank you sponsoring for Jesus take captive every thought amen now

I I have to hit some of these some of these comments here first was lost but found says whoa one to you whoa that's hilarious that's a good one that's hilarious but Melissa Owens at dr.

RC or she's talking to D but she says RC Sproul speaking to Drew what's wrong with you people because of what

I said about cats I'm sorry I feel the way I feel again

I'm going to sign drew up to foster cats at every organization in this area don't you you're really testing drew sanctification and his emotions how they're responding to that that's right that's right

I'm calming down breathe taking control just adrenaline it's just the drill and they're just cats right

God's creation just like spiders and snakes that's right that's right they they're good for stuff getting around I guess yeah do it judging me with their eyes but anyways

I want to thank you guys we're not gonna meet we're gonna be counseling after this yeah gonna be it's gonna be a session about my my dislike for cats but I want to thank you guys for for tuning in want to thank

Aaron of course week number two I think we knocked it out of the park that's right a and a wait no

I don't know what that was no no cuz I'm I'm drew I don't you're drew yeah so so D a duh we need to be done we're in trouble

I know we need to get out of here guess what we'll see you guys on the next one well I mean maybe I will

Andrew will probably be back I don't know maybe you should come back to make yourself maybe

I don't know I'm having fun if Andrew's back maybe it won't be any fun we'll see that's true you know what

I don't know we'll think of something to get him occupied so then we'll just mutiny you and I are taking over that's right that's right it's no longer apologetics live with Andrew Rappaport it's apologetics live with duh and we have to throw this one out there super chat

Jason cave member for 16 months Wow man you've been rocking for a while brother but he says great show gentlemen god bless you all thank you

Jason Jason lives over my neck of the woods Melissa says hope you feel better drew thank you very much this show definitely helps