Loving God with our Emotions

Reset and Renew: Lessons for the New Year  •  Sermon  •  Submitted   •  Presented   •  39:26
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Our emotions are not simply unhelpful, rather they are God-given faculties which can be used along with our reasoning to help us to love God. Join Malcolm as he explores how we can manage dangerous emotions and press into helpful ones to better love God and others in 2025.

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Introduction

We’re starting this year with a series called “Reset and Renew: Lessons for the New Year.” Four of us will be presenting some of the things that we’ve learnt over the last year or so, and thinking about how we can grow in God through these things.
For me, this past year has been an emotional year. It seems that the older I get, the more emotional I get. I think this has something to do with the way that my relationships have become deeper and more important to me over time.
That’s why I want to talk about emotions, and how we can love God with them.
Before I start, let me give you a map to this morning. First, I look at two different perspectives on emotions, then I’ll walk you through a third, better way. Then I’ll take a quick look at the range of emotions, and finally I have some suggestions on managing and using our emotions.
Let’s get started.

Two perspectives on emotions

The traditional Christian perspective

Growing up in the Protestant church, I gained the impression that emotions were more of a liability than a benefit.
There is a famous poem, attributed to Martin Luther, that summarises a common Protestant view of emotions:
The Wesleyan Bible Commentary, Volume 6: Hebrews–Revelation 3. God’s Word Will Quicken and Purify (1:22–25)

feelings come and feelings go,

Feelings are deceiving;

I’m trusting in God’s word,

Naught else is worth believing.

I first heard this in a Christian Rock song as a teenager. I loved that song: it gave me permission to focus on my rational side, and to distance myself from my emotions.
Growing up Christian in a hostile culture was often bruising and confrontational. Emotions are powerful and scary, and it seemed easier to suppress them in favour of trusting God’s word. That behaviour transitioned easily into my adult lifestyle. I was following a well-trodden path.

The modern perspective

The modern alternative, embraced since the Millennial generation, has swung almost 180 degrees. It involves an almost total capitulation to our emotions. “Follow your heart” is the catch cry of this approach. Emotions are considered a more reliable guide to reality, while reason is left to the dusty past.

What is a Biblical perspective?

Now, I genuinely believe, that for the big questions of life, like how to deal with my emotions, the best source of answers is the Bible. I hope you share that perspective.
So what does the Bible say?
It says a lot, so I’ve chosen a couple of representative passages.
Let’s start with Paul’s amazing description of how Christians should live out their lives, found in his letter to the Roman church.
Romans 12:9–16 NLT
9 Don’t just pretend to love others. Really love them. Hate what is wrong. Hold tightly to what is good. 10 Love each other with genuine affection, and take delight in honoring each other. 11 Never be lazy, but work hard and serve the Lord enthusiastically. 12 Rejoice in our confident hope. Be patient in trouble, and keep on praying. 13 When God’s people are in need, be ready to help them. Always be eager to practice hospitality. 14 Bless those who persecute you. Don’t curse them; pray that God will bless them. 15 Be happy with those who are happy, and weep with those who weep. 16 Live in harmony with each other. Don’t be too proud to enjoy the company of ordinary people. And don’t think you know it all!
Wow! There are lots of emotions in that passage: love, hate, affection, delight, laziness, enthusiasm, confidence, hope, patience, compassion, eagerness, happiness, sorrow and grief, pride and humility.

What are emotions for?

Clearly emotions are important in God’s kingdom, but why?
The insightful Presbyterian theologian, John M. Frame, writes in his book, “The Doctrine of the Knowledge of God,” about how emotion fits into human experience and into our relationship with God.
Frame points out that emotions are no more inherently broken or evil than is our capacity to think and reason. When we rebelled against God our emotions and our reasoning both became corrupted and focused inward on ourselves, and when we are rescued by God they are equally redeemed and made new, focused outward on God and others. The Bible never suggests that our reason is more important than our feelings, or vice-versa. Therefore the claim of Luther’s poem, that “feelings are deceiving,” is inaccurate: feelings can be deceiving, but so can logic and reason.
But if this suspicion of our feelings didn’t come from the Bible, where did it come from? Frame reveals that it was the Greeks, not Christians, who thought that philosophy, the exercise of reason, was the way to salvation, and that feelings only led one astray. However, the Bible explicitly denies this. Paul wrote to the Corinthians,
1 Corinthians 1:21 NLT
21 Since God in his wisdom saw to it that the world would never know him through human wisdom, he has used our foolish preaching to save those who believe.
It is our desire, our will that is the problem. Our reason can’t rescue us, nor can our feelings, only Jesus death can set us free to love God rather than ourselves.
How, then, should our emotions work together with our thinking?

Emotions and our relationship with God

Let me quote Frame here,
The Doctrine of the Knowledge of God b. Emotions and Decisions

It is true, of course, that people sometimes “follow their feelings,” rather than thinking responsibly. But it is also the case that people sometimes follow rationalistic schemes that run contrary to what they know in their “guts” (feelings) to be true. God gives us multiple faculties to serve as a sort of internal system of checks and balances. Sometimes reason saves us from emotional craziness, but emotions can also check the extravagant pretenses of reason.

The idea that our feelings work with our reasoning to help us properly navigate reality, and especially our relationship with God, was a revolutionary one for me. Maybe it is for you, too. How does this work, you might be wondering?
Frame gives an example from his experience that demonstrates the way feelings and thoughtful reasoning can work together.
The Doctrine of the Knowledge of God b. Emotions and Decisions

Writing book reviews is one of the more “intellectual” tasks that I perform. But it is interesting to see the role that emotions play even in that activity. After reading the first chapter of a book, I often have “a certain feeling” about the book: I like it or I don’t like it or I have a reaction that is somewhere in between. I then try to think it through. Why do I have this feeling? My rational reflection may lead to a change in feeling, or it may enable me to defend and articulate the feeling. Still, the feeling plays a crucial role. I cannot imagine doing academic work at all without having some feelings of that sort. If I had no feelings about the book I was reviewing, I would simply set it aside. The feeling guides my reflection; my reflection refines my feelings. Those refined feelings provoke additional reflection, and so on. The goal is a satisfying analysis, an analysis I feel good about, one with which I have cognitive rest, a peaceful relation between intellect and emotion. That relation seems to me to be involved in all knowledge.

I’m sure you can think of similar situations in your life. When Mable and I searched for churches soon after we were married, we had a matrix analysis (in other words a spreadsheet with rows of churches and columns of desirable features). That sounds very rational, doesn’t it? And yet some of those “features” of the churches were based entirely on feelings. And, ultimately, our decision came down to the “feel” of the short list of churches.
Almost all of our largest decisions involve feelings to a significant degree: marriage, church, job, home, etc. And most of our smallest decisions also involve feelings: breakfast, word choice, clothing for the day, and so on.
The point is: emotions are a good and necessary part of the way that we relate to ourselves, one another, the world, and, most importantly, to God.
It’s not always wrong to follow your feelings.

The Continuum of Emotions

But sometimes it is wrong to follow your feelings, isn’t it? So how do we know when to follow and when to wrestle?
Paul’s passage encouraged love and patience, but condemned revenge and laziness. And, perhaps more confusingly, he told Christians to share other people’s grief and joy!
The reality is that emotions are not all equal. Some are dangerously destructive, like pride or anger; some are helpful, like love and joy; and some are mixed, like fear and grief.
I wish I had the time to flesh out the distinctly Christian understanding of the emotions, but I only have time to give you a taste. Instead I’ll focus on two key emotions which can demonstrate how we can manage our emotions: anger and grief.
Let’s start with the dangerous emotions, which include anger.

Dangerous & destructive emotions

Pride

Proverbs 8:13 NLT
13 All who fear the Lord will hate evil. Therefore, I hate pride and arrogance, corruption and perverse speech.
God hates pride, and this is perhaps the emotion that underpins all rebellion.

Indifference

Psalm 106:7 NLT
7 Our ancestors in Egypt were not impressed by the Lord’s miraculous deeds. They soon forgot his many acts of kindness to them. Instead, they rebelled against him at the Red Sea.
Indifference is the root of boredom, ennui, and laziness, and it contributes to selfishness.

Hatred

Matthew 5:43–44 NLT
43 “You have heard the law that says, ‘Love your neighbor’ and hate your enemy. 44 But I say, love your enemies! Pray for those who persecute you!
Hatred creates an implacable opposition to something or someone, grounded deep in our heart and felt with great strength. The only legitimate hatred is hatred of wrongdoing (not wrongdoers).

Anger

Ephesians 4:26 NLT
26 And “don’t sin by letting anger control you.” Don’t let the sun go down while you are still angry,
Anger is an emotion that drives us to destroy, and so it is very dangerous.
I recently saw a Christian book about anger, called Good & Angry, which argues that anger is a necessary response to injustice. But in preparing for a sermon on anger years ago, I did a study of God’s expression of anger in scripture and was startled to find that God gets angry with only one thing, and it is not what we would call injustice. He only gets angry when people get in the way of his mission of salvation. Jesus gets angry with the Pharisees, his compatriots, rather than the Romans, the oppressors of his people, because it is the Pharisees who get in the way of true obedience to God, not the Romans. The fact that we misunderstand God’s righteous anger, assures us that we need to be very careful with anger.

Anxiety

Philippians 4:6 NLT
6 Don’t worry about anything; instead, pray about everything. Tell God what you need, and thank him for all he has done.
Anxiety reveals our desperate desire to be in control instead of allowing God to be god.

Mixed emotions

And here are the mixed emotions, which can be helpful or destructive, depending on their object.

Fear

Matthew 10:28 NLT
28 “Don’t be afraid of those who want to kill your body; they cannot touch your soul. Fear only God, who can destroy both soul and body in hell.
Fear encourages a healthy respect, but when it is misplaced, it can prevent us from doing the things we should be doing.

Jealousy

Exodus 20:5 NLT
5 You must not bow down to them or worship them, for I, the Lord your God, am a jealous God who will not tolerate your affection for any other gods. I lay the sins of the parents upon their children; the entire family is affected—even children in the third and fourth generations of those who reject me.
Jealousy is the desire to keep something of yours to yourself and yourself alone. It is different from envy which is simply the desire to prevent someone else having something. Jealousy is good when it is directed at something that should be yours alone, such as a marriage relationship, but dangerous otherwise.

Guilt

1 John 1:9 NLT
9 But if we confess our sins to him, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all wickedness.
Guilt is helpful when the thing you’re feeling guilty about is something you actually did wrong, and when it moves you to repentance.

Grief

2 Corinthians 7:9 NLT
9 Now I am glad I sent it, not because it hurt you, but because the pain caused you to repent and change your ways. It was the kind of sorrow God wants his people to have, so you were not harmed by us in any way.
Sorrow and grief are vital in helping us process loss. But we are not designed to live in sorrow, and God promises us release from tears when Jesus comes again.

Helpful emotions

The helpful emotions almost always draw us closer to God and lift up other people.

Patience

Psalm 86:15 NLT
15 But you, O Lord, are a God of compassion and mercy, slow to get angry and filled with unfailing love and faithfulness.

Humility

Philippians 2:3–5 NLT
3 Don’t be selfish; don’t try to impress others. Be humble, thinking of others as better than yourselves. 4 Don’t look out only for your own interests, but take an interest in others, too. 5 You must have the same attitude that Christ Jesus had.

Joy

Psalm 30:11–12 NLT
11 You have turned my mourning into joyful dancing. You have taken away my clothes of mourning and clothed me with joy, 12 that I might sing praises to you and not be silent. O Lord my God, I will give you thanks forever!

Love

Colossians 3:12–14 NLT
12 Since God chose you to be the holy people he loves, you must clothe yourselves with tenderhearted mercy, kindness, humility, gentleness, and patience. 13 Make allowance for each other’s faults, and forgive anyone who offends you. Remember, the Lord forgave you, so you must forgive others. 14 Above all, clothe yourselves with love, which binds us all together in perfect harmony.

Reflection: what emotions defined 2024 for me?

Now, before we finish up with some tools to help us better use our emotions for God’s glory in 2025, let’s take a moment to reflect on what emotions were most powerful in our lives in 2024.
Turn to the person next to you, especially if you don’t know them, and share with them the emotion or emotions which have been most prominent for you in 2024. Perhaps they were dangerous emotions, that’s OK, perhaps they were helpful. It doesn’t matter. I’ll give you two minutes, so you don’t have to get too in depth.

How can we love God in 2025 with our emotions?

OK. I hope that wasn’t too painful.
Of course, it is not just enough to be aware of our emotions. We must also be able to deal properly with them. How do we encourage helpful emotions? What do we do with dangerous emotions? And how do we ensure that mixed emotions are working helpfully rather than harmfully?

Know our emotions

The first step is to really understand your emotions. Not just be aware that you’re angry, for example, but understand what you’re angry with, why that is making you angry rather than sad, and so on.
Too often we spend years trying to understand our work, but remain ignorant of our own souls. It is worth spending time each day considering: how am I feeling? What is going on in my heart? What is making me feel this way?
If we don’t know our emotions, we can’t manage them.

Transition from dangerous emotions to helpful ones

Now, what happens when you are experiencing dangerous emotions. For example, someone in your family has betrayed you, and you are feeling incandescent anger—you want to hurt that person! This sort of anger is clearly unhelpful—you are feeling it because you have been hurt: it is an essentially selfish feeling. But the betrayer did do something wrong, that is still true (and that is what your anger will tell you). Jesus gives us an example, listen to this account from the gospel of Mark:
Mark 3:1–5 NLT
1 Jesus went into the synagogue again and noticed a man with a deformed hand. 2 Since it was the Sabbath, Jesus’ enemies watched him closely. If he healed the man’s hand, they planned to accuse him of working on the Sabbath. 3 Jesus said to the man with the deformed hand, “Come and stand in front of everyone.” 4 Then he turned to his critics and asked, “Does the law permit good deeds on the Sabbath, or is it a day for doing evil? Is this a day to save life or to destroy it?” But they wouldn’t answer him. 5 He looked around at them angrily and was deeply saddened by their hard hearts. Then he said to the man, “Hold out your hand.” So the man held out his hand, and it was restored!
Jesus’ anger was, of course, righteous anger. He wasn’t angry because someone had hurt him, he was angry because people were trying to stop someone else receiving healing. But he didn’t stay angry, almost immediately his anger transmuted into grief.
Anger is an emotion that drives us to destroy; God’s wrath destroys. But grief is a much more productive emotion, it moves us to compassion and healing, as in this account.
So if you feel anger, try to understand what it is that you’re really angry about, and then recognise that it is not your place to destroy that person or thing. Rather, open yourself to sorrow for how this wrong or injustice hurts people (including you). Grieve over the pain caused. And let that grief move you to change the world.
I was struck by two stories on 60 Minutes this past year. Both involved parents who had lost their children. One set of parents were still stuck in their anger, and all their anger did was burn them up. The second set of parents were grief-stricken, but their grief so moved the hearts of our Federal government that they immediately passed laws to try to prevent more children being lost that way. Grief is far more powerful than anger, because people can join us in our grief, but we are alone in our anger.
The other dangerous emotions are vulnerable to reflection and thought, as well. Pride and hatred and anxiety are diminished by calm reflection on God’s glory. If we push into reflecting on God—for example, reciting Psalms, singing hymns, reading God’s word—then as our mind fills with joy and love the dangerous emotions will be pushed out.

Ensure the right object and motive

What about mixed emotions?
The key to mixed emotions is that they are dangerous when they have the wrong object. In other words, a mixed emotion is helpful if you are feeling it about the right thing. So feeling sad about not getting a new car for Christmas is probably not helpful. But feeling sad about leaving home to go to uni probably is helpful.
The key to dealing with mixed emotions is to ensure the right object, and the right motive. If I am sad about not getting a new car for Christmas, it is clear that I am sad about the wrong sort of thing, the wrong object. But also, I am sad for the wrong reason, the wrong motive. I am sad because I’m so entitled that I think I deserve a new car for Christmas, yet I didn’t get one.
I need to reflect on my entitlement, and hold it up against the Bible, for example this verse:
James 1:2–4 NLT
2 Dear brothers and sisters, when troubles of any kind come your way, consider it an opportunity for great joy. 3 For you know that when your faith is tested, your endurance has a chance to grow. 4 So let it grow, for when your endurance is fully developed, you will be perfect and complete, needing nothing.
Wow, that really deflates my sadness over missing out on a new car under the Christmas tree!

Overcome evil with good

Which brings me to my final observation.
God designed us with emotions, certainly. We then corrupted them by turning against God. The solution is not to deny our emotions, but rather the same as the solution to all our genuine problems: the solution is the cross of Christ.
Paul said this better than I ever could, when he explained to the church at Colossae how they could overcome evil with good. He was particularly focused on character, which includes emotions, thoughts and actions. He wrote:
Colossians 3:1–17 ESV
1 If then you have been raised with Christ, seek the things that are above, where Christ is, seated at the right hand of God. 2 Set your minds on things that are above, not on things that are on earth. 3 For you have died, and your life is hidden with Christ in God. 4 When Christ who is your life appears, then you also will appear with him in glory. 5 Put to death therefore what is earthly in you: sexual immorality, impurity, passion, evil desire, and covetousness, which is idolatry. 6 On account of these the wrath of God is coming. 7 In these you too once walked, when you were living in them. 8 But now you must put them all away: anger, wrath, malice, slander, and obscene talk from your mouth. 9 Do not lie to one another, seeing that you have put off the old self with its practices 10 and have put on the new self, which is being renewed in knowledge after the image of its creator. 11 Here there is not Greek and Jew, circumcised and uncircumcised, barbarian, Scythian, slave, free; but Christ is all, and in all. 12 Put on then, as God’s chosen ones, holy and beloved, compassionate hearts, kindness, humility, meekness, and patience, 13 bearing with one another and, if one has a complaint against another, forgiving each other; as the Lord has forgiven you, so you also must forgive. 14 And above all these put on love, which binds everything together in perfect harmony. 15 And let the peace of Christ rule in your hearts, to which indeed you were called in one body. And be thankful. 16 Let the word of Christ dwell in you richly, teaching and admonishing one another in all wisdom, singing psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, with thankfulness in your hearts to God. 17 And whatever you do, in word or deed, do everything in the name of the Lord Jesus, giving thanks to God the Father through him.
Let’s pray.
Lord, help us to value the emotions you have blessed us with, and to lay them before you as an offering. Help us to put aside our dangerous emotions, recognising their selfishness, and to take up the helpful emotions that equip us to better love you and our fellow human beings. Please use 2025 to transform us into your likeness, Lord Jesus.
Amen.
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