I come, I come. Do you see me? Just right to me, Billy Graham, Minneapolis, Minnesota. Somehow those words all kind of fit together just as I am. Last week as our ushers were doing their, or our maintenance men were doing their cleaning here in the auditorium, they came across a note that had been written during the service on Sunday. I don't know by whom or which service, but it was obviously from one end of a row to another. The first person wrote,
what are you doing down there? Something wrong? The note came back and it said, no, I just have a lot of forgiving to do. Then it was sent back and it said, so do I. Well, how's it been going this week on your project of forgiving? We've been looking at some themes that are important to the Christian life. None of them surpasses an importance that of forgiveness. Forgiveness is a freeing thing.
This week, I hope that if it's been needed, you've worked on either giving or receiving forgiveness and that that has been a liberating experience for you. Today we want to look at the matter of emotions. How we feel controls so many of us. I was talking with a friend of mine yesterday about this and he said, well, what text are you going to expound? And I shared with him the frank problem that there are very few texts in the scripture that one can expound just on emotions.
The whole book of Psalms is about emotions, the expression of them. Where do you find a text that one might expound to say what you want to say about emotions? I believe the book of 2 Corinthians is one of the most emotional books in the Bible. I invite you to turn there with me to a passage that will at least give us a starting point. We won't be expositing this text verse by verse, but we see some of the emotion of the Apostle Paul as he writes in 2 Corinthians 4, beginning in verse 7.
We have this treasure, talking about the treasure of the ministry of the gospel of Jesus Christ. We have this treasure in earthen vessels. That the surpassing greatness of the power may be of God and not from ourselves. We are afflicted in every way, but not crushed. Perplexed, but not despairing. Persecuted, but not forsaken. Struck down, but not destroyed. Always carrying about in the body the dying of Jesus. That the life of Jesus also may be manifested in our body.
For we who live are constantly being delivered over to death for Jesus' sake. That the life of Jesus also may be manifested in our mortal flesh. I have before me this morning a cartoon drawn by Gary Larson. He is the cartoonist for The Far Side. Those of you who enjoy that cartoon know what it is, and if you don't know what it is, you probably won't enjoy what I'm going to say next. It's one of those cartoons that you either get or you don't get.
I have a whole calendar of them, a new one for every day of the year, and have saved my favorite one since January. I went out to lunch with a friend of mine this week and eagerly handed him my pile of favorite Far Sides and he would... He didn't get a single one of them, so much for his sense of humor. In this cartoon, a rather forlorn, neglected, disheveled man sits on the end of his bed in what can be best described as a flop house room.
There's a bare light bulb hanging from the ceiling, cracks in the walls, the picture is crooked and it's broken. Clothing is strewn on the floor along with some cans of I don't know what. As he sits on the end of his bed, he looks out a window and perched in the window is a chicken looking at him. The caption underneath says, the bluebird of happiness long absent from Ned's life, he is now visited by the chicken of depression.
Well, I suppose all of us have from time to time known the bluebird of happiness as well as the chicken of depression. I want today to talk about emotions, learning to live with our feelings. My concern is how we who name Jesus Christ as Lord can learn to live with our emotions in a spiritually healthy way. Some Christians are as dependent upon their feelings as a drug addict for his next fix.
Others, however, consider emotional expressions unspiritual or immature and pride themselves in a rather igloo like existence, frigid and frozen. It would be good for all of us to recognize the legitimacy of having feelings and being emotional. And yet, to keep that in balance so that our walk with God is not similar to a roller coaster ride. We must learn to live with our feelings, but not allow them to dominate us.
That is my proposition this morning and I invite you to think hard with me about it. We must learn to live with our feelings, but not be dominated by them. There are three facts I want to talk about. If you and I can grasp these facts, I believe we will go a long way toward handling our emotions. Fact number one is simply this, emotions are a part of being human. God created us with the ability to have feelings and to express them.
In the book of Genesis, the very first chapter, we observe something interesting about God that is at least suggested to us. At various points in the creation narrative, the writer Moses states, God saw that it was good. He says that, for example, in verse 10, he says it again in verse 12. He says it again in verse 18. He says it in verse 21, and God saw that it was good. Again, verse 25. Believe me, this is not just a rational statement regarding God.
This is not a mechanical response on his part, oh, that is good. This is a statement of the heart of God as he saw the creation that he brought into being by his spoken word. It was good. In fact, he says it was very good. I observe from this that God himself has emotion. Holy, pure, sovereign, infinite emotion. God is emotional, and he created mankind in his image to also experience emotions. In chapter 2, verse 18, the Lord God said, It is not good for the man to be alone.
I will make him a helper suitable for him. You see, God admits that man can feel lonely, and he says it is not good for him to feel lonely, to be alone. I am going to create something as his counterpart. And he did that in verse 23. The man responds, This is now bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh. You see, all of the animals have come before Adam. He has named them appropriately. But nothing has been found for him to be completed with.
And he responds by saying what he does. She shall be called woman because she was taken out of man. You think that that was merely a rational statement on his part? Not in the least. If you want to reduce that statement of Adam's to just one word, it would be the word, wow. When he saw what God had prepared for him, that perfect counterpart, bone of his own bones, flesh of his own flesh, taken from him, it was terrific. It was wonderful. He recognized this as woman, his completer.
He felt deeply regarding this. It says in verse 25, the man and his wife were both naked and were not ashamed. But then in chapter 3, the record states that sin entered through the temptation of the serpent. And Eve and Adam fell into sin. And the eyes of them were opened, verse 7, and they knew that they were naked, and they sowed fig leaves together and made themselves loin coverings. And in verse 10, Adam is responding to God who is searching for him.
And he says, I heard the sound of thee in the garden, and I was afraid because I was naked, so I hid myself. And so after the fall, we still see emotion being expressed. Now negatively, they are feeling ashamed and they are feeling afraid because of the effect of sin. My point in coming here to Genesis is simply to underscore the fact that when God created man and woman in the beginning, emotion was part of it. Emotion is not a result of sin, although sin affects our emotion.
Emotion was present before sin and certainly present after sin. Emotions are part of being human. To deny our emotions is to deny our humanity. And that results in problems. Suppressed emotions will surface somehow, some way, some day. When God entered his creation through the incarnation, he was a perfectly healthy and balanced man. Jesus Christ experienced the gamut of feelings and emotions which a holy person could.
It is interesting to go through the Gospels as I did quickly and in a cursory way this week, just looking for the emotions that Jesus expressed and felt. Here are some of them. In John 15-11, he speaks about his joy. Jesus knew joy in his feelings. On the other hand, in Matthew 26-38 in the garden, it says that he was grieved. Literally it says he was surrounded by sorrow, fulfilling what Isaiah said, a man of sorrows and acquainted with grief.
That's what the Messiah would be like. It says in John 11-33 in two interesting words, in the first place he was troubled. You recall this is the death of Lazarus and all the wind accompanied that. It says he was troubled. The word literally means disturbed or to shudder. He was troubled. It's the same word used in John 14-1, let not your heart be troubled, Jesus says. But he himself experienced trouble of heart. It also says in John 11-33, he was deeply moved. A significant word, deeply moved.
Literally it means to snort as an expression of anger. I'm not going to try to illustrate that for you, but I think you get the idea. He uttered a sound that was generated by anger inside of him and what he was seeing. Then Matthew 9-36, he felt compassion for the multitudes. In John 6-66, he says to his disciples, and you, you won't go away too, will you? Jesus knew the meaning of loneliness. He's felt that. I'm told that we are capable of more than 600 emotions as human beings.
All of those that would be consistent with a holy person Jesus felt. It's important to remember that emotions are not inherently sinful. Feelings are not sinful in themselves. How we express them may be righteous or unrighteous, good or bad. But the feelings themselves are not inherently sinful. Our emotions are always in flux because our emotions respond to our circumstances and our circumstances are in continual change. Here's the process.
A change in my situation produces a change in my feelings, which in turn produces a change in me biochemically and in my relationships with others. And because my situation is constantly changing, my feelings are constantly changing, and so I am constantly changing chemically and in my relationships to others. It's something very dynamic and it's not static. It is changing all the time. No wonder we need to learn to live with our feelings.
But I have occasionally lamented, as maybe you have, if only I didn't have feelings. My feelings get in the way of my service for God. I just wish he would take away my feelings. Really that's a very stupid statement. Because what we're saying when we say that is that we don't want to be human anymore. Emotions provide variety to life, just as color is provided by the beautiful strands in a tapestry. Feelings and emotions are a wonderful gift from our Creator.
We should thank God for our emotions because emotions are part of being human. But that brings us to a second fact that's important for us to think about. And that is, emotions are subject to abuse and to manipulation. Turn with me again to 2 Corinthians, chapter 1 this time, and notice how Paul's emotions changed. If we had time to look more fully at 2 Corinthians, I could show you how his emotions were changing a great deal regarding them in particular.
In chapter 1 verse 8 he says, We do not want you to be unaware, brethren, of our affliction which came to us in Asia, a change in his situation, that we were burdened excessively beyond our strength, so that we despaired even of life. Hey friend, this is perhaps the greatest saint in the last 2,000 years speaking. And he says his emotions were such that he despaired even of going on with life, beyond his strength, excessively burdened.
That's how he felt. Our emotional states and our response can be affected by a number of things. We've talked about change of circumstances, but let's think also about our physical conditioning. That can affect our feelings. Fatigue affects the way that you feel. When you are rested you may feel one way about a circumstance, and when you're fatigued another way. Likewise we are affected by medications, by hormones. Particularly females are affected by this.
As they enter into that mid-period of life that's called menopause and the change of hormones at that time, many women go through a difficult crisis with their feelings, and it's hormonal primarily. Men also can face a mid-life kind of crisis, not so much because of hormones, but because of the aging process, it affects feelings. Abuse can affect feelings. I have talked to people who have been abused as children. Oh my, how that causes feelings later in life to be complicated.
Feelings can be affected by plan and manipulation. There are those who study how to manipulate others. Often sales techniques involve this. Television is just one case of manipulation after another. Trying to get you to feel certain ways about certain issues, or certain products that they want you to feel like going out and buying. When you and I sit down before the television, we are sitting down before the great manipulator, and we need to be on guard.
Our feelings are affected by nutrition. Those who eat a lot of junk food sometimes have difficulty with their emotions because they are not eating a balanced diet. Somebody who is high on sugar can because of that feel certain things that normally he or she would not feel. Nutrition is important. Stress affects our feelings. Habit, whenever you and I act upon an emotion, we reinforce it. And that then can become a pattern. So habit affects our emotions.
How do we know whether our emotions are healthy or not? What are our feelings and what they ought to be? Let me begin by saying there are two extremes that need to be avoided as we face changes in our circumstances. The one extreme is the emotional response. Everything is visceral. It's all in the surface. And everything is very high or very low. The emotional response. That's an extreme that needs to be avoided. The other extreme is the purely rational response.
Where one reasons and approaches the situation logically and it's all mechanical, and any feelings are deeply held down, not allowed to surface, it's got to be rational and reasonable. When you get two people who are on extremes married, you've got a real household. What we need to strive for is a balance, somewhere in between. It's very difficult for me to tell you what your balance ought to be because each of us is a little different.
But the fact is we both need, we need both to be emotional and rational as we face our changing circumstances. A healthy emotion is one that is working in balance with reason, with logic. Now the fact is that sometimes all of us need assistance from another person who can help us sort through what we're facing and how we're feeling. It may be a good friend that we sit down with. Maybe we're out fishing and we just start talking about it.
Or maybe we actually go over to the house in tears and we say, oh, can you have a cup of coffee with me? I need to talk about this. It may be to the point that we need to go see a counselor who's professionally trained to help us sort through these things. But the fact is that every one of us probably, a week doesn't go by. What we seek out somebody to help us sort through what we're facing and how we're feeling about that. There is nothing wrong with that that is good, it is normal.
We need to find the kind of godly friends who will help us with it. That brings us to a third fact that we need to talk about and that is emotions are a part of your Christian experience. They're not just a part of life in general, but emotions are a part of your Christian experience. Hear me. An emotion-less Christianity is unhealthy. To attempt to worship God and serve him without any expression of emotion is to practice a form of godliness without the life.
That kind of Christianity is as cold as marble in a mausoleum. It's dead. On the other hand, an emotion-filled Christianity is unstable. To base one's faith or one's walk with God on mere emotion is to live, shall we say, in a world of bubbles. Bubbles that burst and pop easily. That kind of Christianity leaves one on a dangerous religious joyride that must always seek a greater thrill to be satisfying.
A healthy and balanced Christian life will embrace and express true emotion while finding its basis to be truth and not experience. I want to repeat that. A healthy, balanced Christian life will embrace and express true emotion while finding its basis to be truth and not experience. We need to understand the proper place of emotion. Three statements I want to make about it. Emotions are not the foundation, but the fireplace.
Obviously, I'm comparing it to a house, the house of your life. Emotions must not be the foundation of it. It's the fireplace. The foundation is not feeling. If the foundation of your life is feeling, it's going to be a rough one. The foundation must be fact, primarily the fact, the truth of God's Word. But feeling is nice, like a fireplace. It provides warmth. It provides decoration. But it's not always necessary any more than your fireplace is always lit in your home.
Or your home may not have a fireplace. But a fireplace is nice. Emotions are nice. They're the fireplace, but they're not the foundation. Second thing I'd like to say about emotions and their place is this. Emotions are not the master, but the servant. To be dominated by your emotions is to be a slave to them. We ought not to be a slave to our emotions and just follow around wherever our feelings lead us. Emotions are not the master, but the servant.
And thirdly, emotions are not the locomotive, but the caboose. Appropriate feelings will always follow when we act in loving obedience to Christ's commands. And yet how many Christians there are who are just following their feelings around, making the caboose the locomotive. It doesn't work very well that way. The caboose comes along at the end. That which pulls the life must be the locomotive of faith in the facts of God's Word.
With the locomotive, with the caboose rather, coming at the end in emotions. There are people who have come to me and have said, I don't love my wife anymore. I don't love my husband anymore. And they are stating something they genuinely feel. That is an emotion that is true about them. But the fact is that God commands us to love our wives, our husbands. And if we lovingly obey Christ's commands and we act lovingly, therefore, toward our spouse, the emotions will come along.
Now I recognize that things happen in a marriage that can crush those feelings of love. Those too need to be dealt with and can be. But my point is that those who get a divorce saying, I don't love him anymore, I don't love her anymore, are making a tragic mistake. A tragic mistake. There are those today who are taking their vows of marriage. And what they say at the end of the vow is something like, until we love no more, instead of until death we depart.
When you and I do what God tells us to do, the emotions will come along like a caboose. There are those who are reluctant to do God's will in their lives because they feel that for some reason it won't be good for them. Or that they're not able to do it. Or that's too far away from home. Or whatever. When you and I lovingly obey what Jesus tells us to do, the emotions come along like a caboose. There are some of us who have not been in the garden with God lately.
We started out the summer, our project, you know, the journaling and going to the garden. And now as time has gone by we've let that slip and weeds have grown up in the garden. And we have not gone to the garden every day because we haven't felt like going to the garden every day. That's right. None of us feel like going to the garden every day. But when we go to the garden, the feelings come along later. You see, feelings must not be the locomotive. They must be the caboose.
Your emotions are a wonderful part of the God-designed you. Despite the fact that they can be manipulated or abused, they add a great deal to the experience of living. And they're important in your Christian life too. The problem that you and I have is how do we control our emotions rather than our emotions controlling us? Do you ever feel that way? It's okay, I'm human. I'm going to have feelings. I need to express them, but how do I control them?
The fact is that when we are dominated by our feelings, it's easy for us to make shipwreck in our Christian lives. So how do we control our emotions so they're healthy and they're in balance? I have a thought about that. When you find yourself being overwhelmed by some emotion, dominated by it, seek to discern what the thought or the attitude is that lies underneath that feeling. You see, that feeling is coming from somewhere in your life. It's not just floating around. It's got an origin.
So when you find yourself struggling, being overwhelmed with a feeling, then seek to find out what the attitude or thought is that's at the basis of that. And once you have isolated that, see yourself as a soldier of Jesus Christ, which you are, that takes captive and makes prisoner that thought or that attitude that is creating the feeling. Take that prisoner to the Lord Jesus Christ, your commander in chief, and present that prisoner to him to deal with. That's what you should do.
Now, I'm basing that upon a passage of Scripture in 2 Corinthians, chapter 10. Paul says in verse 4, The weapons of our warfare are not of the flesh, but divinely powerful for the destruction of fortresses. We are destroying speculations. Look at this. And every lofty thing raised up against the knowledge of God, and we are taking every thought captive to the obedience of Christ. That's what Paul is saying, and we're applying it to emotions.
When you are overwhelmed by an emotion, find out what the thought or the attitude is that underlies that. And once you're able to isolate it, to name it, to see it, then make it a prisoner. And in your mind, just take that to Jesus Christ, your commander in chief, and say, Lord, I present to you this prisoner. You take him. And then, once you've done that, turn around and walk away from it. That is, that thought or that attitude. But you can't stop there.
You've got to put something in its place. What are you going to put in its place? Well, turn to Philippians, chapter 4, a minute, and notice what Paul tells us in verse 8. Finally, brethren, whatever is true, whatever is honorable, right, pure, lovely, of good report, if there's any excellence, if anything worthy of praise, let your mind dwell on these things. Here's what we are to do.
Once we have taken that prisoner to Jesus Christ and committed that thought, that attitude, that we've taken captive to him, we are then to replace that thought with a good one, one that is pure, one that is honorable, one that is lovely, one that is a good report, one that is true. Let's suppose for a moment that we are feeling fearful. There is anxiety in our lives.
And as we look at that feeling, it's coming from a doubt in our minds whether God is really going to see us through this situation. Is God able to do that? Well, we should never doubt that God's able to do it and that he will do it. That's a wrong thought. That thought is a lie. To ever think that God wouldn't see me through it. Therefore, I need to take that thought captive and take it immediately to the Commander in Chief.
And once I've committed the lie to him, then I need to think in my mind the truth. What is the truth? Faithful is he who calls me, who also will do it. Or some other verse that God would give us that's true and planted in its place. You know what happens when we do that? That new thought, that new attitude will produce the right kind of feeling. That's how we handle our feelings.
And you know when you and I take those thoughts captive and bring them to Christ, and we begin to meditate and to think on the things that we ought to think about that are true and lovely, good report and so on, when we do that, the Holy Spirit begins to bring the Lordship of Jesus Christ into our lives. He begins to produce the fruit of the Spirit, which is love.
That's in part a feeling, and joy, and peace, and long-suffering, and gentleness, and goodness, and faithfulness, and meekness, and self-control. And he will begin expressing in our lives those healthy things. Because Jesus Christ is Lord, our minds are focused on good things, and our emotions are right and balanced. What is the emotion that you're struggling with today? I challenge you, change your thoughts, change your attitudes, and you will find your emotions following along.
Because feelings follow where we, by the Holy Spirit, consciously lead them by our thoughts. Our thoughts determine how we feel and what we become. Let Jesus Christ be Lord of your thought life. Let him feed your thoughts with what is true and lovely, of good report and pure. The things that are worthy of praise and excellence. And your feelings will come along. It's time for us to bow together. I'm glad you're seated.
What is a feeling or an emotion that has dominated your life in recent days, perhaps even this morning? What is the battle with emotions that you are facing, or some unhealthy, sinful response perhaps to an emotion? What are you feeling today? The second question is, why are you feeling it? What thought or what attitude lies beneath that emotion, giving it strength? Maybe you're not able to isolate that quickly. Would you ask the Lord to help you to understand it?
To see clearly, to focus on that thought or that attitude that's producing that overwhelming emotion? If you're able to isolate it, would you right now take it prisoner and present it to Jesus Christ, your commander in chief? And having done that, will you choose to walk away from it and no longer harbor that attitude or that thought? And in its place, will you right now put what is true or what is pure or what is of a good report?
Some appropriate, contrasting, righteous thought or attitude, will you put it in your life? Now all of this is an act of faith and obedience in your part. As you do it, you will find your emotions changing, coming under control of the Holy Spirit. Oh God, I pray that all of us today will learn something about how to live with our feelings. May we no longer be led around by them and may we no longer ignore them and wish them away.
May we learn by the Spirit how to control them so that the beautiful fruit of the Spirit will be evidenced in our lives and we'll be balanced and healthy, maturing children of God living under the Lordship of Jesus Christ. In His name we pray, Amen. Amen. Amen. Amen. Amen. Amen. Amen. Amen. Amen. Amen. Amen. Amen. Amen. Amen. Amen. Amen. Amen. Amen. Amen. Amen. Amen. Amen. Amen. Amen. Amen. Amen. Amen.