One question often discussed among pastors is this: how can people attend solid Bible-teaching churches and not seem to make much progress in their growth as Christians? I’ve been mulling that one for a decade. I think an answer that deserves repeated attention is simple: emotions. Emotional immaturity is a barrier to overall spiritual health. So I’m going to take some time over the next few posts to dive into this.
Two Unhealthy Emotional Approaches to Avoid
In order to get emotionally healthy, we have to approach them the right way. One wrong way we deal with emotions is disregarding them. Stoicism isn’t biblical. God wired us to feel. Just read the Psalms! Pretending emotions don’t exist or are “evil” and to be suppressed won’t help. We need to be honest with ourselves and others about how we feel. We need to self-evaluate what we’re feeling and why.
In being honest about how we feel, however, we can drift into the other kind of unhealthy emotional approach: granting our emotions sovereignty. Just because we feel a certain way, doesn’t mean what we feel is right or honoring to God. Because emotions aren’t sovereign, they need to fall under biblical scrutiny.
Granting emotions sovereignty is a growing problem in our cultural milieu. Feelings have become the litmus test for determining what is true. At the end of the day, this is idolatry and never leads anywhere good. So how do we deal with them in a biblically faithful way? Stay tuned…
