The Godly Emotional Life

Recently, I read a chapter in Gentle & Lowly called “The Emotional Life of Christ.” I actually read it for the first time a couple of months ago, but it rocked my world this time. I’ve been processing a lot of complex emotions these last few months. I’m also a very passionate person with a big personality. Sometimes, balancing everything in a way that honors the Lord and His people feels like an impossible task. My solution up to a couple of weeks ago was to push all my feelings down as far as they could go and become as indifferent as I could. I thought if I could just pretend I didn’t feel the way that I felt, it would eventually go away. I was kinda living in a “fake it til’ you make it” mindset. I didn’t “make it,” though. Eventually, all the feelings I had been pushing down rose to the surface, and I felt consumed by my emotions. Consumed by anger, bitterness, sadness, guilt, and everything in between. At the beginning of this week, I sat down with the Lord and admitted how I felt like a dead man walking. I felt drained. I felt like I was present physically, but not at all mentally or spiritually. This is always the result when I try to “fix things” myself and do things my way. Time and time again, the Lord has shown me that I can’t do anything without Him. My desperate need for Him is apparent. I know I can’t bury my emotions and pretend everything is okay, but sometimes I feel like I’m at a crossroads. I don’t want to be numb, but I also don’t want to be consumed by my feelings and dishonor the Lord with the way I handle things. That’s when I rediscovered the chapter of my book that I mentioned earlier. I realized that I had been looking at things all wrong. The solution to my problems isn’t to feel less. It’s to submit all my big feelings to the Lord and let Him teach me how to honor Him in the midst of them. Jesus lived a very emotional life. He felt all the emotions you and I feel today. He got angry, but also showed more compassion than we ever could. Jesus was never indifferent or nonchalant. He cared, and He felt all the feelings, but He always honored His Father. Every emotion He displayed was wrapped in righteousness. To look like Jesus, we have to be emotional. We have to care. We have to feel the good and the bad. He made us that way. We don’t honor Him by erasing emotions but by being set apart in the midst of them. It’s not about what emotions we’re having, but what we’re doing about them. We don’t sin just by being angry. We sin when we let our anger govern our lives. In the Gospels, we see Jesus get angry many times, but that anger never consumed Him because He was consumed by the Father. When we are consumed by God, there’s no room for us to be consumed by anything else. Jesus isn’t asking us to become less. He’s asking us to give Him more. When we submit everything in our lives, the good and the bad, to Him, He shows us how to live a Godly emotional life. A life governed by our Father and His word, not the way we feel. It's an honor to feel so deeply, but we have to steward it well to give Him glory. Christ is welcoming us to live an emotional life with Him. If we accept that invitation, we will see great fruit come from it, and emotions will no longer feel like a burden, but a privilege and another avenue by which we can bring honor to His name.