Are We Experiencing a Healthy Emotional Life?

We live in a day and age when this life is hard pressed on so many fronts. Turn on the nightly news and one quickly sees people are so stressed out they end up doing extreme things that are out of control, like pulling out a gun and shooting someone for little to no reason other than they were mad. It seems people have little to no ability to control their emotions these days.

People have admitted in a nation-wide survey that over 50% of the population feels depressed because of the economy, their health or any number of things. Among teens the numbers are higher, giving way to a rise in teen suicide. When a culture walks away from God and then kills their unborn children as a normal way of life is there any wonder why the world seems poised for destruction? When I was a kid growing up in the 70s we were mostly afraid of nuclear war with Russia. Today people are more afraid than ever and not just because of war or the economics of their own country.

Jesus said at the end of the age there would wars and rumors of wars. Although the world has had war after war throughout recorded history something seems very different today. You can feel the utter hopelessness in the world around you partly because we thought we would solve the world’s problems though our inventions and technology. Not only have these things not made our lives better, in many ways they have caused our lives to be more stressed out than ever before. They have complicated our daily lives far more than most of us could have imagined and now we are warned about AI destroying us as well.

This leads me to ask the question of are we getting “FUELED” emotionally or drained? Are our emotions being energized enough to handle the pressures around us and in us? When our emotions are fragmented and stretched beyond measure the outcome becomes destructive because our emotions are meant to give us meaning and fulfillment. Good emotional health is a must for healthy and happy living so where does the church come into this picture? In my opinion the church should be providing healthy emotional support as well as intellectual support through sermons and scripture, yet I wonder, or should I add, I doubt many are.

It is my experience that so few churches provide a healthy emotional outlet or experience that the human soul so needs. Our souls need mental, emotional and spiritual refreshing, but if the main fueling we get at our church services is mostly intellectual, with scripture & sermon being the main emphasis, we end up starving our emotional well being. God wired human beings with emotions and those emotions need to be connected to our spiritual experiences both with God and each other. 

If our worship is Spirit-led, and there is a pathway for people to connect with God emotionally, then there is indeed emotional strengthening of the individual as well as the congregation. If, on the other hand, all people do is sing songs without connecting with God then little is accomplished from such worship. So many churches are afraid of providing healthy worship services where emotions can flourish because of the fear of excessive emotions. 

When I speak of emotional worship I’m referring to worship that king David wrote about in the psalms in which David was very passionate about loving God and expressing it emotionally and physically. One of the more famous acts of worship was when David brought back the arc of the covenant to Jerusalem and danced before the people without any kingly robe or special clothing. Weekly worship should be where people can feel free to lift their hands or kneel down, or even lay prostrate on the floor. Such worship engages the whole person not just the intellect.

2 Samuel 6:14-15 

And David was dancing before the LORD with all his might, and David was wearing a linen ephod. So David and all the house of Israel were bringing up the ark of the LORD with shouting and the sound of the trumpet.

Both Jesus and the apostle Paul stated very clearly that in the end times peoples’ “LOVE” would grow cold and become self centered. This happens when the emotional side of love for God and others gets robbed because all the emphasis is put on stimulating the intellectual side of our soul. Just like our physical health needs to be balanced so does our spiritual experience need to be balanced. 

Matthew 24:12

Because lawlessness is increased, most people’s love will grow cold. 

2 Timothy 3:1-5 

But realize this, that in the last days difficult times will come. For men will be lovers of self, lovers of money, boastful, arrogant, revilers, disobedient to parents, ungrateful, unholy, unloving, irreconcilable, malicious gossips, without self-control, brutal, haters of good, treacherous, reckless, conceited, lovers of pleasure rather than lovers of God, [5] holding to a form of godliness, although they have denied its power; Avoid such men as these. 

If there is one thing that is obvious is the fact that “Lawlessness” is rampant today with little to no accountability. When our emotional relationship with God is not nurtured, especially in church gatherings, and then telling people to not sin and obey God, our love just can’t handle the emotional stress. Marriage is a good example: Don’t nurture and feed the emotional side of love and the marriage often dies a slow death until one day you feel more like strangers than lovers. 

Our church gatherings, whether small or large, should create an environment that is conducive to stirring our emotional souls to connect with our Heavenly Father. That environment will help us battle the stress that we will face in the coming week. The flip side is if we don’t get emotionally fueled and healed in our church services weekly then when we enter our next battle we will fail to overcome. Feeding our intellect with scripture without experiencing the presence and freedom of God in our emotions makes us emotionally unstable and weak. God’s heart is to feed our mind with truth and our emotional soul with his presence so that we are able to weather the storms of life with victory, not with defeat. Don’t be lied to that your emotions don’t count and you should ignore them because God made you to have and experience emotions with his guidance not the world’s.

My hope and prayer is that our congregations will feed both our intellect and our emotions as we strive to love God and one another. Be the change agent in your church families and experience the richness of a balanced spiritual life.

Questions:

1) Do you feel like you are emotionally out of balance, either too controlled by them or not enough feeling? Ask the Holy Spirit to bring healing as you read the word in John 8:31-32 (both verses linked together)

2) Are you starving emotionally in your worship services? Let the Holy Spirit lead you to those who worship in Spirit & Truth and discover a healthy place to love God and people.

Pastor Dale