The Emotional Life

One night Anita says to me, “Honey, you’re in the middle of a serious depression. You need to deal with this and talk with someone.”

I made an appointment with a therapist the next day and as I recounted what all was swirling around and just kind of dumped, he said, “No wonder you’re depressed!” That was the beginning of a journey out of a dark place.

I wasn’t listening to my emotions…and as a result, I wasn’t thinking straight as well in terms of a next step. He helped me to see some of my family history and how that affected the way I was leading.

Here’s the problem with the Stoic approach and just “stuffing” your emotions: it’s not played out like that in the Bible. God longs for us to cry out to Him. When emotions are raw, it can create a thin space between us and God, a blurred line where we might get real.

In the Psalms, at one point David says, O LORD, why do you stand so far away? Why do you hide when I need you the most? Psalm 10:1 (New Living Translation)

Or later in deep emotional turmoil he writes: My heart is in anguish. The terror of death overpowers me. Fear and trembling overwhelm me. I can’t stop shaking. Oh, how I wish I had wings like a dove; then I would fly away and rest! Psalm 55:4–6 (New Living Translation)

But even God in the flesh had deep and varied emotions. After a friend of Jesus’ died in another town, He went to see the family. His friend’s sister ran up to Him and collapsed. It reads: Mary came to where Jesus was waiting and fell at his feet, saying, “Master, if only you had been here, my brother would not have died.” When Jesus saw her sobbing and the Jews with her sobbing, a deep anger welled up within him. John 11:32–33 (Message Version)

I would interpret this as a holy anger at how awful death is, how unnatural to the original design of God’s…angry at how the enemy had twisted the beauty of this world. Now watch these wildly fluctuating emotions in Jesus:

He said, “Where did you put him?”

“Master, come and see,” they said. Now Jesus wept. John 11:34–35 (Message Version)

There were other times when Jesus is having a blast. He trains 72 guys to do the same kind of wild, supernatural ministry of healing and deliverance that He did, and they come back from a mission trip higher than a kite…telling crazy stories of God’s power working through them. It reads: At that, Jesus rejoiced, exuberant in the Holy Spirit. Luke 10:21a (Message Version)

Or when He gets blasted by the religious leaders for starting to heal a handicapped man with a withered hand on the Sabbath (because that would have been considered work for His line of business as a rabbi—what would be the problem for waiting one more day?), Jesus was puzzled with them.

Then Jesus asked them, “Which is lawful on the Sabbath: to do good or to do evil, to save life or to kill?” But they remained silent. He looked around at them in anger and, deeply distressed at their stubborn hearts… Mark 3:4–5 (Today’s New International Version)