God and our Emotions
Probably all of us are familiar with phrases like “faith not feelings”. Some preaching is criticised for being all about feelings rather than the objective facts of the gospel. There is, of course, a lot of truth and validity to these criticisms. However, if we read the Bible we find that God is actually a lot more concerned about our feelings than we often imagine.
I am currently working through Jeremiah. This is one the most hard hitting, and relentlessly so, books in the Bible. It is incisively clear about the depths of sin in Judah and Jerusalem, and the terrible judgement that was about to come upon the people. Yet that is not all that we find in the book. We also learn about Jeremiah’s emotional state. We learn about his feelings about the disaster that was about to befall his country. We learn about how at times he just wanted to run away from it all. We even learn about how he thought God was a liar! (Jer 15:18).
And this characteristic is not limited to this book, far from it. We know that Elijah had that famous contest with the prophets of baal. He called down fire from heaven and defeated them, yet shortly afterwards he ran away into the desert. He had had enough and just wanted to die.
The book of Job is full of the outpouring of Job’s heart, including how unfair he thought God was being in allowing all his suffering. The Psalms are full of David expressing his feelings, both when full of joy and when full of despair.
We all know that Abraham had Ishmael as a result of his liaison with the servant girl. Later on after Isaac was born God told him he had to send Ishmael away. Abraham found this very hard because while Ishmael was an illegitimate son, the result of his lack of faith, he was still his son. We might think that God would tell Abraham that was his problem, he shouldn’t have disobeyed God in the first place. But no, we find that God takes account of Abraham’s feelings, and promises to look after Ishamel.
As always, the Bible is far more balanced than we are. It is true that we must not let feelings rule our lives, but we must not ignore them. More importantly, God does not ignore our feelings, our emotions. He deals with us and our emotions. It will probably not be in the way we expect, nor in the way we would choose. Abraham had to send Ishmael away, Job was never told why he had to suffer so much, Elijah had to get on with the job of being a prophet, Jeremiah had to continue delivering the word of God to a sinful and rebellious nation. But God will deal with our hearts in a way that brings far deeper healing and freedom than we never imagine.
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