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Biblical EQ

 

A Christian Handbook For Emotional Transformation

 

 

 

 

 

By John Edmiston

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Ó Copyright, John Edmiston, 2001

 

 

 

Table Of Contents

 

How To Understand And Use This Book  - 4

 

PART 1 –  Jesus As Our Model Of How Our Emotions Work  - 5

Commencing The Journey - 6

Common Questions About Emotions - 9

Can Jesus Be Our Model For Biblical EQ? - 14

The Holy Spirit  And The Emotional Life of Jesus -21

The Emotional Life Of The Apostles, Prophets and Great Christian Leaders - 30

The Emotional Life of Carnal Christians -37

 

PART 2 – The Inner self and Our Emotional World - 42

Perception - 43

Perception In and By The Spirit - 56

The Thoughts and Intentions Of The Heart - 73

The Learning Organization -  84

Emotions And Our Physiology - 92

 

PART 3 – Practical Techniques For Emotional Self-Mastery And Expression - 104

The Masterful Mind - 105

Getting A Handle On Our Emotions - 118

Acting On And Reacting To Our Strong Emotions - 124

Recognizing And Understanding Emotions In Others - 133

The Appropriate Expression of Emotions - 143

Love Is A Many Splendoured Thing - 149

 

Index - 159

Appendix 1 – Teacher’s Guide - 164

Further References - 165

About the Author - 168

 

 

 

How To Understand and Use This Book

 

This is a Christian handbook on emotional transformation. Biblical EQ is about emotional competence , about being able to handle and discern emotions and express them wisely. The emphasis of the book is ongoing growth rather than healing. The book does not assume that the reader has emotional “problems” that need to be “fixed”.  This is not a book for people with high levels of emotional pain to read to get better – though it may achieve that. Biblical EQ is a fitness manual rather than a diagnostic manual. Its focus is strength, health and maturity.

 

The aim of this book is to equip Christians, especially those in the ministry, by putting them in touch with the ground of their emotional being, getting them to commit to become emotionally mature and Christ-like, and helping with the correction of areas of imbalance and immaturity, then finally showing them how to express emotions with clarity, integrity and sensitivity in the context they are in. That’s a lot for one book and so Biblical EQ starts with some pretty solid foundations and build upwards because we are not tackling one emotion at a time here but actually trying to rebuild the Christian’s entire understanding of the emotional life of the believer from the ground up.

 

The first section, on Jesus as our model, deals with some of the basic overall biblical theology of emotions and is foundational to the rest of the book. It is written from an evangelical viewpoint and at a level that should suit most committed Christians. Its central premise is that Jesus Christ is the model for our emotional life and that the sanctification of our emotions is a work of grace involving the power of the Holy Spirit  working in the committed Christian. Its pictures the ideal Christian as having grand and powerful emotions that are holy and good and which are wisely and appropriately expressed in God’s timing for His glory.

 

The second section, on the inner self and our emotional world, is perhaps the part of the book that has the most new teaching for many readers. It spends a lot of time looking at how emotions arise in our spirit, in our soul and from our body and how these complex interactions create our emotions and our character. It draws together many counseling techniques and Scriptural insights. It should lead the reader to a deep understanding of self and of how others arrive at the place they are emotionally. It is founded on a very literal and exhaustive treatment of the Scriptures and tries to work from the biblical data and carefully build an adequate understanding of the human person. Its central premise is that our inner self is not constant and fixed but is “being renewed day by day” and that we can be co-workers with God in this process of inner renewal.

 

The practical section is grounded in Proverbs-like general wisdom and common sense and much will be familiar territory to some readers, however it is useful to “be stirred up by way of reminder”.  It deals with our experience of self-mastery , emotions and issues of emotional regulation, how we can read other people’s emotions and how to express those emotions appropriately in love. It also deals with how to tap into God’s love  so we can minister to others. Its central premise is that God links to us through faith, which works through love, which employs specific focused wisdom and knowledge, to do good deeds and that on our side of the equation we facilitate this process by fixing our minds firmly on Christ and mastering our personal responses.

 

This book tries to give you both the relationship aspects and the specific focused wisdom and knowledge  aspects of biblical EQ. References for further reading, a teachers guide and an exhaustive index has been provided for those who want to dip into the book to research a particular issue. A seminar manual is also available as a separate publication.

Part One

 

Jesus As Our Model

 

 

 

Commencing the Journey

(Proverbs 4:23 NKJV)  Keep your heart with all diligence, For out of it spring the issues of life.

 

Good emotional management is a highly needed commodity in Christian work. Without it we can unintentionally make a complete mess out of our service for God. One emotional explosion at the wrong moment can be held against us for a long time to come and we are often judged by others on how we handle our emotions. Many very productive Christian workers have had to leave the ministry because they just could not manage their emotions well and this marred all their relationships. So we need to do something – but what can we do? The good secular materials available do not draw on the resources that the Holy Spirit  can bring to emotional transformation and few good Christian resources exist that combine biblical insights with good clinical data. This book is an attempt to do that.

 

In order to do this I have had to start with first principles and work out a sort of biblical paradigm with Jesus at its center and the emotional life of Jesus as our model. The Holy Spirit is seen as the main power behind emotional transformation. Also tips and techniques from secular authors as well as their data has been incorporated where this material is “Christian-compatible” so to speak. So this book is divided into three sections, the biblical basics, discussion of the inner self and our emotions, and practical tips on self-mastery and emotional expression. Each of these sections has five or six chapters each. The biblical section discusses some foundational teaching about the Christian emotional life, the “inner self” section looks at how emotions arise in our spirit and soul and are influenced by our body and how our inner emotional life is formed, finally the practical section looks at our experience and understanding of emotions and how they should be best expressed.

 

What is EQ?

Emotional intelligence  is the term we use to describe a complex set of human abilities related to emotional management. The four key aspects of emotional intelligence as described by Mayer and Salovey (the pioneer researchers in the area) are:

1. Emotional identification, perception and expression

2. Emotional facilitation of thought

3. Emotional understanding

4. Emotional management

Various other researchers, most notably Daniel Goleman, have broken these into various sub-factors which are continually being reviewed. Recent findings in neurology have contributed greatly to our understanding of where emotions arise in the brain. The field is fluid and a final decision on what finally constitutes EQ has not been entirely reached yet and there are two or three main schools. However much is coming out of these studies that is very interesting from a Christian perspective, as we shall see as we go along.

 

What Is Biblical EQ?

This is the biblical perspective on the above four key skill areas. It doesn't neglect the findings of neuroscience but it adds in the transforming power of the Holy Spirit  and the wisdom of Proverbs. It has as its model the emotional life of Jesus Christ with His personal presence, self-control, emotional expressiveness and discernment of situations. Thus it has a clear pattern, a master plan that can be used to analyse theories and to determine what is true and false, wise and unwise. Secular theories have no "ideal person" to point to - they merely assemble ideals from their own theories and worldview. In Jesus we have a model , a guide, a point to aim our teaching towards and this is invaluable.

The Christian believer is to aspire to have the emotional life of Christ Jesus for that is very much part of being "in His image". Above all Biblical EQ is biblical - founded on faith in the inspired, inerrant and authoritative Scriptures.

 

The Failure Of The Secular Models of EQ

After reading various EQ books you know that emotions are important, that you should handle them better and a lot about how they arose within you, but you are not shown how to conquer them. In fact many of the EQ programs based on this kind of research have had fairly middling results. The corporate sector is pulling back from them, partly because of recession but partly because they are not delivering as expected. Why is this so? Why has the secular approach  to emotional intelligence fizzled?

 

Firstly they have a philosophical underpinning that has no definite direction. There is nothing intrinsic to the theory that tells them what to aim for when helping a person achieve a higher level of emotional intelligence. Apart from being in touch with ones emotions and being able to express them accurately, appropriately and responsibly there is no “big picture” of what the emotionally intelligent person should turn out like. People end up confused and perplexed. Theories seem at variance with each other and the result is that some practitioners are almost Zen Buddhists while others are extremely businesslike, manipulative and pragmatic. Without any agreement on what an ideal person is they cannot make much real progress.

 

Secondly much of the work of Goleman and others involves a model steeped in a medical and neurological framework that sees our responses as entirely conditioned by biology, genetics and environment. Alteration of responses is through medication, education and behavior modification. After a while people start to feel depersonalized by this approach, and react against the diminution of human responsibility that seems to be the outcome. It is so reductionistic and materialistic that after some initial enthusiasm people are repelled.

 

Thirdly prayer and spiritual disciplines are marginalized in the literature despite their utility. For instance on page 75 of Goleman's first book Emotional Intelligence  he says "Finally, at least some people are able to find relief from their melancholy in turning to a transcendent power. Tice (a researcher into depression) told me "Praying, if you are very religious, works for all moods , especially depression". Despite this obvious therapeutic value for prayer it is never again referred to in Goleman's book. People know religion works - they are just refusing to admit it much in print.

 

Should we then throw out their work entirely? Not at all. Truth is truth and measurements are measurements. There is an enormous amount of good work and wise information in the current EQ literature. It can be, and is, very helpful in giving us understanding of how our emotions work. However it does not give us a whole lot of power to transform them. The power to defeat deep and difficult emotions comes from God and involves the human spirit  coming into contact with God's Spirit. So in this book we shall tend to turn to secular sources  to explain much of the physiology and the mechanisms of emotion and to Christian sources for the power to deal with them.

 

Core Concepts

To get answers that genuinely help people we need two things, a clear destination, and the power to get there in a reasonable amount of time. Our destination is the image of Christ Jesus, our power to get there is the infilling with and transforming work of the Holy Spirit . These are just the some of the great advantages of the gospel, we have hope, and we have lots of hope!

 

Thus the central premise of the book is that Christians can have their emotional life redeemed so that it is transformed to mirror the emotional life of Jesus Christ and that the Holy Spirit’s power and grace is the key to this process. This involves renewing seven key aspects  which will be discussed in detail as we move along:

1.       Renewing our basic perceptions of reality and our perspective on life.

2.       Renewing our individual belief system.

3.       Renewing the purposes and intents of our heart .

4.       Renewing our physical bodies and their influence on our emotions.

5.       Renewing our ability to be aware of and to understand our own emotions.

6.       Renewing our ability to understand the emotions of other people.

7.       Renewing our ability to appropriately express emotion according to the desire of the Holy Spirit .

 

The first few of these are a very deep work. It takes effort, courage and time to change one’s perspective on life or to review and change core beliefs, thoughts and intentions. However unless this is done the foundations are not strong and any positive emotional changes will be temporary at best. Thus it is important that you work through the foundational chapters and understand them. They are the chapters which will give you the deepest wisdom to assist you with your emotional growth. Before we go much further we need to answer a few of the common questions about emotions and that is the topic of the next chapter .

.

Discussion Questions

 

1.       What do you want out of this book?

 

2.       Are you prepared to change?

 

3.       How can we combine secular insights with biblical insights?

 

4. What are some of the reasons that the secular models of EQ have not got the results that everyone hoped they would?

 

5. What advantages does the revelation  of Scripture give us?

 

6. What advantages do we obtain from having Jesus as our model?

 

 

 

 

Common Questions About Emotions

 

(Proverbs 29:11 NKJV)  A fool vents all his feelings, But a wise man holds them back.

 

What Kind Of Emotions Should Christians Have?

While God is emotional there are some emotions that God never has. God is never envious, lustful, greedy, bitter with selfish ambition, small-minded, or petty. Neither is he anxious or fretful but dwells in perfect peace. His emotions are positive, holy, noble and appropriate. God is light and in Him there is no darkness at all. Since we are called to be “in the image of God”, then whatever else that means, it means that at the end of our Christian maturity, our emotions should in some measure share these divine qualities. We should be “walking in the light”.

 

Thus godliness means forsaking some emotions and embracing others. We should be utterly free from unholy and fleshly emotions and moving toward mature and holy emotional responses.  The mature saint of God is filled with love and utterly free from bitter envy and selfish ambition. (James 3:15-18). Petty covetous worldly longings are replaced by the love of the Father (1 John 2:15-17) and perfect love casts our fear so that we dwell in quietness, peace and confidence (1 John 4:18, Isaiah 26:3). Holy people do not easily fly into rages or engage in back-biting and quarrelling rather they are centred people full of love, joy and peace (Galatians 5:19-23). There is thus a grand and holy emotional authenticity  that accompanies maturity in Christ.

 

As a rough guide our emotions can be broken down into three classes:

Holy emotions – thos e experienced by God such as compassion, joy, and holy indignation and those that accompany life in the Spirit such as praise, worship and adoration. These emotions are derived from the kingdom of light and the Sprit (Ephesians 5:18-21, Colossians 3:16-17, Galatians 5:22,23) and are  in agreement with true wisdom (James 3:17,18) They are the emotions of Christ in us. They are not necessarily religious or pious emotions. Admiring a flower or delighting in beautiful music or focussing on the beautiful and the good can be just as holy as going to church. (Philippians 4:8)

Human emotions – based in  our human situation and the created order and shared by Jesus during His time on earth. This includes emotions such as grief, pain, fear, abandonment, sadness and sorrow, anxiety, stress, anguish and vulnerability.  These emotions are well chronicled in the Psalms. For the Christian they are temporary and in eternity there shall be no more crying or sadness or pain (Revelation 21:4). While these emotions may feel bad they are not evil or toxic. They can be painful but they are not poisonous.

Fleshly emotions – are pois onous and destructive and include toxic emotions such as malice, envy, selfish ambition, sensuality, bitterness, overpowering lusts and murderous hatred. They are closely tied up with the works of the flesh and with evil deeds. Their outcome is spiritual death. These emotions were not part of mankind at Creation and are not “natural human reactions” (For instance grief is a natural human reaction but bitterness is fleshly. One can have “good grief” without a trace of bitterness. Bitterness  is not natural to the human condition.) Rather these emotions are derived from the kingdom of darkness and have their source in a dark wisdom (James 3:14-16).

 

This classification helps us see the relative value of our emotional responses and to use the techniques described in the succeeding chapters to assist with our sanctification. It also puts the lie to the old humanist rubric “there are no right or wrong emotions.”  All emotions are not equal. Some are of much higher value than others and some emotions and impulses are positively wrong. This classification also goes a bit beyond the black and white classification of emotions as ‘spiritual” or “unspiritual” that causes so much pain in traditional missionary circles. When pain and disappointment  are seen as “unspiritual” we simply add to the burden the person is carrying. Hurt, disappointment, pain and frustration are valid human emotions stemming from our creatureliness encountering a fallen world. Human beings were created good but mortal and it is as we explore this mortality that we find out many useful things about ourselves. The above simple classification also saves us from the error of stopping there with our human emotions and being content simply to explore ourselves at that level. It tells us there is something higher, something beyond our mortality and that it is as we focus on our immortality in Christ that we develop the highest and noblest parts of our being.

 

We are thus called to participate in the holy emotions so that they transcend the human emotions and overcome the fleshly emotions. By this I mean that we must choose our emotional level and which emotions we will be gripped by. When disappointment  strikes we can choose to respond with holy emotions and pray through until we trust God and can praise Him as the Psalmist did or we can respond at the human level and  sit down disconsolate in human misery and gradually see it through or we can respond from fleshly emotions and lash out in anger, bitterness, distrust and revenge. Consider Paul in jail in Philippi in Acts 16. He praised God, sang psalms and rejoiced thus transcending the human emotions of pain and discomfort and effectively banishing any fleshly emotions such as bitterness or desire for revenge. Thus Paul participated in holy emotions so that they transcended the human emotions and overcame the fleshly emotions. The human emotions are not denied or seen as wrong rather they are acknowledged but not focussed on. They are transcended. The saint focuses on and deliberately chooses to move toward the holy emotions. Prayer, fasting, praise and worship, reading Scripture, meditating on good teaching and doing good works are all helpful in this process. However above and beyond these things we need the work of the Holy Spirit .

 

The Holy Spirit  responds differently to each of theses three categories of emotion. The Holy Spirit rejoices and assists us when we engage in holy responses. He produces them within us so they can justly be called “the fruit of the Spirit”. (Romans chapters 8 & 12, and Galatians 5) On the other hand the Holy Spirit comforts us when the human emotions such as grief overwhelm us (see 2 Corinthians 1). Finally He is determined to break the grip of fleshly emotions such as hatred, lust and revenge. In fact the Spirit wars against such impulses so that we cannot fully give way to our worst desires (Galatians 5:16-18). Thus the Holy Spirit produces holy emotions, comforts overwhelming human emotions and wars against fleshly emotions. However we have a choice in the matter. We can take heed of the Spirit’s promptings or we can discard them in fleshly rebellion. This leads Paul to say that the mind set on the flesh and its fractious emotions “is death” but the mind set on the Spirit with His holy emotions is “life and peace”(Romans 8:5,6).

 

As we will see in other chapters, the Spirit renews the mind with its personal perspective and belief structure . The renewed mind becomes centred on God and can be validly called “the mind of Christ” (1 Corinthians 2:14-16). Thus as the mind is redeemed and renewed and set on the Spirit life and peace result. This life and peace that results from a well disciplined and renewed mind is the aim of this book. This simple classification of emotions will be vastly expanded as the complexities and subtleties of the emotional life of the Christian life are explored. Our emotions need redemption if they are to become holy and the focus of all redemption is Jesus Christ who will be our model and pattern for biblical EQ.

 

How Come Christians Seem To Stop Changing Emotionally After A Few Years?

Massive early transformation followed by accommodation to religious sub-cultural norms is a fairly common pattern among Christians from emotionally damaging childhoods. Church life provides many little nooks and crannies where we can hide from the Holy Spirit  and the hard work of emotional transformation. In many cases painful emotions are not understood by the clergy and even by some Christian counselors and damage is done. This book will seek to bring wisdom and balance to the Christian handling of emotions. However all is not the fault of the clergy, church culture or inadequate theological and counseling training. Much is our own fault. Each of us has defense mechanisms against change such as rationalization, projection, and denial. We dodge dealing with God and we duck change.

 

Yet I believe one of the greatest obstacles to emotional health in Christian circles is that we simply don't understand our emotions or we lack proper mechanisms for dealing with them. Many Christians are ignorant of Scriptural teaching on emotional life and so are left stranded with a few basic techniques that barely scratch the surface of the problem. In a puzzling , almost paradoxical way,  we also take our emotions too seriously and make them the source of our spiritual self-esteem . When we feel holy and good and positive we judge ourselves as being "up" spiritually and when we are feeling distant or depressed we judge ourselves as being "down" spiritually.  In fact the connection between emotions and spirituality is fairly loose. Some very happy optimistic people are carnal and worldly, while some serious gloomy types are deeply spiritual - and the reverse applies as well. While it is certainly preferable to feel good and to "rejoice in the Lord always" even the apostle Paul admits to times of intense pressure and discouragement. We see this particularly in his letters to the Corinthians. And, of course, Jesus was known as  " a man of sorrows and acquainted with grief..". Even tempting emotions need not be sinful. Jesus was "tempted in all things as we are, yet without sin". Yet there is indeed a deep connection between our emotions and our character.

 

Are Emotions  Important? Do They Build Christian Character And Ethics?

The common observation of philosophers and theologians as diverse as Aristotle and C.S.Lewis has been that right affections and emotions form the basis for right morality . If we love the good and abhor the evil we are far more likely to be good. And if we hate bribes and value integrity we are far more likely to be honest.

 

Ethics  is not a purely intellectual exercise. From antiquity it has involved  feeling, thinking and acting rightly. True agape love has emotions that are ethical. “Love does not rejoice in iniquity but rejoices in the truth” (1 Corinthians 13:6). Being horrified by certain sins is a good and moral thing. Rejoicing in the truth is a right emotional response for the disciple. Our emotional valuation of life should be in agreement with our ethical stance. In biblical terms the person who is right emotionally loves good and hates evil. In their emotions they value what God values. The emotionally perfected Christian is not just “together” or integrated in the secular sense rather they are righteous and just and holy and perfectly loving. Their emotions agree with their ethics which agree with the Scriptures which agree with God.

 

What we like and dislike gradually shapes the course of our life and character.  This is why TV and advertising can have such a profound effect. It teaches us to like a certain lifestyle filled with material things and to value being sexy and attractive. It teaches us, ever so gradually not to dislike fornication and adultery. Rarely does it blatantly say “adultery is good” – it just teaches people to like the idea of being attractive to many people and to be quietly thrilled by the notion of perhaps having many sexual partners. Thus, over time their ethical resolve is weakened, the emotions that drive holiness are eroded and thousands of Christians fall into sin they would not have contemplated too many years ago. What we like and dislike, what we value  and esteem, is critical to what we will eventually become.

 

Unfortunately we have divorced emotions from ethics. We see ethics as “our opinion” about things not  our reaction to things. At times we even train ourselves to think one way and feel another. We ask people to be righteous and biblical yet feel embarrassed at our fellow Christian who get genuinely get angry over sin and moral decay. By doing this we say its Ok to just have notions not emotions. That Christianity is best kept in the head not in the heart. Then we wonder why they do not give and why they do not commit to discipleship! We teach Christian young people to be sexy, sophisticated and emotionally unshockable then expect them to value chastity. We are asking the impossible.

 

Our emotions reflect what we value and cherish, admire and love and they also reflect what we dislike loath and reject. Our emotions undergird our choices and our choices form the foundations for our character and destiny. If our emotions are askew our choices and destiny will surely follow suite. During my university years I often tutored high school students in calculus. The biggest obstacle was nearly always emotional rather than intellectual. It was moving the student past emotional valuations such as  “I hate maths” and “homework is horrible”. Because they had been taught by parents and peers that mathematics was odious and loathsome and homework was dull they were not doing their work. Because they were not doing their work they were failing mathematics. If they failed mathematics they would not get into university in Australia or into a decent career. Their emotional attitude, learned from others, was affecting their entire future.

 

The ability to delay gratification  is fundamental to the development of good character. An experiment was set up where small children were given a choice: one marshmallow now, or two in ten minutes time. To get two marshmallows they had to delay gratification - a basic skill in managing and discipling their emotions. When the children were then followed up in a longitudinal study the difference between the “grabbers” and the “patient” was incredible. The most impatient and impulsive achieved less and got into trouble more while the most patient were more successful in practically every sphere of life. In fact this test proved more predictive of success at school and in life than IQ tests or any other social variable. This simple act of emotional management was a key to later success in life.

 

Thus right emotions are an important part of right character and right ethics and right emotions undergird right choices and right destiny. To emotionally rejoice in truth, to celebrate justice, to delight in noble actions and to embrace compassion and mercy is to have emotions that complement our faith. On the other hand confused emotions can destabilise us and create conflicts. Finally the presence of strong lustful and evil emotions can drive us to sin and blind us to truth.  Thus sorting ourselves out emotionally is much more than just getting our act together. It is getting our heart in line with our faith and with our God. But which way is up? How can we know which emotions are right, which are wrong and which are neutral? How can we get an idea of what an emotionally together and righteous and holy Christian looks like? As in everything else Jesus is our model and that is the subject of the next chapter

 

Discussion Questions

 

1.       What have you learned from this chapter?

 

2.       What are the differences between holy emotions, human emotions and fleshly emotions?

 

3.       How do emotions fit into the Christian life?

 

4. What would the Christian life be like without emotions?

 

5. Are people in your church generally threatened by emotional change or generally comfortable with emotional change?

 

6. Are extroverts more spiritual than introverts, or vice versa or doesn’t it matter?

 

 

 

Can Jesus Be Our Model For Biblical EQ?

 

(Hebrews 12:1-2 NKJV)  Therefore we also, since we are surrounded by so great a cloud of witnesses, let us lay aside every weight, and the sin which so easily ensnares us, and let us run with endurance the race that is set before us, {2} looking unto Jesus, the author and finisher of our faith, who for the joy that was set before Him endured the cross, despising the shame, and has sat down at the right hand of the throne of God.

 

It is one of the key teachings of Christianity that our Master and Model is Jesus Christ and we are to be conformed into His image and be like Him in all respects. Lets look at two well-known verses in this regard:

 

(Romans 8:29 NASB)  For whom He foreknew, He also predestined to become conformed to the image of His Son, that He might be the first-born among many brethren;

 

 (Ephesians 4:15 NASB)  but speaking the truth in love, we are to grow up in all aspects into Him, who is the head, even Christ,

 

God's plan for our lives is that we become conformed to the image of  His Son. Now to "grow up in all aspects into Him" includes the emotional aspects of the nature of Jesus Christ. Becoming emotionally mature and skilled is part of our sanctification - but it is only a part. There are many other aspects of sanctification as well such as faith, knowledge and purity. Growing up emotionally is important and it’s the part of sanctification that this book will focus on but please don't get the impression that I think Biblical EQ is all there is to sanctification.

 

Is Jesus Christ An Appropriate Model For Emotional Maturity?

There are a number of objections that people might think of  against using Jesus Christ as our Model of  EQ:

1.       The standard's too high, the idea is terrifying, it just gives me a panic attack to think of it. I can never be like that.

2.       He was God and sinless, I'm neither. He had an unfair advantage. What's possible for him is just not possible for me.

3.       There isn't enough information in Scripture to make a judgment. Its an argument from silence. You can just make Jesus into whatever you want Him to be to suit your purposes.

4.       He was Jewish and lived in the Third World 2000 years ago and just ambled around the place healing lepers. What would He know about the pressures of corporate life and the emotional jungle that my office is? OR I'm a woman, He was  a man and totally different emotionally. Its just silly to ask me to be like Jesus.

5.       Jesus was a prophet and had the emotions of a prophet. I could never be that confrontational - its not my spiritual gift.

6.       Jesus? High EQ? Kind of lacking in social skills if you ask me! I'm much more tactful and artful that that. Don't ask me to act in ways that get you nailed to a lump of wood.

 

Well lets look at some ways we can answer those objections and the assumptions that underlie them.

 

Objection 1: The Standard Is Too High

Solution: Jumping Off Jacob's Ladder - Getting Rid Of Legalism Over Emotions

 

Many evangelicals have a "Jacob's Ladder " view of the spiritual life  with Jesus at the top and host of angels in-between and Christians climbing up rung by painful rung. The idea is to ascend to perfection, to strive to arrive. One slip and you tumble to the bottom to start all over again. Those that adhere to this view of spirituality are always envying those ahead of them, clinging on to the ladder for dear life, and having not too much to do with those “below” lest they get dragged down.

 

This view of the Christian life is thoroughly unbiblical. Ephesians 2:6 tells us that all those who are in Christ are already seated with Him in heavenly realms and Hebrews 12 tells us that we  have come (past tense) to the Heavenly Zion. In Christ we have already arrived in terms of spiritual status. There is no ladder and if there is all born-again Christians are standing shoulder to shoulder on the top rung as brothers of Jesus Christ (Hebrews 2:10-15).  We have been saved by grace and not by our own spiritual strivings (Eph 2:8-10) and there is no condemnation for those in Christ Jesus (Romans 8:1) including condemnation about our emotional life.

 

Aspiring to be like Jesus is not a matter of status or spiritual ascent. It’s a journey, a destination, a joyous arriving. It was what we were made to be like from all eternity. If we view our emotional life as an indicator of spiritual status then it will be utterly terrifying to think of Jesus as our model. Every emotional insecurity will seem a "sin" and every lustful thought a pathway to Hell. If we judge ourselves and rate our spiritual life  by the difference between our emotional life and the emotional life of Christ, by how far we have yet to go on our imaginary Jacob's ladder, then all we will feel is endless guilt and insecurity. By trying to go up, you will go under.

 

If you recognize yourself as being on an imaginary Jacob's Ladder - then its time to "jump off". To let go of striving and relentless self-assessment. To stop comparing yourself to those around you. To let the strain of sanctification go and to instead to learn how to receive grace so that you grow far more quickly than you can in your own strength.

 

When I am saying "lets consider Jesus as our model for the emotional life of the Christian" I am NOT setting a new standard to be "lived up to" by discipline and self-control. Your discipline and self-control will run out long before you reach that standard! Being like Jesus is our vision and our destination. We fix our eyes on Jesus, we seek to grow up into Him, we pattern ourselves after Him. It becomes an exploration and an adventure, a time of growing and learning, a receiving of grace upon grace as we learn to be like Him. It is a gracious growing - not a terrifying ascent.

 

Objection 2 -  He was God and that's cheating!

Solution: He was also fully human. Jesus was the prototype of the perfect Christian, the elder brother among many brethren. We are of the same kind as Him.

 

Jesus was not some aloof divine maharaja floating six inches above the ground, another category of being entirely from you and I. Jesus is God yet He was also fully human and tempted in every point as we are and still retains that humanity in Heaven as our faithful high priest.

(Hebrews 2:10-18 NASB)  For it was fitting for Him, for whom are all things, and through whom are all things, in bringing many sons to glory, to perfect the author of their salvation through sufferings. {11} For both He who sanctifies and those who are sanctified are all from one Father; for which reason He is not ashamed to call them brethren, {12} saying, "I WILL PROCLAIM THY NAME TO MY BRETHREN, IN THE MIDST OF THE CONGREGATION I WILL SING THY PRAISE." {13} And again, "I WILL PUT MY TRUST IN HIM." And again, "BEHOLD, I AND THE CHILDREN WHOM GOD HAS GIVEN ME." {14} Since then the children share in flesh and blood, He Himself likewise also partook of the same, that through death He might render powerless him who had the power of death, that is, the devil; {15} and might deliver those who through fear of death were subject to slavery all their lives. {16} For assuredly He does not give help to angels, but He gives help to the descendant of Abraham. {17} Therefore, He had to be made like His brethren in all things, that He might become a merciful and faithful high priest in things pertaining to God, to make propitiation for the sins of the people. {18} For since He Himself was tempted in that which He has suffered, He is able to come to the aid of those who are tempted.

This passage and others like it in Hebrews (4:14-16, 5:7-10) emphasize that life or Jesus was difficult. It was so difficult that it was quite rightly described as suffering and had all the emotional hallmarks of suffering. It was no light suffering for it was to have the effect of perfecting Him! It was a suffering that matured His obedience by testing it under very stressful conditions. As we shall see Jesus was pressed again and again to almost breaking point but He never sinned. Though He was God He laid aside those privileges (Philippians 2:5-11) to become fully human and a servant and was "made like His brethren in all things that He might become a merciful and faithful High Priest".

 

He was made like us in our experiences of hunger, thirst, tiredness, frustration, misunderstanding, betrayal and even of unjust treatment by others. Even a cursory reading of the gospels will tell you that He did not just cruise through these experiences. He wept, He rebuked, He cried out, He rejoiced, He got angry, He became "troubled in spirit", He groaned in anguish and sweated drops of blood. Life for Jesus was difficult and it was often emotionally intense. This has made Him merciful in His role as high priest for He has fully been where we are.

 

In fact the reason we can be like Jesus is because became very much like us. In fact He calls us "brethren" (Hebrews 2:11 )  which means that we are enough alike Him to be considered family and to bear a close “genetic relationship” that has some sort of equality about it. The Scriptures also say that we share the heavenly realms with Christ Jesus, and are members of Heavenly Zion (Ephesians 2:6, Hebrews 12:22-24). Therefore we are literally “in the same realm” as Christ Jesus. Romans 8:29 tells us that we will be conformed to His image almost like someone pressed into a mould. Our shape will be the same as His shape. We will be like Him. There will be a resemblance. We can resemble Him because he chose to resemble us. Finally Ephesians 4:15, which I quote often in this book ,says we are to be made like Him “in all respects”.  That’s a very close likeness.

 

To dramatize this with a touch of humour- imagine I was to compare a trout with a horse using these same criteria. Can a trout occupy the same realms a horse? No, a trout swims in the river and a horse gallops on land.. Can a trout be called a brother of a horse in any genetic likeness? Not at all.! Can a trout be made into the image of a horse or expect to be made like a horse in all things? Its ridiculous. In order to occupy the same realms, be brothers and be able to transformed into Christ Jesus we must be very much LIKE Jesus. In fact we are like Jesus because we are fully human and He became fully human. He became like us so that we could become like Him. Jesus took on our emotional life so that it may be redeemed and become like His emotional life.

 

Finally we share a common destiny with Jesus Christ and a common home.

 (John 14:1-4 NKJV)  "Let not your heart be troubled; you believe in God, believe also in Me. {2} "In My Father's house are many mansions; if it were not so, I would have told you. I go to prepare a place for you. {3} "And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come again and receive you to Myself; that where I am, there you may be also. {4} "And where I go you know, and the way you know."

"That where I am you may be also". This is not just the offer of streets of gold. It’s the offer of an elder brother to His younger brethren. Its fellowship, its love and its family. We shall be enough like Jesus to be considered family. He as the Son of God and we as sons of God. When we are made in all aspects like Him and conformed to His image we will share His habitations and have meaningful fellowship with our Lord and God. Going back to our trout and our horse - there is no possibility of meaningful fellowship there. It is only in likeness and communication that there can be fellowship with God. Jesus is not alien to us but in fellowship with us and we can be like Him. Our emotions, in the end, will be fitted for life in eternity with God. The goal of biblical EQ is thus not commercial success or social popularity but fellowship with God and harmony in Heaven.

 

Objec tion 3: There isn't enough information about His emotional life to base an EQ theory on.

Solution: There is enough to give us key reference points so we can gain a reasonable impression of what it means to have a redeemed and Christ-like emotional life.

 

The information about the emotional life of Jesus is contained both in direct references to His humanity such as "Jesus wept" in John 11 and in broader more theological references that imply His full humanity and complete goodness. For instance John calls Him “the light of life” and states that darkness had no place in Him and could not overpower Him. To have no "darkness" in one's spirit is to have emotions that are never deceitful, false, envious, spiteful, grumbling or small-minded. All his emotions were "light" not in the sense of light-hearted but as in the sense of positive, true and illuminating, righteous, appropriate and genuine. There was never a snicker or a snarl, never a dark brooding, violent emotion. Whether in tears or triumph the emotions of Jesus were noble, wise, good and perfectly righteous. Then there are the direct references.

 

A survey of any good systematic theology such as Erickson or Grudem will find a wealth of information under the heading "the humanity of Jesus" as well as a good discussion of the complexities this entails (such as how the divine and the human were combined in one person). I will leave these intricacies to the theologians and will just list some of the biblical references which show how complete His humanity and emotional life was: Jesus experienced hunger (Matt 4:2, 21:18), thirst (Jn 19:28) ,  fatigue (Jn 4:6) , He rejoiced at the end of the sending out of the seventy-two (Luke 10:21), marveled at the faith of the centurion (Matthew 8:10) and felt love for the rich, young ruler (Mark 10:21) . His most frequent emotion is compassion which is recorded 11 times in the gospels (eg Matthew 9:36). Anger was part of life for Jesus such as when He became angry at the Pharisees for their hardened cruelty (Mark 3:5) . Zeal for God's honor caused Him to cleanse the temple (John 2:17) . He grew in stature and in wisdom and in favor with God and man (Luke 2:52) was subjected to high-powered temptation (Matthew 4:1-11) , and learned obedience without sinning (Hebrews 5:8-9) . He had some of life's more painful emotions as well. For instance He wept (Luke 19:41, John 11:35) , His soul was troubled (John 12:27) and a while later He was "troubled in spirit" (John 13:21) . He underwent extreme emotional distress to the point of death (Matthew 26:36-41) and prayed with loud cries and tears (Hebrews 5:7) . Finally of course he experienced an agonizing death on a cross. (Matthew 27:34-54) with its attendant feelings of abandonment (Matthew 27:46) .

 

The way Jesus processed His emotional life can also be deduced from some of the incidents in His life. For instance He was extraordinarily calm in the face of storms and authoritative even in the face of arrest. He was an accessible person who was a "friend of sinners" and seemed to enjoy a reasonable social life with stable friendships with His disciples and with the household of Lazarus, Mary and Martha at Bethany. He had an inner circle of Peter, James and John and the apostle John seems to have been a true friend and was known as "the disciple whom Jesus loved". Thus there is sufficient evidence from direct references, incidents in the gospels and proper theological inference to construct a reasonable portrait of the emotional life of Jesus - at least one that can inform our discussion of biblical EQ.

 

Objection 4: Jesus is not a culturally relevant or gender relevant model for the emotional life I lea d. To ask me to model my emotional life on His is inappropriate.

Solution: The cultural details of Jesus life are scant. God seems to have mainly preserved only those details about Jesus that are relevant for all places and times.

The core message of who Jesus is has been perceived by Jew and Gentile, slave and free, male and female down the centuries. We will find out that Jesus shows us how to cope with pressure, express anger, set limits and boundaries, participate in grief and feel for the lost, the sick and the downtrodden. No one argues that Jesus shows us how to have compassion and love as our primary emotional realities. These are the sort of principles that survive cultural and gender differences. Each of the EQ skills that Jesus displayed is written into Scripture for our instruction. Much about His personality is left out - even such vital details as His age or His personal preferences. This means that those details that are in there (e.g. He is recorded 9 times as saying thanks at meals) are ones that the Holy Spirit  wanted to draw attention to and are largely personality independent. [ In the case of “saying grace” it is  the value of being thankful and cultivating a life of gratitude for daily provision.] Millions of people in dozens of cultures find the gospel accounts of Jesus highly relevant to their situation. Using Jesus as our model means following what Scripture says not what medieval paintings portray. There is no indication that Jesus had a beard or long hair or was slightly effeminate looking. All these cultural details are absent from the gospels. What is present is the account of a person with a remarkable understanding of humanity and an enormous desire to heal it and redeem it. If we mould our passions on His passions we will be highly relevant people in a very needy world.

 

Objection 5: Jesus had a totally different spiritual gifting. I could never be as assertive, confident or confrontational as He comes across as in the gospel narratives.

Solution: Becoming like Jesus is not about becoming a clone of a prophet but is a unique journey of self-disc overy.

God does make us each very different and He certainly does not ask us all to be evangelists or prophets. In fact it is quite clear that there is no one "right" Christian personality. Some are like Peter or Paul, while others resemble Moses , Daniel, Barnabas or Elijah. Yet as different as each of these people are or were, each of them was Christ-like. There is almost a trick to this. If I imitate another human e.g. Billy Graham, I end up not being myself in the end yet  if I imitate Jesus the reverse happens – I find myself. This is because Jesus is the center of humanity and the crown of humanity and we were all created by Him and for Him and in him everything holds together, including our personalities (Colossians 1:15-20). Thus becoming like Jesus is like a journey to the center of the Universe, full of adventures and surprises where we end up back where we began but marvelously transformed. When the timid person decides to become like Jesus he finds new boldness. When the sarcastic wit decides to become like Jesus she finds new gentleness and tact. When the messed up and confused person decides to become like Jesus, clarity appears as if from nowhere. The gospels talk about losing yourself in order to find yourself and indeed we do. One person sets out, another returns who is somewhat similar but entirely different. The timid person loses their fear that they have harbored for so long, the  sarcastic person loses their cruelty, the disordered person loses their freedom to be foolish. No-one becoming like Jesus becomes a clone. Its not a journey to a single point, a “dot” we must all approximate. We don’t all end up in Jerusalem wearing sandals. Maybe it’s a bit like a spiritual black hole in which we seem to vanish but actually end up on a journey in another Universe traveling faster than the speed of light .

 

Objection 6:  Jesus was tactless and His "high EQ" just got Him crucified. That is not something ordinary people should imitate. They should be tactful and careful.

Solution: Jesus was not tac tless, He was an effective agent of change and a brilliant communicator who was steadfastly opposed. His EQ skills made Him effective and powerful and thus are worth imitating.

The ministry of Jesus and His EQ skills seem to have gone through three stages:

Favor: First Jesus grew in favor with God and man (Luke 2:52). Secondly His early ministry was characterized by people being astonished at the gracious words that fell from His lips. (Luke 4:22). At this stage His EQ skills make Him perceptive, gracious and tactful.

Effectiveness: Where He taught with authority and challenged the teachings of the scribes and the Pharisees. Some opposed, many listened, His following grew. His opponents were infuriated by Him, but at this stage they were not yet afraid of him. At this stage His EQ skills make Him authoritative and effective as a public speaker and prophetic teacher

Power: Jesus eventually became a national political and religious figure that many people wanted to see become King. He was able to challenge the highest authorities in the land and to create genuine fear in His opponents. His enemies were now truly afraid of Him and plotted His death like that of any political enemy. At this stage His EQ skills make Him a skilful leader of a mass movement and also someone able to withstand enormous pressure and persecution.

 

For Chr istians the development of a high biblical EQ goes through these same three stages of favor, effectiveness and power . Stage One is "growing in favor" where EQ skills are honed and refined and poor strategies are discarded. Stage Two is effectiveness where EQ skills are honed in one's own home town and district and an effective and authoritative ministry develops. Stage Three is power when EQ skills are used to effect large scale change in one's community such as being a community organizer, politician, writer, moral crusader, preacher or evangelist.

 

These latter stages generally provoke a reaction from the Evil One who launches his attacks against the now highly effective Christian. Two Scriptures are relevant here:

(2 Timothy 3:12 NKJV)  Yes, and all who desire to live godly in Christ Jesus will suffer persecution.

 

(Matthew 16:24-28 NKJV)  Then Jesus said to His disciples, "If anyone desires to come after Me, let him deny himself, and take up his cross, and follow Me. {25} "For whoever desires to save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for My sake will find it. {26} "For what profit is it to a man if he gains the whole world, and loses his own soul? Or what will a man give in exchange for his soul? {27} "For the Son of Man will come in the glory of His Father with His angels, and then He will reward each according to his works.

 

Godliness will attract the scorn of some and the hatred of a few. If those few occupy places of power than the persecution can be trying indeed. Nevertheless we are called to be lights in the midst of darkness and sheep in the midst of wolves; as wise as serpents and as innocent as doves. A high EQ will enable you to skillfully handle high level social and political issues and be a real influence for good in your society. However this will attract attention, envy, rivalry, and in some cases ridicule, scorn and hatred.

 

The prophet Daniel is a prime example of this. His high biblical EQ , wisdom and maturity made him effective and influential but made others envious and landed him in the lions den amongst other places. But God delivered him! My experience of Christian political involvement is that the persecution is always more than I wanted but always far less than I feared. If you strive to attain the EQ of Jesus Christ you will eventually become so gracious, poised, and authoritative that you will have a real presence that makes a difference at national and international levels. Unfortunately you will also have real enemies opposing the righteous changes that you are seeking to bring about. Then its time to take up your cross and follow Him!

 

Conclusion

So we see that Jesus is indeed a very adequate, and in fact ideal model for the development of the Christian’s emotional life. This is a high calling and in some ways a daunting one. How did Jesus cope? What gave Him the strength? Or as His neighbors in Nazareth said when He returned from the wilderness “Where did He get this wisdom from?” From the Holy Spirit ! And the work of the Holy Spirit in the life of Jesus – particularly in His emotions, soul and spirit, is the subject of the next fascinating chapter.

 

Discussion Questions

 

1.       How scary is it to have Jesus as the model for your emotional life? Is it adventurous scary or terrifying scary?

 

2. How much like Jesus can we hope to be?

 

3.       What is the best thing about having Jesus as our spiritual model?

 

4. How can we “jump off Jacob’s ladder”?

 

5. Name the three stages Jesus went through in developing His EQ skills?

 

6. At what stage are you at in developing your own EQ skills?

 

7. Name six emotions that Jesus felt. What do you think it was like for Him?

 

 

The Holy Spirit , The Emotional Life of Jesus,

And The Emotional Life Of The Spirit-Filled Believer.

 

(Isaiah 11:1-2 NKJV)  There shall come forth a Rod from the stem of Jesse, And a Branch shall grow out of his roots. {2} The Spirit of the LORD shall rest upon Him, The Spirit of wisdom and understanding, The Spirit of counsel and might, The Spirit of knowledge and of the fear of the LORD.

 

The central teaching of this book is that as part of their redemption Christians are to take on the emotional life of their Saviour and that this occurs as a result of the power of the Holy Spirit  who transforms us into the image of the Son of God. If the Holy Spirit is indeed the divine dynamic and the agent of deep emotional transformation then we should see some evidence of that in His work in the life of Jesus. Obvious questions arise that we will investigate such as: Did His baptism and empowerment with the Holy Spirit  change Him or did He remain just the same? Are there any hints that the Holy Ghost lay behind the impressiveness of His personality? Can we appropriate some of the same power that moved Jesus ?

 

The Baptism of Jesus and His EQ

While Jes us grew in wisdom and stature and in favor with God and man there was also a sudden break in His life, a radical change in His emotions and personal authority so that those who knew Him said "where did He get this wisdom from…."

(Matthew 13:54-58 NKJV)  And when He had come to His own country, He taught them in their synagogue, so that they were astonished and said, "Where did this Man get this wisdom and these mighty works? {55} "Is this not the carpenter's son? Is not His mother called Mary? And His brothers James, Joses, Simon, and Judas? {56} "And His sisters, are they not all with us? Where then did this Man get all these things?" {57} So they were offended at Him. But Jesus said to them, "A prophet is not without honor except in his own country and in his own house." {58} Now He did not do many mighty works there because of their unbelief.

He had changed! While Luke shows us that Jesus was a child prodigy (Luke 2:42-50) no-one expected Him to turn into a miracle working prophet. The transition from promising youth to powerful prophet seems to have come at His baptism. There was a massive empowering work of the Holy Spirit  that changed Jesus just as Pentecost changed the disciples.

 

The highest level EQ skills such as boldness and courage and skill in healing and proclamation are Holy Spirit  endowed. The early church realized this when they prayed for boldness and the room shook! (Acts 4:29-31). EQ change empowered by the Holy Spirit can be remarkable and sudden and leave others astonished. I can testify personally to a remarkable change in one meeting in September 1978 when I went from being a timid and secretive Christian to being as bold as a lion and an ardent evangelist!

 

The Body of Jesus and The Holy Spirit

As we all know our physical state and our emotional state are closely connected. We are more disposed to get angry when we are tired or hungry. We also seem to inherit certain emotional dispositions from our parents. We are "hard-wired" from birth into a certain emotional disposition (however this can later be altered as we shall see). This can be as toxic as a problem with rage or as beneficial as the ability to be enraptured by music. The Holy Spirit  set Jesus' genetic structure at conception so that He was unusually inclined to love righteousness and hate wickedness (Hebrews 1:9). A passage from Hebrews indicates that His body was prepared for him by God, so that Jesus would love to do the will of God. (emphasis mine)

(Hebrews 10:5-7 NKJV)  Therefore, when He came into the world, He said: "Sacrifice and offering You did not desire, But a body You have prepared for Me. {6} In burnt offerings and sacrifices for sin You had no pleasure. {7} Then I said, 'Behold, I have come; In the volume of the book it is written of Me; To do Your will, O God.'"

Here we see that as Jesus came into the world He had a body prepared for Him by the Father and the express intent of His coming into the world was "to do Your will O God.."  Jesus had a body that was free from sinful genetic predispositions towards rage, alcoholism, drug addiction, or whatever other negative traits that can be passed on genetically. Basically Jesus was born without any sinful dispositions. His body and nervous system were formed to do the will of God by the creative, body-renewing and forming work of the Holy Spirit .

 

If the creative work of the Holy Spirit  was able to make Jesus’ body such that it was free from sinful tendencies then obviously that power can go to work in our bodies also. This gives us hope that long standing biological urges  can be erased by the healing and renewing ministry of the Holy Spirit and countless Christian recovery programs attest that this is the case. Alcoholics can and do lose the biological desire to drink, homosexuals can and do have their sexual orientation set right, drug addicts can and do completely lose their cravings, sex addicts can be and are freed from the torment of 24hr a day lust. But is this a realistic and a scriptural expectation? Lets look at Romans 8:11

“But if the Spirit of Him who raised Jesus from the dead dwells in you, He who raised Christ from the dead will also give life to your mortal bodies through His Spirit who dwells in you.”

The Holy Spirit  can give life to our mortal bodies – not just our resurrection  bodies, but the very bodies we have now, our mortal bodies. His renewing life can pulse through us and cleanse us from sins and addictions  just as he can heal a person from illness or disease. Like a divine electrician he can fix the fuse box and rewire the house so the circuitry functions as it was always meant to – for the glory of God.

 

The biological basis of sin is not separate from the spiritual basis of sin. When God delivers you from sin He can deliver you from sin in your spirit, sin in your soul and eventually from the power of sin in your members. He can fix the physical and medical basis of rage, lust, addictions  and anti-social behaviour. Minimal brain dysfunction, ADHD, post-traumatic stress disorder, and whatever else may be engraved in our neural tissue - can be healed by the Holy Spirit .

 

Lets see how this happened for the Christians at Corinth:

(1 Corinthians 6:9-11 NKJV)  Do you not know that the unrighteous will not inherit the kingdom of God? Do not be deceived. Neither fornicators, nor idolaters, nor adulterers, nor homosexuals, nor sodomites, {10} nor thieves, nor covetous, nor drunkards, nor revilers, nor extortioners will inherit the kingdom of God. {11} And such were some of you. But you were washed, but you were sanctified, but you were justified in the name of the Lord Jesus and by the Spirit of our God.

The Corinthian Christians has come from some pretty terrible backgrounds including fornication and adultery (sexual addiction), homosexuals and sodomites (probably pedophiles in this case), and drunkards (alcoholics). These behaviors are generally acknowledged to have a strong and persistent biological and neurological component.

 

However they are now PAST behaviors, they have been repented of and forsaken and the Corinthians are now washed and made holy! "Such WERE some of you" - its over, dealt with, fixed. And this transformation took place "in the name of the Lord Jesus and by the Spirit of our God". Paul puts it this way….

(Romans 8:13 NKJV)  For if you live according to the flesh you will die; but if by the Spirit you put to death the deeds of the body, you will live.

(Galatians 5:16-18 NKJV)  I say then: Walk in the Spirit, and you shall not fulfill the lust of the flesh. {17} For the flesh lusts against the Spirit, and the Spirit against the flesh; and these are contrary to one another, so that you do not do the things that you wish. {18} But if you are led by the Spirit, you are not under the law.

The Spirit can deal with the flesh in both its spiritual and biological aspects. We are not at the mercy of our genetics or our addictions . The Holy Spirit  can set us free! What He did in constructing the body of Jesus so that it was prepared to do God's will can be done for you as well "for nothing is impossible to him who believes".

 

The Soul and Spirit of Jesus

Listed below are all the direct gospel references to the soul and spirit of Jesus Christ.

(Matthew 26:38 NKJV)  Then He said to them, "My soul is exceedingly sorrowful, even to death. Stay here and watch with Me."

(Matthew 27:50 NKJV)  And Jesus cried out again with a loud voice, and yielded up His spirit.

(Mark 2:8 NKJV)  But immediately, when Jesus perceived in His spirit that they reasoned thus within themselves, He said to them, "Why do you reason about these things in your hearts?

(Mark 8:12 NKJV)  But He sighed deeply in His spirit, and said, "Why does this generation seek a sign? Assuredly, I say to you, no sign shall be given to this generation."

(Mark 14:34 NKJV)  Then He said to them, "My soul is exceedingly sorrowful, even to death. Stay here and watch."

(Luke 10:21 NKJV)  In that hour Jesus rejoiced in the Spirit and said, "I thank You, Father, Lord of heaven and earth, that You have hidden these things from the wise and prudent and revealed them to babes. Even so, Father, for so it seemed good in Your sight.

(Luke 23:46 NIV)  Jesus called out with a loud voice, "Father, into your hands I commit my spirit." When he had said this, he breathed his last.

(John 11:33 NKJV)  Therefore, when Jesus saw her weeping, and the Jews who came with her weeping, He groaned in the spirit and was troubled.

(John 12:27 NKJV)  "Now My soul is troubled, and what shall I say? 'Father, save Me from this hour'? But for this purpose I came to this hour.

(John 13:21 NKJV)  When Jesus had said these things, He was troubled in spirit, and testified and said, "Most assuredly, I say to you, one of you will betray Me."

(John 19:30 NIV)  When he had received the drink, Jesus said, "It is finished." With that, he bowed his head and gave up his spirit.

Three things especially stand out:

Ø      That Jesus perceived life's situations with His Spirit.

Ø      That Jesus was moved on the basis of those perceptions.

Ø      That Jesus candidly expressed His emotions to those closest to Him.

[Also to be noted are His ability to surrender His spirit to God and that with the surrender of His spirit His life ended.]Note the power and depth of Jesus reactions. He cries out with a loud voice, is troubled unto death, or rejoices greatly. His Spirit-filled emotions were powerful and present. He is no antiseptic, calm beyond belief, purely logical and mental being. The triumphs and tragedies of faith move Him deeply indeed - as they have moved all great men and women of God.

 

Jesus And Perception

In Mark 2:8 Jesus "per ceived in His spirit". The spirit is the true organ for the perception of reality for Jesus as Isaiah declared in one of the best known passages in the Bible:

(Isaiah 11:1-5 NKJV)  There shall come forth a Rod from the stem of Jesse, And a Branch shall grow out of his roots. {2} The Spirit of the LORD shall rest upon Him, The Spirit of wisdom and understanding, The Spirit of counsel and might, The Spirit of knowledge and of the fear of the LORD. {3} His delight is in the fear of the LORD, And He shall not judge by the sight of His eyes, Nor decide by the hearing of His ears; {4} But with righteousness He shall judge the poor, And decide with equity for the meek of the earth; He shall strike the earth with the rod of His mouth, And with the breath of His lips He shall slay the wicked. {5} Righteousness shall be the belt of His loins, And faithfulness the belt of His waist.

The presence of the Holy Spirit  upon Jesus gave Him extraordinary knowledge and wisdom so that He judged situations righteously and truthfully and inwardly. He did not judge situations as they appeared to the eyes and ears and to sense perception (verse 3 above). Rather He judged life's situations with a spirit of wisdom and understanding, counsel and knowledge that saw into the heart of things. This special perception that Jesus had shows in many of the gospel encounters and is neatly summarized by the apostle John who writes: (John 2:24 NKJV)  But Jesus did not commit Himself to them, because He knew all men. ( see also Matthew 9:4, 12:25, Mark 5:30, 12:15 Luke 11;17, John 5:6, 6:61, 64 , 13:1-3, 18:4)

 

Jesus' perceptions  of situations then led to His emotional reactions to them. On sensing His impending death His soul was troubled unto death, on seeing the grief at Lazarus's tomb He groaned in spirit and was troubled, when the disciples returned victorious He rejoiced, when He perceived the hardness of heart of the Pharisees He became angry, and when He sees masses of people coming out after healing and teaching He is moved with compassion. (see "objection 3 in the previous chapter) . Jesus then expressed these emotions powerfully but appropriately. There is always great dignity in the reactions of Jesus Christ. His emotionality was deep and expressive - never trivial, sentimental or chaotic. This then gives us a process for our own emotionality:

 

1.       Perceive life spiritually, righteously, truthfully and with a Kingdom perspective .

2.       React in our soul and spirit. Be moved by life. Not aloof and detached or cold and hard.

3.       Express those reactions with dignity, power and poise. Be full-hearted emotionally but also be wise in expression.

 

In the next chapter we will see that the apostles  and many great men and women of God over the centuries have done precisely this - bringing their emotions under the control and empowerment of the Spirit of God so they reacted to things no longer from a merely human perspective with its five senses and self-interest but from a divine perspective with spiritual perception  and true Kingdom interests. This is what makes a good Christian biography so compelling - we sense a different way of  looking at the world - a heart controlled by God and seeing His interests in all things. In that chapter I will argue that a Kingdom perspective  is not only good for our sanctification it is also critical for good emotional health and a high EQ. However I have more to say about the emotional life of Jesus first.

 

The Beliefs of Jesus Christ

Emo tions flow from beliefs. When I was a young boy I was playing by the local creek when I found a huge lump of iron pyrites (Fool’s Gold) and it was heavy and soft and looked like gold. I showed my brother Peter and we went home very secretively so nobody could see us with our important find. We then showed Dad and said, “We are rich! We are rich! We found this huge lump of gold and there’s more just down by the creek!” Dad just laughed and explained about Fool’s Gold. Even though our belief was not a true belief it still made us very happy while it lasted. We were so excited, not by actually finding gold, because we didn’t actually find gold, but by the belief that we had found gold. When this belief was corrected, our emotion of joy was unsupported by an adequate belief, and it vanished. We went from very excited to being a bit disappointed. Once the belief vanished, the emotion vanished. Underneath emotions are beliefs, if you take way the belief the emotion vanishes, if you change the belief sufficiently, the emotion changes.

How we believe has a direct affect on how we feel. This applies even in spiritual things. So if , like Jesus, you think that stealing houses from poor widows is wrong, you will react to it with the intensity that Jesus did. The difference between a video camera recording an event and a person seeing the event is that the person has prior beliefs. These prior beliefs cause the person to react to what they see.  Lets look at three incidents in the life of Jesus to see how His beliefs informed His emotional reactions and made them different from those of so called "normal people". First we will look at His cle ansing of the temple:

 

(Mark 11:15-17 NKJV)  So they came to Jerusalem. Then Jesus went into the temple and began to drive out those who bought and sold in the temple, and overturned the tables of the money changers and the seats of those who sold doves. {16} And He would not allow anyone to carry wares through the temple. {17} Then He taught, saying to them, "Is it not written, 'My house shall be called a house of prayer for all nations'? But you have made it a 'den of thieves.'"

 

(John 2:13-17 NKJV)  Now the Passover of the Jews was at hand, and Jesus went up to Jerusalem. {14} And He found in the temple those who sold oxen and sheep and doves, and the moneychangers doing business. {15} When He had made a whip of cords, He drove them all out of the temple, with the sheep and the oxen, and poured out the changers' money and overturned the tables. {16} And He said to those who sold doves, "Take these things away! Do not make My Father's house a house of merchandise!" {17} Then His disciples remembered that it was written, "Zeal for Your house has eaten Me up."

 

What beliefs of Jesus lay behind the strength of His reaction here? In Mark's gospel we see that Jesus believed :

a) That the purpose of the Temple was to be a house of prayer for all nations. 

b) But that it had become a robbers den.

 In John's gospel Jesus is shown believing that it is :

c) My Father's house 

b) But instead it had become a house of merchandise (with the implication that it was dishonest trade.

[The accounts are not contradictory they just report slightly different samples of Jesus reactions at the time. It is probable that he said many other things as well while He was overturning the tables.]

 

Lets look at the sequence of events. Jesus believes it should be A but perceives it is in fact B this leads to emotional reaction C which is expressed in verbal and physical behaviour D. For Jesus His beliefs included the honor due to His Father , the fact that the right use of the temple was prayer and that all nations should have access to it. They also included the belief that trade, especially dishonest trade was inappropriate in such a location. These were not widely and strongly held beliefs in His time otherwise the traders would not have been there in the first place. His unique beliefs led to His unique emotional reaction based on His spiritual perception  of the nature of the situation.

 

Lets move on and look at anoth er of Jesus' puzzling reactions - during a fierce storm on the lake of Galilee.

 

(Matthew 8:24-26 NKJV)  And suddenly a great tempest arose on the sea, so that the boat was covered with the waves. But He was asleep. {25} Then His disciples came to Him and awoke Him, saying, "Lord, save us! We are perishing!" {26} But He said to them, "Why are you fearful, O you of little faith?" Then He arose and rebuked the winds and the sea, and there was a great calm.

 

Here Jesus' belief seems to have been that He was absolutely safe and that nothing could touch Him because His Father was protecting Him and the disciples. His belief also included the fact that it  was a sane and reasonable thing for Him to speak to waves and wind and expect that they would obey Him. Furthermore He seems to believe that the disciples ought to share these beliefs and were quite unjustified in being fearful in the midst of such a storm.

 

Based on these beliefs Jesus perception of the situation seems to have been "Not a problem!". It just wasn't a big deal. To say that this is "counter-intuitive" and defies all common sense is no under-statement. Nevertheless his beliefs were justified for He calmed the storm with a word. It truly wasn't a problem for Him at all.

 

People of great faith have a tremendous poise in crisis situations. In a later chapter we shall learn how to handle situations we dread from a position of faith and a sense of mastery . Here Jesus beliefs led to Him having emotions of calm and a sense of mastery in a crisis situation and enabled Him to take effective action to remedy the situation.

 

For our third illustration of Jesus' belief system we will go a few verses earlier in Matthew 8 to see the only time Jesus is recorded as "marvelin g" at something…

 

(Matthew 8:7-14 NKJV)  And Jesus said to him, "I will come and heal him." {8} The centurion answered and said, "Lord, I am not worthy that You should come under my roof. But only speak a word, and my servant will be healed. {9} "For I also am a man under authority, having soldiers under me. And I say to this one, 'Go,' and he goes; and to another, 'Come,' and he comes; and to my servant, 'Do this,' and he does it." {10} When Jesus heard it, He marveled, and said to those who followed, "Assuredly, I say to you, I have not found such great faith, not even in Israel! {11} "And I say to you that many will come from east and west, and sit down with Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob in the kingdom of heaven. {12} "But the sons of the kingdom will be cast out into outer darkness. There will be weeping and gnashing of teeth." {13} Then Jesus said to the centurion, "Go your way; and as you have believed, so let it be done for you." And his servant was healed that same hour.

 

Here Jesus is marveling at the "great faith" of the Roman centurion. There are many beliefs of Jesus recorded here such as the hardness of Israel, the salvation of the Gentiles and the power of His commands to heal the sick but none of these beliefs are the mainstay of His marveling at the centurion. Jesus is reacting to the presence of great faith in an unexpected place - a Gentile and a soldier, a man who was outside of the covenant and whose job was killing people and who was in part responsible for the occupation of His nation.

 

This was the reaction of one belief structure  to another belief structure. The centurion expressed His beliefs about a) his unworthiness as a Gentile (though a powerful man) to have Jesus visit him and b) His belief in Jesus' authority and the power of His words of command. As the centurion expressed these beliefs Jesus in turn resonated with them. Just as the hardness of heart of the Pharisees enraged Him, just as the littleness of faith of the disciples disappointed Him, the great faith of the centurion  encouraged and astonished Him. It was a "rare find" "Assuredly, I say to you, I have not found such great faith, not even in Israel! .

 

So we see that belief structures react to one another and evaluate one another. When we find another who is astonishingly full of faith we rejoice. When we find someone hard and cynical and unbelieving we are discouraged or angered. Like Jesus we search out those that resonate with us. They are a rare find and a treasure. The way we interact with others will depend in large measure on what we believe about what they believe. Much inter-denominational misunderstanding revolves around "what we believe about what they believe" and the strong emotional reactions that result. It’s a critical area for mental health and is why some types of fundamentalism though very sound in many areas are incredibly damaging psychologically.

 

Putting It All Together

Ea rlier we saw that perceptions led to internal emotions which were then expressed appropriately. Later we have seen that our perceptions work in with our beliefs to produce astonishing emotional reactions that are unique to the Christ-like Spirit-filled believer. On top of this we have a physical predisposition to certain types of emotional reactions and behaviours - covered in the first part of this chapter. Thus we can say that for Jesus and the Spirit-filled believer the steps are: 1. Perception of person or situation - ideally in the Spirit.  2. Interaction of perception with belief system.  3. Internal emotion generated.  4. Interaction of internal emotion with physical predisposition.  5. Expression of emotion outwardly.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

You may be wondering about the title of this chapter "The Holy Spirit  And The Emotional Life of Jesus" where is the Holy Spirit in Jesus’ beliefs, perceptions etc. Lets see!

 

• Perception: Jesus perceives by both His Spirit and the Holy Spirit  who brings these realities to Him.
• Beliefs: The Holy Spirit  writes the law of God on our minds and hearts and forms our beliefs within us as our teacher and the One who shows us the things that God has prepared for those who believe and reveals to us the deep things of God. Here are just a few direct references to His teaching ministry. (John 6:45, 14:26, Galatians 1;11,12 , 1 Corinthians 2:9-16, Ephesians 4:21,  1 Thessalonians 4:9,  Hebrews 8;10-11, 1 John 2:20,27 )
• Internal Emotions:  Emotions can proceed directly from our spirit under the influence of the Holy Spirit  " and Jesus rejoiced in His spirit.." and emotions such as love, joy and peace are called the fruit of the Spirit (Galatians 5:22,23).
• Interaction With Physical Disposition: The indwelling Holy Spirit  gives life to our mortal bodies that we may be renewed and cry out "Abba Father!" (Romans 8:11-15) to our gracious Heavenly Father. See also the first section in this chapter on how His powerful work can break the domination of our lives by sin and addictions .
• Outward Expression Of The Emotional Reaction: The spiritual basis for revelation  that culminates in teaching is shown in 1 Corinthians.

 

(1 Corinthians 2:9-13 NKJV)  But as it is written: "Eye has not seen, nor ear heard, Nor have entered into the heart of man The things which God has prepared for those who love Him." {10} But God has revealed them to us through His Spirit. For the Spirit searches all things, yes, the deep things of God. {11} For what man knows the things of a man except the spirit of the man which is in him? Even so no one knows the things of God except the Spirit of God. {12} Now we have received, not the spirit of the world, but the Spirit who is from God, that we might know the things that have been freely given to us by God. {13} These things we also speak, not in words which man's wisdom teaches but which the Holy Spirit  teaches, comparing spiritual things with spiritual.

 

Thus verse 13 is the culmination of a long sequence. Firstly truth which eye cannot see and ear cannot hear is revealed to us through the Holy Spirit  (verses 9-11). Then we receive them through the Holy Spirit who teaches us and works them into our belief system. This is freely and graciously given (verse 12). Finally we speak and we speak not human, but divine wisdom and not in human words and categories but in words the Holy Spirit gives us.

 

Thus Scripture is not just God's Word in human words; rather it is God's Word in the Spirit's Words. Lets see how this worked for Jesus:

(John 8:28 NKJV)  Then Jesus said to them, "When you lift up the Son of Man, then you will know that I am He, and that I do nothing of Myself; but as My Father taught Me, I speak these things. {29} "And He who sent Me is with Me. The Father has not left Me alone, for I always do those things that please Him ."

The responses, reactions, words and expressions are taught to us by God and are in spiritual categories "comparing spiritual with spiritual.”

 

 That leads on to the last section of this chapter - symbols, metaphors, and archetypes  - how the Spirit teaches us to express spiritual things - including our emotions.

 

The Language Of  The Spirit and The Emotional Realm - Symbols, Metaphors and Archetypes.

As I am writin g this "Just As I Am" is playing on the stereo in the background and the choir is singing "O Lamb Of God I come..". This is the language of the Spirit that makes no sense to the carnal man but which abounds in Scripture and in the great moments of the Christian faith including the hymns that lift us to God. To take up where we left off in the passage1 Corinthians:

 

(1 Corinthians 2:13-16 NKJV)  These things we also speak, not in words which man's wisdom teaches but which the Holy Spirit  teaches, comparing spiritual things with spiritual. {14} But the natural man does not receive the things of the Spirit of God, for they are foolishness to him; nor can he know them, because they are spiritually discerned. {15} But he who is spiritual judges all things, yet he himself is rightly judged by no one. {16} For "who has known the mind of the LORD that he may instruct Him?" But we have the mind of Christ.

 

There is something called "the mind of Christ" which enables the believer to make sense of symbolic language such as "the Lamb of God that takes away the sin of the world" and to quickly grasp the meaning of parables and to feel the wonder of the scenes in Revelation. The Holy Spirit  enables us to perceive and believe correctly thus renewing our mind into the mind of Christ . He is our Teacher and instructor and does so in the language of the spiritual realm - dreams, visions, symbols, parables and metaphors - using analogues of the faith to explain it as well as more straightforward language such as that of the book of Romans.

 

In the language of the Spirit beasts with seven heads and ten horns are juxtaposed with scarlet women and numinous symbols such as the Throne of God. These can be visual as well as verbal symbols and realities angels, demons, cherubim and seraphim are seen by the  seers and prophets. To the purely material and "scientific" mind this is all quite offensive and many liberal theologians have stumbled over it. The more we think of  the power of our own intellect the less we think of God's Word and the more we think of God's Word the less we think of the power of our own intellect!

 

Jesus was supremely taught of God and a master of the symbolic realm so the He expressed Himself skillfully in parables, aphorisms, sermons and stories. His teaching was unlike that of the scribes and Pharisees for He taught with authority and in such a way that those truly seeking God understood Him while those who were just curious walked away puzzled and frustrated with His teaching. The language of the Spirit is not "plain language" but is strangely numinous and symbolic. If you have seen some the "New Age advertising" around that taps into these common and universal symbols of the emotional world you will know what I mean.

 

These symbols or archetypes  such as a woman dressed in a flowing white robe holding a torch aloft, or a dove against a clear blue sky, or a rainbow or a man on a white horse dressed for war or a shining sword or a red dragon. These symbols have universal emotional content almost independent of culture. The psychologist Carl Jung spent His life exploring them and Hitler was a master at exploiting them. Transpersonal psychology and various schools of psychoanalysis take them very seriously indeed. Myth, saga, music, song and poetry all tap into this treasure trove of emotional and spiritual symbols as do fables and stories and most national anthems.

 

We interact with spiritual language either totally or not at all. The phrase "the Lamb of God" either has immense meaning or is a total enigma. It is an almost binary form of communication that literally "separates the sheep from the goats" and believers from unbelievers.

(John 10:25-27 NKJV)  Jesus answered them, "I told you, and you do not believe. The works that I do in My Father's name, they bear witness of Me. {26} "But you do not believe, because you are not of My sheep, as I said to you. {27} "My sheep hear My voice, and I know them, and they follow Me.

In a startling statement Jesus said "but you do not believe because you are not of my sheep". In other words you have to be one of God's people to understand His teaching! It’s the other side of the more usual "because you do not believe you are not God's". Here its "because you are not God's - you d o not believe." Some eagerly believe and can understand the language of the Spirit while others are just further hardened by it. (John 12:40).

 

Thus the spiritual person understand the things of the Spirit including symbols, parables and dreams; is taught spiritual things by God, has a deep emotional response to them which in turn finds its deepest expression in the language of the Spirit speaking spiritual truths in words taught by God comparing spiritual with spiritual.

 

Summary

For Jesus and ideally for the Christ-like Spirit-filled believer the model of the process for the development of the emotional life is as follows:

1.       Things are perceived in and by the spirit by believers with the mind of Christ and a lucid grasp of symbol and metaphor. These believers see life as being in a Kingdom framework.

2.       This perception is then passed through a grid of beliefs taught to the believer by God.

3.       This results in a godly internal emotional state in the believer - of rejoicing, awe, wonder, repentance, burdens for the lost  etc.

4.       This is then mediated through the renewed life-filled temple of the Holy Spirit  that is the believers body and translated through his or her natural God-given temperament.

5.       Finally the emotional response is expressed in words taught by the Spirit bringing edification to the body of Christ and reflecting the mind of Christ on the matter.

 

This should result in a deep, powerful resonant emotional life that is totally in tune with Kingdom realities and which can express matters of justice and truth as well as care and compassion. This Holy Spirit  produced emotional life should weep for the lost, ache for the poor and celebrate the repentance of a single sinner. Like Jesus we should have a Holy Spirit given courage that enables us to speak God’s truth in God’s words at God’s moment. Like Jesus the Holy Spirit in us should make us radiant with a healing and gracious personality so that people sense the love and peace that is in us and know that in our earthen vessels dwells a priceless treasure.

 

The next two chapters will test the above five step theory before we put it into practice on ourselves. Firstly we will look at the emotional life of apostles , prophets and great Christian leaders. Then we shall examine the dreadful emotional life of carnal Christians. On the way we shall see if the model we have developed works.

 

 

Discussion Questions

 

1.       What are the five steps in the five-step model?

 

2.       What was special about the body of Jesus Christ?

 

3.       What difference did the Holy Spirit  make in the life of Jesus?

 

4. How did Jesus perceive reality differently from others

 

5. How did the beliefs of Jesus Christ affect or determine His behaviour?

 

6. How is symbolic language often quite different from the language we normally use? Why is it useful ?

 

The Emotional Life Of The Apostles, Prophets and Great Christian Leaders

(Acts 13:22 NKJV)  "…. 'I have found David the son of Jesse, a man after My own heart, who will do all My will.'

 

If the previous chapter summary of the emotional life of the Christ-like Christian is correct, then it will predict the lives of the most Christ-like people - and will also predict, in a negative way,   the lives of the most carnal people.

 

In this chapter will check if the theory of biblical EQ has predictive validity when applied to the lives of the great Christian leaders and in the next chapter we will check to see if it also predicts the emotional lives of carnal Christians.

 

According to our model the f ollowing twelve things should be true of the apostles  and prophets and great Christian leaders.

 

Perception

1.       They should see the world differently from the rest of us. For them the Kingdom perspective  will be the only true perspective.

2.       They should be able from time to time to see into the hearts of men and women and to speak accurately to their condition.

3.       They should be conversant with dreams, visions and symbolic language. They should readily grasp the prophetic and be excited by the Scriptures.

Beliefs

4.       They should have beliefs that the surrounding culture has not taught them or which it opposes vehemently, beliefs that only God can have taught them.

5.       Those beliefs should give them a sense of what is righteous and what is unrighteous like Jesus had when He cleansed the temple and create an unusual zeal within them that consumes them.

6.       Those beliefs should give them unusual poise and power in crisis situations like Jesus in the storm.

7.       As a result of those beliefs they should resonate with and be emotionally drawn to others who are of great faith, like Jesus resonated with the Roman centurion.

Emotions

8.       They should have deep and vivid emotions like those of Jesus Christ.

9.       They should have a sense of  their emotions being God's emotions and be aware of what they are feeling and able to name it clearly as Jesus did with His emotions. They should be people of authentic and powerful emotional expression - groans, tears, crying, and rejoicing.

Physical Nature

10.   They should demonstrate victory over addictions  and sexual temptations and have a renewed physical nature whereby they were able to express their emotions in godly ways through their physical bodies.

Emotional Expression

11.   These righteous emotions should lead to righteous actions such as when Jesus' compassion moved Him to act. Their emotionality should be an integral part of being a righteous person. Not detached from life like the emotions of an actor or a hypocrite.

12.   The course of their lives should demonstrate an ever-increasing wisdom in emotional expression as if they were being taught by God in how to say things.

 

Do these twelve predictions pass the test of Scripture and of the testimony of the saints down the ages? Are great men and women of God people of deep and vivid emotionality? Do they demonstrate an unusual sense of righteousness? Do they indeed see life differently? Do they hold counter-cultural beliefs or have an unusual power and poise in crisis situations? The answer is Yes! In fact great men and women of God are so vivid emotionally that they are often accused of being overly emotional - from Jeremiah with his tears to John Wesley  with his preaching. Luther saw life so differently that he threw his ink-pot at the Devil! Isaiah was so counter-cultural that he went around for three years with his buttocks uncovered! (Isaiah 20:1-3).

 

Lets test our predictions on the spiritual heroes  of Hebrews 11 . I will go paragraph by paragraph commenting on how these heroes perceived, believed, felt and reacted differently. The bible version is the New King James Version.

 

(Hebrews 11  NKJV)  Now faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen. {2} For by it the elders obtained a good testimony. {3} By faith we understand that the worlds were framed by the word of God, so that the things which are seen were not made of things which are visible.

 

These heroes  of faith saw a different reality to others they had evidence of things not seen and understood that the visible world was predicated on perception of an invisible spiritual world.

 

 {4} By faith Abel offered to God a more excellent sacrifice than Cain, through which he obtained witness that he was righteous, God testifying of his gifts; and through it he being dead still speaks. {5} By faith Enoch was taken away so that he did not see death, "and was not found, because God had taken him"; for before he was taken he had this testimony, that he pleased God. {6} But without faith it is impossible to please Him, for he who comes to God must believe that He is, and that He is a rewarder of those who diligently seek Him.

 

The belief system of these people was different from and more excellent than that of their contemporaries and was grounded in the invisible spiritual reality that they perceived.

 

 {7} By faith Noah, being divinely warned of things not yet seen, moved with godly fear, prepared an ark for the saving of his household, by which he condemned the world and became heir of the righteousness which is according to faith.

 {8} By faith Abraham obeyed when he was called to go out to the place which he would receive as an inheritance. And he went out, not knowing where he was going. {9} By faith he dwelt in the land of promise as in a foreign country, dwelling in tents with Isaac and Jacob, the heirs with him of the same promise; {10} for he waited for the city which has foundations, whose builder and maker is God. {11} By faith Sarah herself also received strength to conceive seed, and she bore a child when she was past the age, because she judged Him faithful who had promised. {12} Therefore from one man, and him as good as dead, were born as many as the stars of the sky in multitude; innumerable as the sand which is by the seashore.

 {13} These all died in faith, not having received the promises, but having seen them afar off were assured of them, embraced them and confessed that they were strangers and pilgrims on the earth. {14} For those who say such things declare plainly that they seek a homeland. {15} And truly if they had called to mind that country from which they had come out, they would have had opportunity to return. {16} But now they desire a better, that is, a heavenly country. Therefore God is not ashamed to be called their God, for He has prepared a city for them.

 

These great men and women of God had beliefs that gave them an unusual sense of righteousness which condemned their generation e.g Noah. Their beliefs gave them the courage to be counter-cultural to seek a heavenly country and to see life from a Kingdom perspective .

 

 {17} By faith Abraham, when he was tested, offered up Isaac, and he who had received the promises offered up his only begotten son, {18} of whom it was said, "In Isaac your seed shall be called," {19} concluding that God was able to raise him up, even from the dead, from which he also received him in a figurative sense. {20} By faith Isaac blessed Jacob and Esau concerning things to come. {21} By faith Jacob, when he was dying, blessed each of the sons of Joseph, and worshiped, leaning on the top of his staff. {22} By faith Joseph, when he was dying, made mention of the departure of the children of Israel, and gave instructions concerning his bones. {23} By faith Moses , when he was born, was hidden three months by his parents, because they saw he was a beautiful child; and they were not afraid of the king's command. {24} By faith Moses, when he became of age, refused to be called the son of Pharaoh's daughter, {25} choosing rather to suffer affliction with the people of God than to enjoy the passing pleasures of sin, {26} esteeming the reproach of Christ greater riches than the treasures in Egypt; for he looked to the reward. {27} By faith he forsook Egypt, not fearing the wrath of the king; for he endured as seeing Him who is invisible. {28} By faith he kept the Passover and the sprinkling of blood, lest he who destroyed the firstborn should touch them. {29} By faith they passed through the Red Sea as by dry land, whereas the Egyptians, attempting to do so, were drowned.

 

Their unique beliefs led to godly emotions  such as Jacob worshipping on the top of his staff . It led to unusual poise and courage in the face of enraged Pharaoh. It led to the ability to go against normal human emotions in the case of Abraham sacrificing Isaac.

 

 {30} By faith the walls of Jericho fell down after they were encircled for seven days. {31} By faith the harlot Rahab did not perish with those who did not believe, when she had received the spies with peace. {32} And what more shall I say? For the time would fail me to tell of Gideon and Barak and Samson and Jephthah, also of David and Samuel and the prophets: {33} who through faith subdued kingdoms, worked righteousness, obtained promises, stopped the mouths of lions, {34} quenched the violence of fire, escaped the edge of the sword, out of weakness were made strong, became valiant in battle, turned to flight the armies of the aliens. {35} Women received their dead raised to life again. And others were tortured, not accepting deliverance, that they might obtain a better resurrection . {36} Still others had trial of mockings and scourgings, yes, and of chains and imprisonment. {37} They were stoned, they were sawn in two, were tempted, were slain with the sword. They wandered about in sheepskins and goatskins, being destitute, afflicted, tormented; {38} of whom the world was not worthy. They wandered in deserts and mountains, in dens and caves of the earth. {39} And all these, having obtained a good testimony through faith, did not receive the promise, {40} God having provided something better for us, that they should not be made perfect apart from us.

 

Finally we see such great emotional mastery  and Kingdom perspective  that men and women of faith were enduring torture in the hope of a better resurrection !  Poise, power and peace and a most unusual set of emotions characterised these heroes  of faith. Their emotions moved them to righteous lives and actions. They were not subject to cravings or addictions  or impulses of the flesh, rather they had the steady strong enduring emotions that were part of the life of Jesus Christ.

 

What’s The Difference Between Overly-Emotional People And The Vivid Emotions Of  Jesus And The Prophets?

Good question! Lets start this investigation by taking a look at that chronicler of the emotional life - David the Psalmist. I have just picked a Psalm "at random" - Ps alm 30.

 

 (Psalms 30 NKJV)  I will extol You, O LORD, for You have lifted me up, And have not let my foes rejoice over me. {2} O LORD my God, I cried out to You, And You healed me. {3} O LORD, You brought my soul up from the grave; You have kept me alive, that I should not go down to the pit. {4} Sing praise to the LORD, You saints of His, And give thanks at the remembrance of His holy name. {5} For His anger is but for a moment, His favor is for life; Weeping may endure for a night, But joy comes in the morning. {6} Now in my prosperity I said, "I shall never be moved." {7} LORD, by Your favor You have made my mountain stand strong; You hid Your face, and I was troubled. {8} I cried out to You, O LORD; And to the LORD I made supplication: {9} "What profit is there in my blood, When I go down to the pit? Will the dust praise You? Will it declare Your truth? {10} Hear, O LORD, and have mercy on me; LORD, be my helper!" {11} You have turned for me my mourning into dancing; You have put off my sackcloth and clothed me with gladness, {12} To the end that my glory may sing praise to You and not be silent. O LORD my God, I will give thanks to You forever.

 

These twelve short verses give us a good sample of David's emotional life. What is the difference between David’s emotional life and the emotional roller-coaster of some Christians?

·         The negative emotions are temporary "weeping may last for a night but joy comes in the morning".

·         There is a righteous resolution of the emotions, a giving of thanks in the end.

·         The emotions are primarily directed towards God in a private and appropriate fashion.

·         There is a wide range of appropriate emotions from joy to a troubled spirit. The emotional thermostat is not stuck in just one position e.g. deep gloom or constant happiness.

·         There is an ability to see good in God in the midst of it all - to sing praise and give thanks. The spiritual perspective is not lost.

·         There is no stifling of emotions, they are expressed in spiritual terms  "that my glory may sing praise to You and not be silent".

·         There is repentance of false perspectives and beliefs. "Now in my prosperity I said 'I shall not be moved..". When God challenges this David repents of his self-sufficiency.  People who are out of balance emotionally do the opposite and cling to their self-defeating perspectives

·         In the expression of emotions there is genuine dignity and beauty. This psalm is poetry!

 

[If this area interests you why not take some more of the Psalms and explore their emotional content. The men and women of God down the centuries have valued them for the insights they give into the emotional life of the believer.]

 

So we se there is a vast difference between the deep, powerful and godly emotions  of the saints and the clanging, shrill emotions of Christian neurotics. The emotions of the saints have God at the center. The emotions of neurotics have self at the center.

 

What About The Different Temperaments?

The question "which Bible character are you most like?" is an interesting one. I am a miniature "clone" of Paul the apostle sharing much of his impatience and his intellectual approach to the faith.  Others say they are like Peter or Moses  or David or Jeremiah or Amos. Tim La Haye made an important contribution with his book Transformed Temperaments which identified four personality types - Sanguine, Choleric, Melancholy and Phlegmatic. Those of you familiar with Myers-Briggs personality tests will know it also has four basic categories divided into sixteen sub-types. Whatever your schema, one thing is obvious - there is a wide range of personality types! God uses people of all temperaments in His Kingdom and designs ministries and places for each of them. He called complex Thomas as well as straightforward Peter, Simon the Zealot and the sons of Thunder as well as Matthew the pragmatic tax-collector, sophisticated Daniel was sent to minister to Nebuchadnezzar while Amos the farmer went to bluntly prophesy to the northern kingdom. Having a high biblical EQ does not mean that you are the same as everyone else or that you become a cute, saccharine sweet, always smiling,never-a-hair-out-of-place believer. There is a vast range for individuality and even for eccentricity within the Kingdom of God!

 

Eccentricity ? Well the prophets were hardly "normal"! John the Baptist wearing camel's hair clothes and eating locusts may be viewed as "eccentric" along with Elijah, Ezekiel and characters such as Samson. These people were culturally distinct but not the least bit mentally ill - they just lived by a different and higher reality which consumed them.

 

Different temperaments have different uses within the Kingdom of God. Barnabas was a great encourager of the brethren, Peter's high emotionality made him a master preacher and evangelist, Paul's razor sharp mind made him a great one for attending to the operational details and theology of church life, John's mystical temperament pointed to the deep abiding spiritual realities and resulted in wonderful teaching on prayer. Titus seems to have been a born trouble-shooter while Timothy was the sensitive and caring pastor par excellence.

 

God will use your basic temperament that He has built into you - and even some of your weaknesses for when you are weak then you are strong! Your basic God-created and renewed self is OK! G od can and will use it and has accepted it in Christ Jesus (Romans 14:7).

 

Being accepted does not mean being unchanged. The Holy Spirit  will take certain parts of your basic emotional temperament and refine them into the image of Christ Jesus. Paul matured in tolerance and love, Peter became stable and reliable, Timothy had to overcome his timidity and learn to suffer hardship as a good soldier of Christ Jesus. As the Holy Spirit convicts you and teaches you and ministers to you a slow but sure transformation will take place that will increase your maturity in Christ and your usefulness to the Master. I find Hebrews especially encouraging - the fact that I have a merciful and faithful High Priest in heaven who understands my weakness and intercedes for me and a throne of grace that I can go to for strength and help in time of need. (Hebrews 4:12-16).

 

Emotions In Times of Revival

If the Holy Spirit  acts to redeem our emotions into those of Christ Jesus what causes the emotional excesses during times of revival ? Does the Holy Spirit, who so desires balance, holiness, wisdom and truth cause these bizarre manifestations? This is an often discussed question and in recent years this has become a controversial topic and so I will try to offer some comment and resolution.

 

Firstly emotions DO run high when God moves mightily in times of genuine revival . I recommend the book "The Nature of Revival" a collection of writings from the journals of John Wesley , Charles Wesley and George Whitfield abridged and put into modern English by my friend Clare G. Weakley Jnr and published by Bethany House Publishers. These journal entries give great insight into the emotionality of these great men of God and the extraordinary events of their times.  Here are a few more or less random extracts.

 

P 84. John Wesley .. "On Friday all Newgate rang with the cries of those whom the word of God had cut to the heart. Two of these were filled with joy in a moment, to the astonishment of those who watched them"

 

P 85 John Wesley  regarding one who opposed the revival : " While reading the last page he changed color, fell off his chair, and began screaming terribly as he beat himself against the ground…..between one and two in the morning I came in and found him on the floor. The room was full of people who his wife tried to keep out. He cried aloud "No let them all come! Let all the world see the just judgment of God!". Two or three men were trying to hold him down. He immediately fixed his eyes on me, stretched out his hand and said "Aye this is he who I said was a deceiver of the people! But God has overtaken me! I said it was all a delusion, but this is no delusion!" …(He is eventually released from torment..)

 

P 87 "While I was enforcing these words "Be still and know that I am God" (Ps 46:10), God began to bare His arm, not in private but in the open air and before more than two thousand witnesses. One then another, and yet another was struck to the earth, greatly trembling at the presence of God's power. Others loudly and bitterly cried "What must we do to be saved?"

 

Few revivals have been without great emotion and the revivalist Jonathan Edwards  wrote a famous treatise on "Religious Affections.." which established that the emotions were a by-product of grace not its chief aim. The aim of the godly evangelist is not an emotional audience but a repentant and believing audience.

 

If the emotions expressed so powerfully indicate that repentance is taking place and that people are meeting with God and having their souls transformed then that emotion is a good thing. However if it is simply emotionality, hype, manipulated sentimentality  and the like and no work of God is taking place and people are not truly turning from darkness to light then it is unprofitable.

 

A revival  in which there is no great emotion would be like a wedding without joy. Such a momentous thing is happening to so many people that surely some great expression of emotion must accompany it. However when the emphasis is on the manifestations - the tears, the laughter, the falling etc then it has gone off track. The wedding should focus on the bride and groom and the revival on Christ and  on the believer's transformation. The emotions are just part and parcel of the process and not ends in themselves. In a later chapter on handling our strong emotions I go into the issue of discernment at quite some length. However I think we should conclude this brief section by saying that the powerful and bizarre emotions of revival are a temporary excess that God permits, but does not encourage. After the emotions and the changes the person so powerfully affected should go on to lead a normal, balanced, wise, godly and sanctified life. They should not keep on having bizarre emotional experiences. That is immature. Mature people display resonant love and deep wisdom and emotional control.

 

Christian Maturity and Emotion

I soon got the impression as a new Christian that my enthusiasm was expected to wear off and that when I "became mature" I would have rather dull and respectable emotions that resembled cold porridge poured into a grey flannel suit. Is this the sort of emotional maturity  that Scripture speaks of in Ephesians?

 

(Ephesians 4:13-15 NKJV)  till we all come to the unity of the faith and of the knowledge of the Son of God, to a perfect man, to the measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ; {14} that we should no longer be children, tossed to and fro and carried about with every wind of doctrine, by the trickery of men, in the cunning craftiness of deceitful plotting, {15} but, speaking the truth in love, may grow up in all things into Him who is the head; Christ;

 

Christian emotional maturity  does involve emotional stability - we are not "tossed to and fro…by every wind of doctrine".  It also involves "growing up" in all things and becoming a person participating in the stature and fullness of Christ. While it involves the stability of Christ it also involves the passion and zeal of Christ (John 2:17, Titus 2:14) and His ability to bless and to care. In fact part of the purpose of our redemption is to become a people “zealous for good deeds”.

(Titus 2:14 NASB)  who gave Himself for us, that He might redeem us from every lawless deed and purify for Himself a people for His own possession, zealous for good deeds.

Maturity is not the loss of emotions but the educating of emotions so they are like those of Jesus Christ and the mature person is both stable and zealous.

 

Childish emotions are OUT for the mature Christian but Christ-like emotions are IN. In the next chapter we will see what carnal emotions look like, how they are the reverse of the biblical EQ process and how we can move beyond them and start the process of "growing up in all things into Him who is the head - even Christ".

 

Discussion Questions

 

1.       Do you think that King David was overly emotional? If not, why not?

 

2.       What is different about the emotions of the great Christian leaders?

 

3.       What about revival ? How should we cope with strong emotions in Christian gatherings?

 

4. Go back over the twelve predictions that we began this chapter with; how do you feel as you read them and what picture do they paint for you about how the Christian life should be lived?

 

5.  How do our different characters and temperaments fit in with a view of emotions that is centred around one person – Jesus Christ?

 

6. What do you think Christian maturity looks like?

 

The Emotional Life Of  The Carnal Christian

 

(1 Corinthians 3:1-5 NKJV)  And I, brethren, could not speak to you as to spiritual people but as to carnal, as to babes in Christ. {2} I fed you with milk and not with solid food; for until now you were not able to receive it, and even now you are still not able; {3} for you are still carnal. For where there are envy, strife, and divisions among you, are you not carnal and behaving like mere men? {4} For when one says, "I am of Paul," and another, "I am of Apollos," are you not carnal?

 

We just saw how the five-step model of emotions quite accurately predicted the emotional life of Spirit-filled men and women of God. Now the model has as its central theme that emotional maturity is arrived at by focusing on Jesus, and modeling our emotions after Him in the power of the Holy Spirit. It is the Holy Spirit who renews our perceptions, beliefs, emotions, and physical bodies and who gives us wisdom in how to express our emotions in ways that are “taught of God”. We saw a positive correlation between what the theory predicted about the great saints of God, who cooperated with the Holy Spirit, and how they turned out emotionally, becoming beings of emotional grandeur. If our model stands the test, then those who resist the Holy Spirit, those who are unspiritual, should not be beings of emotional grandeur. Rather they should be emotionally unformed and immature. If, as our theory predicts, the Holy Spirit is essential for full emotional formation, then unspiritual Christians should be emotional wrecks, or at the least quite shallow and indifferent emotionally. These unspiritual Christians are termed  “carnal Christians” and this chapter will see if our model can predict how they will turn out and what lessons we can learn from that.

 

The carnal Christian  is characterized by an astonishing lack of spiritual maturity to the point where they cannot be addressed as spiritual people. Carnal Christians behave like "mere men" and are indistinguishable from the surrounding culture with their actions and reactions. Using our model we can again make certain predictions about the emotional life of those who do not give the Holy Spirit  full lordship of their lives. We will just reverse the predictions in the previous chapter.

 

Perception

1.       They will see the world in much the same terms as the surrounding culture. For them the Kingdom perspective  will be rare and they will be mainly self-centred.

2.       They will be unable to see into the hearts of men and women and even empathy will be rare. They will not speak accurately to the human condition.

3.       They will be baffled by dreams, visions and symbolic language. They will be bored by the prophetic and struggle with the Scriptures.

Beliefs

4.       They will mainly have beliefs that the surrounding culture has taught them. They will not hold beliefs that the culture opposes vehemently, and will have few beliefs that only God could have taught them.

5.       They will have a very weak sense of what is righteous and what is unrighteous and rarely react to social evil. They would tolerate the selling of doves in the Temple. Zeal  will be unusual for them and even undesirable. They will not be consumed by kingdom interests.

6.       They will not have unusual poise and power in crisis situations like Jesus in the storm but rather will be prone to anxiety.

7.      They will not  resonate with and be emotionally drawn to those who are of great faith. Rather they will feel more at home with the world and with other carnal Christians.

 

Emotions

8.       They will not have deep, vivid and stable emotions like those of Jesus Christ. They will instead be characterised by shallow sentimental spiritual feelings that vary with every wind of doctrine.

9.       They will have little sense of their emotions being God's emotions. They will often be unaware of what they are feeling and will be unable to name their emotions clearly.  They will not be people of authentic emotional expression.

Physical Nature

10.   They will not demonstrate victory over addictions  and sexual temptations They will fail to express their emotions in godly ways through their physical bodies.

Emotional Expression

11.  Their spiritual emotions will rarely lead to righteous actions. Compassion for the lost or the poor will rarely be felt and will not move them to action. Their emotionality will be detached from real life and be like the emotions of an actor or a hypocrite.

12.  The course of their lives will not demonstrate an ever-increasing wisdom in emotional expression. They will go from bad to worse and become increasingly discordant like " a clanging gong and a clashing cymbal" if they should continue as carnal Christians.

 

 

How does this tally with your experience of carnal Christians? Unfortunately it tallies very closely with my experience of them! They are not growing and in fact they are often going backwards spiritually. Lets see what the New Testament says about them.

 

In the quote that opened this chapter we find Paul referring to the church in 1 Corinthians as “carnal” – well what was it like? The carnality of the church is reflected in a long list of  very serious sins – the first four chapters detail division, intellectual and spiritual pride, factions, and infighting.  Chapters five and six show they were visiting prostitutes, and engaging in sexual immorality, and incest, chapter seven discusses marriage, divorce and the basics of sexually appropriate behavior, chapters eight to eleven correct gross disorder such as being drunk at the Lord's Supper, not waiting for one another so one goes hungry while another is full, and participation in feasts in pagan temples and eating food sacrificed to idols. Chapters 12- 14 reveal a paganisation of the spiritual gifts and their use in competitive, unloving and chaotic ways. Chapter 15 finds them denying the resurrection and being in major error over basic doctrines. The church was a mess but it was still considered a Christian church. The church James wrote to may have even been worse! There they murdered one another (James 4:2) and treated the poor with contempt (James 2). Both these churches were considered Christian churches and the recipients were addressed as believers and referred to as saints or holy ones (1 Corinthians 1:2).

 

Several epistles are addressed to churches with a good percentage of carnal Christians these are : Galatians, 1 & 2 Corinthians , Titus, Hebrews and James. In these epistles the language is extremely plain and there are many stern warnings about the consequences of sin and the judgment of God.  (e.g. Galatians 5, Hebrews 6, 1 Corinthians 5, 2 Corinthians 12 & 13 etc). In the first six or so chapters of his epistle the writer to the Hebrews calls his audience in various turns -  sluggish, unfruitful, dull of hearing, immature, like children, and says they were neglectful of their salvation, in danger of drifting away from the faith and hardening their hearts to God's Word and on the point of having "evil, unbelieving, hearts" (Heb 3:12).  In chapter 10 the writer goes on to say they are neglecting meeting together and on the verge of giving up the faith, returning to sin and being judged by the living God. This is a terrifying picture indeed!

 

Carnal Christians are so close to being unbelievers that they are almost indistinguishable from them. Such Christians are characterised by apathy, division, ongoing strife and a very low EQ! Carnal Christians "bite and devour one another" (Galatians 5:15) The carnal Christians needed lengthy instructions on the basics of human relationships and fortunately the apostolic response to this need has given rise to some of the finest literature on relationships in the world including the famous "love chapter" in 1 Corinthians 13. This is in direct contrast with other more Spirit-filled churches like the one at Thessalonica of whom Paul said :" (1 Thessalonians 4:9 NKJV)  But concerning brotherly love you have no need that I should write to you, for you yourselves are taught by God to love one another;.".

 

Where Then Is The Holy Spirit ?

All truly born-again Christians receive the Holy Spirit as part of the dynamics of conversion and the formation of the new man in them, which is Christ in them the hope of glory.  So all these Christians in Corinth, called ‘saints” by Paul, presumably had the Holy Spirit. Yet they were a mess. Something was dreadfully wrong. There seems to be a breakdown along the way. Their sanctification was falling to bits; it just wasn’t working.  The Holy Spirit in them was not producing maturity, the fruit of the Spirit were not evident. Was this God’s fault? Had God given up on them? Surely not! These people were doing something that was stopping the Holy Spirit from having His way in their lives. They were sinning against the Spirit’s presence in their lives.

This raises the question what then happens to the Holy Spirit in born-again Christians who have become carnal? In tribal cultures they often think that the Holy Spirit vanishes from you if you sin. That is not New Testament teaching. The Holy Spirit remains within the believer but is sinned against. Several terms are used such as: Grieved (Ephesians 4:30), quenched (1 Thessalonians 5:19) lied to (Acts 5:4), put to the test (Acts 5:9), insulted / outraged (Hebrews 10:29), made jealous (James 4:5), blasphemed (Matthew 12:31) and resisted (Acts 7:51). In Jude the divisive people are said to be "devoid of the Spirit" (Jude 1:19). We will very briefly look at each of these terms to gain some understanding of the spiritual dynamics of sinning against the Holy Spirit and its effects on the emotional life.

Grieved (Ephesians 4:30) - by unnecessary and immature interpersonal conflict such as bitterness, wrath, slander and malice. The Spirit is a Spirit of love and is grieved by that which is opposed to love. Carnal behavior such as divisiveness and quarreling is anti-love, and causes grief to the Holy Spirit who is constantly trying to mature us in love.

Quenched (1 Thessalonians 5:18-21) - by despising the gifts of the Spirit especially prophesy. It implies that his fire - His inspirational activity in prophecy and revival  is resisted - perhaps in the name of order, and "cold water" is thrown on attempts to minister in spiritual power.

Lied To (Acts 5:4): Ananias and Sapphira conspired in an act of financial deception of the apostles . This was seen as not deceiving men but God and lying to the Holy Spirit. (Acts 5:4) and resulted in them being carried out dead.

Put To The Test (Acts 5:9): Again refers to Ananias and Sapphira and refers to their testing the omniscience of the Holy Spirit  by thinking they could deceive those He had filled with power and anointed.

Made Jealous (James 4:4,5):Adulterers and adulteresses! Do you not know that friendship with the world is enmity with God? Whoever therefore wants to be a friend of the world makes himself an enemy of God. Or do you think that the Scripture says in vain, "The Spirit who dwells in us yearns jealously"? A difficult verse to translate. Refers to friendship with the world, which is seen as spiritual adultery and makes the Spirit jealous. The world system and the Kingdom are opposites. To love one is to make the other jealous and if we love the world (as in worldliness, not as in John 3:16) we enrage the Holy Spirit. Worldliness is often characteristic of carnal Christians and does great damage to their relationship with God.

Insulted/Outraged/Do Despite Unto (Hebrews 10:29): Refers to someone who turns back from Christianity to Judaism (or to any other religion) and thus says that the work of the Spirit of grace in his or her life was of no value to them. These are apostates.

Devoid Of The Spirit (Jude 1:19): Refers to false teachers who joined into Christian groups and created division leading people away to their own groups. These are probably not even believers to start with.

Resisted (Acts 7:51): Refers to the unbelieving Jews who were stoning Stephen and resisting the clear testimony of the Holy Spirit . Later God said to one of those resistant Jews "Saul, Saul, it must be hard for you to kick against the goads..". This term is not used of believers.

Blasphemed (Matthew 12:31): Is used of those unbelieving Jews who so deeply resisted the Holy Spirit  that they saw the miraculous ministry of Jesus Christ as the work of the Devil and attributed His power to Satan. Again it is never used of Christians.

 

The emotional consequences of sinning against the Holy Spirit  are dire indeed. The more people sin against the Holy Spirit the nastier they become. In the above verses we see them pilfering, murdering lying, fighting and quarreling. As the Holy Spirit is quenched, grieved and resisted His love departs and hatred enters in.

 

How does this come about? A love of worldly things, a growing resentment , anger and malice, a dislike of prophecy and revivals, a little dishonesty with finances here and there and after a while the activity of the Holy Spirit  in the believers life is reduced to a whisper and as they head out the back door of the faith they deliver the final insult by rejecting the value of Jesus whom the Spirit bears witness to.

 

In answer to our question, “What is the relationship between the Holy Spirit and the carnal Christian?” the relationship is one of struggle and pain. The Spirit is grieved, made jealous, quenched and resisted. He seeks to bring the carnal believer to a point of repentance and to cooperation with God. However in the words of the famous Campus Crusade booklet  “How to Be Filled With The Holy Spirit” (which I thoroughly recommend),  “self is on the throne”. The carnal Christian is a “me first” Christian led by their own desires, and seeking their own interests and having their own agenda. Christ may be in their life but He is not being allowed to fully direct their lives. The struggle with the Holy Spirit will only end for them when they abdicate from their throne, and instead decide to place Christ on the throne, obey His commandments and be led by the Spirit not by their own desires. If you think that this may apply to you why don’t you consider praying a prayer somewhat like the following:

“Lord I am sorry that I have put self on the throne and run my life according to my own desires rather than according to Your will. I repent of this and ask that Christ may be on the throne and in the control room of my life, and that I may be ruled by His desires, and by the Holy Spirit. I ask that You may fill me with the Holy Spirit and produce in me a soft and obedient heart. In Jesus name. Amen”.

 

The Low Biblical EQ Of Carnal Christians

The poor control carnal Christians have over their emotional life is due to their lack of co-operation with the Holy Spirit  and can be seen in:

Poor Impulse Control:  G iving in to sexual immorality, drunkenness and even in the disorder of their worship.

Poor Anger Management: Most notably the congregation that James wrote to which were murdering each other (James 4:2) and the Galatians which were "biting and devouring" each other. (Galatians 5:15)

Disintegrating Relationships: Envying, factions, strife and contentions. ( 1 Cor 3:3

Low Levels of Personal Motivation: They are variously described as evil beasts and lazy gluttons (Titus 1:12-14) , neglectful, dull of hearing, and  in danger of drifting.

Instability: Following after "the latest" false teachers particularly if they were good talkers and emotionally persuasive (2 Corinthians 11) and being tossed around by every wind of doctrine.

Lack Of Basic Empathy and Compassion: Such as saying to a person who was without food or shelter "be warm and filled" and not doing anything! Or dishonoring the poor by making them sit in lowly places in church. (James 2).

A Toxic Tongue: Gossip, slander, and the like that proceeds from out of control emotions. (James 3)

A Poisonous Personality: Such people are described as a "root of bitterness that defiles many" or like the emotionally rigid Diotrephes who "like to put himself first" and controlled the church (3 John).

 

The Obvious Conclusion

So we see that our model for biblical EQ predicts accurately the disastrous perceptions, beliefs, actions and reactions of people who are carnal Christians.  We see that the process we have outlined accurately predicts good and holy emotions for those filled with the Spirit and negative and hateful emotions for those who resist and grieve the Spirit. This leads to two conclusions. Firstly, that our model seems to fit the biblical data and probably does describe the process of emotional development and expression. More importantly it leads to the conclusion that the single most important factor in a high biblical EQ is the work of the Holy Spirit  in the life of the co-operating and Spirit-filled believer. Those most full of the Spirit are grand beings of deep emotional authenticity , Christians that grieve the Spirit are emotional wrecks.

 

However believers do not neatly fall into two camps, one with wonderful emotions and the other with sharp, brittle and unstable emotions. That is because we start at different points. Some Spirit-filled believers from emotionally difficult backgrounds may have a lot of learning and growing to do with respect to their emotions, but they are going in the right direction. In time, providing they remain close to God, they will learn and grow and become more Christ-like in their emotions. This seems to have been very much the case with Paul who went from being very abrasive in his early years to very gracious in later life. On the other hand some very worldly and carnal Christians are squandering a wonderful emotional inheritance from a loving Christian family. They seem emotionally together but in time, slowly but surely, emotional disintegration sets in and generally becomes obvious by late middle age.

 

What About Non-Believers?

What does our model say about non-believers? Generally non-believers are neither cooperating with nor resisting the work of the Holy Spirit. Thus the emotional life of non-believers should be normally distributed (that is “on a bell curve”) around a central mean that is less than the emotional mean of Spirit-filled Christians but perhaps not as low as that of truly carnal Christians. Since the Spirit does not indwell unbelievers, the great inner work of the Spirit is not there and the upper reaches of the Christian life are unavailable to them. For instance they are generally not able to love their enemies. While they may be very decent and loving people they will generally not have the tremendous power and life, the "zing" that being like Christ produces. This deep pulsating joy is almost exclusively a work of God in the regenerate believer. Thus our model is not destroyed by the fact of the occasional good non-Christian.

 

It needs to be also said that God has His prevenient and common grace and the Holy Spirit will give some external aid to anyone who seeks to live a good, decent and loving life and encourages Jews, Buddhists, humanists and existentialists alike to be decent human beings. In such people many Christian values will be found in the belief system that undergirds their emotional life. Such people who are seeking good, but have not yet found Christ may well be emotionally together as they are cooperating with God in a stumbling sort of way. However the deep transformational power of the Holy Spirit may well be lacking.

 

The Conclusion So Far

1.       The five step model accurately predicts the emotional state of both saintly Christians and carnal Christians.

2.       Emotional authenticity  is entirely a work of the Holy Spirit  . However it can occur to some extent in non-believers  who seek it as a work of common grace. More commonly it is found in Spirit-filled believers who are walking in holiness.

3.       Emotional functionality and authenticity  come about through the person co-operating with the Holy Spirit  as He forms spiritual perspectives and a Christ-like belief system in the person.

4.       Resisting this work of the Holy Spirit  results in emotional catastrophe.

5.       Emotionally undeveloped Christians who remain close to God can grow into emotionally adept people just as it seems Paul did.

6.       Co-operating with God means not grieving or quenching the Holy Spirit  and being careful to avoid worldliness.

 

Is There A Fast Track To A High Biblical EQ?

Obviously being Spirit-filled and obedient is a great place to start for emotional growth. However Christians can also directly work on their emotions. Information on how to do this has been provided in three ways; firstly God has given His Son to show us what holy and true emotions look like, secondly He has given us the special revelation in the Scriptures and their precise description of the emotional life and the inner man, thirdly He has given His natural revelation to scientists who so assiduously seek the truth about emotional growth. Combining these together we will find out how to directly achieve emotional growth and a high biblical EQ. That takes us to the next section of this book , the section on the inner self which deals with how emotions are formed within us, and what we can do about it.  This section will give us the knowledge and tools we need to work on our perceptions of reality and our belief systems and to renew them and to produce Christ-like outcomes and godly emotions .

 

Discussion Questions

 

1.       What are the emotional consequences for a Christian if they choose not to cooperate with the work of the Holy Spirit ?

 

2.       What are the sins against the Holy Spirit ?

 

3.       What sort of descriptions does the Bible give of carnal Christians e.g. “sluggish”.

 

4. Read the twelve predictions at the start of the chapter. What impression do they make on you? What does it say about why some churches experience problems?

 

5. How important is the Holy Spirit  in developing the emotional life of Christians?

 

6. Why can some non-Christians be in a better emotional state than some Christians? Can emotionally clumsy Christians ever improve?

 

Part Two

 

Our Inner Self

And Our Emotional World

 

(2 Corinthians 4:16 NASB)  Therefore we do not lose heart, but though our outer man is decaying, yet our inner man is being renewed day by day.

 

 

Perception

(2 Corinthians 5:7 NKJV)  For we walk by faith, not by sight.

 

Perception is the first of the five stages of Biblical EQ and by far the most complex, which is why we will spend two whole chapters looking at it. In this chapter we will look at perception as it flows from our stance toward life, our life perspective, how we see things and how we explain the world to ourselves. These perceptions and explanations later become the things out of which we form our beliefs, and out of those beliefs will flow our emotions. In the next chapter we will look at perception at its deepest level, in the human spirit, and how it forms the foundations of and framework for our personality. In logical order that chapter should precede this chapter but I have chosen to put the simple material first and move you to the more difficult as a better teaching strategy. Now read on.

 

How would the people o f Jesus' day seen Jerusalem? A tourist may have just seen a dusty city with a beautiful temple in the middle of it. A trader would have seen an economic opportunity. A priest would have seen the religious community and a chance for prominence in the Temple service. An anxious mother would see it as "the big smoke" where her son had gone to find work. Rome saw it as a trouble spot to be kept under tight control. The disciples at this time saw Jerusalem as a dangerous city with Herod and others intent on killing them (Luke 13:30, John 11:16). Jesus saw Jerusalem  in terms of its long hostility towards messengers of God

 

(Luke 13:34-35 NKJV)  "O Jerusalem, Jerusalem, the one who kills the prophets and stones those who are sent to her! How often I wanted to gather your children together, as a hen gathers her brood under her wings, but you were not willing! {35} "See! Your house is left to you desolate; and assuredly, I say to you, you shall not see Me until the time comes when you say, 'Blessed is He who comes in the name of the LORD!'"O Jerusalem, Jerusalem, the one who kills the prophets and stones those who are sent to her!. 

 

His unique perspective was one that viewed cities in terms of their spiritual responsiveness  and their attitude to the light that they received. Jesus, the apostles  and the prophets all had a unique perspective on people, places and events. They saw things differently and viewed reality in spiritual terms. Instead of the world being a chaotic jumble of almost random events it is a place planned by a sovereign and just God. For Jesus the primary reality was not economic but spiritual - how a person, or even a city relates to God .  Spiritual people see life differently. Spiritual people have deep abiding spiritual perspectives. The perceive reality through an entirely different set of glasses. They see the world “right side up”.

 

When our perceptions about life are wrong soon all else goes wrong. If we perceive life to be utterly random - we will be without hope. If we perceive ourselves to be unlovable - we will live alone in the land. If we perceive others to be hostile when in fact they are friendly - we will needlessly create enemies. In this chapter we shall first look at secular material that explains how our perspective on life is formed. We will also look at some proven secular techniques for fixing common errors and becoming optimistic and functional. Then once we have achieved that we shall then look at how to gain a biblical heavenly perspective and know life and peace.

 

The correct perspective on life can calm fears, break us out of depression, give us peace and stability, bring joy and hope, give us empathy and compassion and give us the ability to plan wisely and well for our future. First we have to understand how our perspective is created, then we can look at how it can be fully redeemed.

 

Explaining Reality To Ourselves

A key element in the creation of our perspective is how we explain reality to ourselves. Bit by bit these explanations become our story about the world and how it came to be and why it is the way it is. Soon we start seeing the world the way we have imagined it to be, through the story we have constructed from our explanations of the world.  The psychologist Martin E. P. Seligman has done much research on people’s "explanatory style " and his book "Learned Optimism " is excellent. Here is my twelve point summary of its basic teachings:

1.      Optimism  and Power-fulness are the opposites of Pessimism and Helpless-ness.

2.      Optimism  and pessimism are learned by experiences in life.

3.       Experiences form beliefs. These beliefs then combine to produce outlooks on life.

4.       The beliefs which we draw from experiences can be well-founded or poorly founded depending on how we explained the experience to ourselves.

5.       We can explain things Perso nally (its always our fault) or Externally (its something outside)

6.       We can explain things Pervasively (its in everything, everywhere) or Specifically (this is just one instance).

7.       We can explain things Permanently (it will always be this way) or Temporarily (its just a glitch).

8.       Personal, Pervasive and Permanent explanatory styles produce self-defeating beliefs and a negative outlook.

9.       The negative outlook is reflected in negative self-talk.

10.   The self-defeating beliefs we have formed can be reasoned with and our thoughts (negative self-talk) can be disputed with or distracted.

11.   Marshalling evidence against self-defeating beliefs and attacking them logically can slowly but surely lead to a more optimistic outlook.

12.   Sometimes you can “externalize” the belief by writing the thought down on paper or talking it over with a friend.

 

Martin Seligman then goes on to show how we can dispute our wrong perspective and learn to be optimistic by writing down our thoughts and looking at them logically and in the light of the three P's - Personal, Pervasive and Permanent. According to Seligman’s research optimists are healthier and have better lives than pessimists. But oddly enough pessimists tend to be more accurate! Pessimists are right in their conclusions but wrong in their living. They are unhappy, unsuccessful and unhealthy. The three key ways pessimists defeat themselves is through their explanatory style  - see points 5-8 above. For instance the way we explain things to ourselves will determine how quickly we recover from minor incidents. If I have an argument with a friend and then think "I am terrible at relationships, I will always have arguments with everyone I meet, I'm just a total loser" then I will be unhappy and I may stay unhappy for a while. On the other hand if after the argument I say "I think I was overtired, I'll get over this and have a better day tomorrow, I don't always blow up at people" then I will be much happier and recover more quickly.

 

Faith Application

Christians have explanatory styles too - that determine their faith level, their happiness and their joy. Explanations can vary from "God is punishing me and will always punish me because I am so wicked" -to "The Devil made me do it.." We have a habitual faith perspective on life - and just like the pessimists in Seligman's research we can be re-educated to a more functional and liberating explanatory style  and faith perspective.  This is a three stage process.

Stage One is acknowledging that our spiritual explanatory style  is in need of major repair.

Stage Two is finding out exactly where it needs to be fixed and

Stage Three is the job of repairing it.

 

Is Your Explanatory Style In Need Of Repair?

Try the following consciousness raising quiz. Its not a  psychological test, just a series of questions to help you become aware of the way you explain events to yourself. It is just a simple diagnostic tool to help you realize what you are thinking so you can fix it. Please be honest.

Answer the following questions by putting the numbers 0 to 4 in the corresponding  boxes as follows:

0 - never think that way

1-      I sometimes think that way

2-      I think that way a fair bit but not often.

3-      I frequently think like that.

4-      You got me! I always think like that.

There are fifty questions in two sections Personal Explanations (20) & Spiritual Explanations (30) and unlike many tests they are deliberately arranged so as to make the patterns obvious so you can see how you are thinking. The areas being examined include the three P's -  permanent, personal and pervasive and a factor called "locus of control" which looks at who or what you see as being in control - yourself, God, other people, luck or the Devil. The theological section also looks at these but adds questions testing our trust in God and our belief in His goodness and our faith in His Word as part of our spiritual explanatory style .

 

Personal Explanations

Permanence

o     After making a mistake I tend to think "this is the end".

o     I feel as if I will never change.

o     If you are a success you stay successful, if you are a failure you are always a loser.

o     Nothing can be done about society - it is bound to go downhill forever.

o     You never recover from bankruptcy.

Locus Of Control

o     I believe you need a lot of luck to succeed in life. Success is mainly random.

o     The world is unpredictable chaotic and confusing so its not worth trying too hard to do anything big. It will probably just be messed up.

o     Other people make me react. My emotions are not under my control.

o     You can't do anything about the Government.

o     If I have a win at anything it was because the other people did not try hard.

Pervasive

o     Evil is everywhere and here to stay. All people and systems are ruined by it.

o     My entire personality is dysfunctional.

o     I am basically bad and if people really got to know me they would despise me or hate me.

o     I am frequently suspicious of other people and their evil motives.

o     All politicians are corrupt.

Personal

o     I find failure depressing because it reflects on who I am.

o     The reason I make mistakes is because I cannot do anything right.

o     When people are late for an appointment and say it was the traffic they are just lying to me. It actually means that I am unimportant to them.

o     When some one fails to return a phone call I think they are rejecting me.

o     If I fail an exam it means that I am stupid.

 

Now add up your score in each section:

Permanence _____    Locus of Control ______    Pervasive ______   Personal ____

Did you notice any patterns emerging? Where were your highest scores?

 

Spiritual Explanations

Permanence

o     My habitual sins are there for life.

o     You can't change the world. It will always be this way.

o     It is easy to sin or mistakenly miss God's will and the results are life-long.

o     I am what God has made me to be and I cannot change.

o     Its all over, I'm washed up, I've totally failed God. This is the end..

Locus of Control

o     Things go wrong because God is not really in charge of my life.

o     Satan is very powerful and in charge of this physical world and much of my circumstances.

o     I must save the world, the job just cannot be done without me.

o     I am not responsible for my actions. The Devil makes me sin.

o     Of course I have to panic in a crisis.  Someone has to do the work and the worrying - namely me!

Pervasive

o     The Universe is totally polluted by sin and cannot be enjoyed.

o     Even my prayers are an abomination to God.

o     My life is riddled with inconsistencies. I am hopeless.

o     All denominations are filled with greedy clergy.

o     Theological error is everywhere.

Personal

o     My failure to memorize bible verses means that I am totally unspiritual.

o     I haven't led anyone to Jesus so my life has been a total failure.

o     Good events happen to good people and bad events happen to bad people. When bad things happen to me it must be my fault.

o     I experience temptation because I am sinful and wicked.

o     The reason my family isn't saved is because I have been a poor witness.

Transcendent Spiritual Focus

o     Emotional security and happiness is almost impossible if I cannot pay the bills.

o     When I talk about blessing I mainly mean something tangible in this life such as a promotion or a new car or a good holiday.

o     For me God's approval of me and the pastor's / Christian community's approval of me is almost identical.

o     I  am easily devastated by criticism at church.

o     It is a long while since I have prayed fervently and truly expected a major answer.

Goodness of God

o     Bad people get all the good things.

o     Prayer is for prayer warriors, average people don't get their prayers answered.

o     My life is miserable and difficult but I must not strive to change it, I must accept it as character-building punishment for my sins.

o     I fear that if I  obey God  to the maximum He will make me a poverty-stricken missionary in outer Uzbekistan (or similar).

o     The safest thing to do as a Christian is not to expect too much from God.

 

Now add up your scores in each section:

Permanence ____    Locus of Control _____    Pervasive _____   Personal______

Transcendent Spiritual Focus ____ Goodness of God ___

Did you notice any patterns emerging? Where were your highest scores?

 

NOTE: This  is NOT a clinical test and should not be used as such or employed as a selection tool. This is a consciousness-raising instrument designed to help individuals become aware of their explanatory style  and to help them surface a few issues regarding it.

 

Interpreting The Results

 If you get 10 or more in any one section then you may have a problem in that area. This does NOT mean that you are crazy or dysfunctional. It does mean that like many people it may be worth your while spending some time looking at that perspective on life and working out what emotions it is bringing to you. Does your perspective cause  you to feel out of control?  Do you have trouble believing in a consistently good God. Just use the results from the test to alert you to areas you may need to work on. Right perspectives and beliefs provide a firm foundation for emotional health.  We will see much more on this in the section on beliefs that follows.

 

A Dose Of Perspective Restorer

When I was in Balimo in the remote Western Province of Papua New Guinea the missionary doctor there Dr. Kath Donovan  used to talk about “taking a dose of perspective restorer ” when things got out of sorts with someone in the mission station. A dose of perspective restorer was often a provocative question or statement that got us to rethink our miseries. In a similar vein here are a few provocative statements and questions that can help you to challenge the dysfunctional perspectives that you have identified as having some influence in your life. I am sure you will quickly get the idea.

 

Challenging Ideas Of  Permanence

·         Are your negative circumstances really permanent or do they just feel permanent?

·         How impossible is impossible? Is anything impossible with God?

·         Haven't you gotten out of difficult situations before? Can't you do it again?

·         Haven't you changed and learned before? Can't you do it again?

·         Hopelessness is never from God. It is a lie and a deception. He is the God of hope.

 

Challenging Ideas Of  Low Locus of Control

·         Is there one single thing you CAN do to change things? .

·         Who is in charge? You, other people, the Devil or God ?

·         Luck is preparation meeting opportunity. Make your luck by preparing your skills and seeking opportunities.

·         The Devil is not in control. Resist the Devil and He will flee. (James 4:7)

·         You are not God - so you don't have to be responsible for everything. However you are you and you do have some responsibilities. Fulfill those and let God handle the rest of the Universe.

 

Challenging Ideas Of  Pervasive Evil

·         You are not totally sinful if you are worried about sinning. Totally sinful people are unconcerned about sinning.

·         Are all politicians corrupt? Was Ghandi corrupt? Was Abraham Lincoln corrupt? Are there really no good churches? Not even one? Is absolutely everyone wrong in their theology?

·         Has the redeeming work of Christ accomplished nothing in 2000 years? Has he not created some good in some corner of the world?

·         Is the Devil so powerful that he can ruin everything? Cannot God preserve some things that are good and beautiful? Cannot one wildflower be excellent in beauty?

·         Cannot God make all things beautiful in their time? (Ecclesiastes 3:11) Can He not make you a wonder and a glory? (Romans 8:28-31)

 

Challenging Ideas That Everything That Goes Wrong Is Your Personal Fault

·         Have you noticed that sometimes you think people are rejecting you when in fact they are just busy or having a bad day? Might you be exaggerating  the degree of rejection ? Maybe its not that bad.

·         Is it really you at fault? Could it just be the circumstances or the other people?

·         When thinking about yourself stop using "absolute" terminology including words such as: must, have to, always, never, and totally. They are rarely true. One mistake does not make you a "total failure".

·         When there is a problem list those factors you can control and also list those factors that you cannot control.  Leave those outside your control to other people or even to God.  Do not feel personally responsible for things you cannot control. Then feel free to responsibly and wisely tackle those things you can do.

·         Cease seeing yourself as being at the center of the Universe with so many things spinning around you. Be content to just be one of God's creatures, a son or daughter with a few assigned tasks to do.

 

Renewing Transcendent Spir itual Focus

·         We walk by faith not by sight. Do not let visible things such as bills and criticism be the only reality.

·         Expect great things from God. Attempt great things for God. (Carey). Read Hebrews 11  & Matthew 6

·         Faith is often "more caught than taught" so hang around people who are full of faith.

·         Have you drifted away from faith? Have you been deeply disappointed with God? Would it help to talk to a good pastor or Christian counselor?

·         Are there genuine concerns about the canon of Scripture, miracles, evolution etc? Get some material and investigate your doubts and find answers to your genuine intellectual questions.

 

 

Believing In The Goodness of God

·         Look at the go odness of God and how He provides for the birds. As a friend of mine says she has "never seen a skinny sparrow". If God is good to sparrows - then how much more good will He do for you!

·         Remember all the Lord has done for you. Make a list of His goodness and remind yourself of the things He has done. Bring to mind His past love of you and remember He never changes! He is faithful!

·         Spend some time in Psalm 23 and Romans 8. Sing hymns, put on Christian music.

·         Examine your background for things like deprivation, cruelty and disappointment . Are you projecting your experiences - particularly of your father/parents onto God? Try and separate the two so that you can see God for all He truly is in His constant lovingkindness and faithfulness. Stand against those lurking feelings from your past and rebuke them in the name of Jesus. Maybe even seek counseling.

·         Move self off center stage. Sometimes we doubt God's goodness because we are demanding a certain thing - a partner, wealth, the return of a divorced spouse etc. and He has not answered us yet and we are furious that God is not meeting our agenda in our time. The goodness of God is bigger than His meeting a single important demand of yours. Your focus is too narrow. While you wait for your answer to prayer notice how He sends you beautiful days and good friends and daily bread. Cultivate thankfulness for what you do have instead of focusing on what you do not have.

 

Coming Up With Your Own Bottle of Perspective Restorer

Cognitive therapists have come up with a general process for giving yourself a dose of perspective restorer . Cognitive therapists believe that underneath our difficult emotions are thoughts that fuel those emotions. With every painful incident there is a thought that makes it painful and which keeps the pain ongoing such as “I’ll never get over this, my life is ruined forever”. When those thoughts are corrected the emotions lose their power and can be brought under control. People vary greatly in their underlying thoughts. That is why one person can just laugh something off and another takes it to heart. Underneath person A is the thought 'Oh that was nothing…", underneath person B is the thought "that's so unjust, unfair and horrible..". . Our thoughts are under our control and as we change them we can also change the emotions that they produce. For instance if you change your thoughts from “I’ll never get over this” to “One day I’ll be able to look back on this and laugh” then you create optimism and give power to your life. Most of the statements that hurt us most are simply not true. In fact if we take a hard look at them they are nearly always illogical.  Self-talk such as “Everybody hates me” is generally not true at all. Its painful, its untrue and it needs to be challenged. Your perspective is your thought on the situation and like any thought you can change it. As you change it you change the emotions that result. So you can heal yourself of many painful emotions just by working out a more truthful, balanced and biblical perspective on life. How can we do this? The five step process below is summarized from "Feeling Good- A New Mood Therapy" by David. M. Burns.

 

1.       Find a recent incident that caused you some emotional discomfort.

2.       Look at the feeling - name and write down the feeling.

3.       Try to find the underlying thought that produced that feeling e.g. "I am always stupid".

4.       Dispute the thought with facts, Scripture, logic and common sense until you come up with a more functional perspective on the event.

5.      Write down the new feeling that comes with the new explanation.

 

Lets apply this process to a common Christian situation - rejection  at the door of the church:

Incident: Rob goes to shake the hand of the pastor after church but the pastor abruptly turns away because he has just caught sight of the church treasurer who wants a check signed. The pastor gives one of those insincere "fake smiles" as he does so. Rob feels discounted and hurt and is depressed and angry. However Rob realizes he may be over-reacting and thinks maybe a dose of perspective restorer  is needed so he gets out his spiritual journal and starts scribbling…

Name The Feeling: Rob writes in his journal - "I feel rejected, hurt, discounted, yes that's the word discounted - like I didn't count, like I don't matter and I have been at that church for five years!"

Find The Underlying Thought: He deliberately discounted me and despite the fact that I have been at that church for five years I was treated like a nobody.

Dispute The Thought: Yes it was inconsiderate and fake but it wasn't that bad. Most of the time he is polite to me and I need not take things so personally. It was a mistake by him but it doesn’t make me valueless or unimportant. I am important whether or not the pastor pays attention to me. God thinks I am important enough to love, save and die for - that's enough for me. I'll go back and try again next week.

Write Down The New Feeling: I feel much more calm and balanced and I am surprised that I reacted so much! Boy can I be over-sensitive sometimes. Glad I gave myself a dose of perspective restorer ! I will try again next week.

 

Well that's about as far as the best secular approaches can take us. Cognitive psychotherapy like the work of Beck, Seligman, Burns,  Ellis and many others is very good and is generally quite compatible with a biblical approach. It offers real relief from emotional pain however it only "goes so far".  It cannot open our eyes to spiritual realities nor can it produce the sudden whole-of -person perspective changes that the Holy Spirit  and Scripture can. To go deeper still in changing our perspective we must turn to that which is uniquely spiritual and biblical.

 

The Perspective Of Your Soul

There are three “places” in the inner man that can have a perspective on life. Firstly there is the mind, the rational part of us, that we have just discussed and which can be addressed logically. Secondly there is the perspective of the spirit, how we perceive life in and with the spirit and how prophets see the world. That will be discussed in the next chapter. Thirdly there is the soul. The soul is the place of life and joy and personhood and subjective judgments and valuations. Our soul quickened by the spirit is what makes us a living being. The soul is also a  place of unruly and temporary emotions of daily frustrations, of falling in love, of the joy of a good meal or a wonderful sunset, the smile at a catchy tune, the sentiments at a movie. It can be a place of tempestuous emotional storms that need to be stilled. The soul can be up one minute and down the next. [In contrast the spirit is a place of grand and timeless emotions, of great joys and piercing sorrows. We shall discuss this in the next chapter.] 

Bringing the stormy world of the soul under control is one of the great tasks of the Christian life and results in what the Bible calls peace. Peace is when the soul is in the state that God wants it to be in. Peace can be brought to the soul, which is subjective, through things such as a sunset or music of which William Congreve said “Music has charms to sooth t