Hoping Through Hurt: 5 Days of Biblical Counsel for the HolidaysSample

Managing Your Emotions

Emotions are a powerful part of our lives. But do we have to be controlled by them? You can learn to identify and understand your emotions, turn to God for help and hope, and even make your emotions work for you instead of against you. It starts by understanding how God made you and your emotions.

Emotions Are Part of God’s Good Creation

Feelings are a “very good” part of who we were created to be (Gn 1:31). We experience emotions because God does and we were created in his image. God grieves, rejoices, weeps, exults, is angry, and loves (see Gn 6:6; Is 62:5; 63:9; Jr 31:20; Hs 11:1–8; Eph 4:30).

The capacity to experience “negative” emotions is also part of God’s good creation. Without “a helper corresponding to” Adam (Gn 2:20), God declared it was “not good” (Gn 2:18), suggesting that some negative emotion was involved. But sadness didn’t turn to depression, loneliness to despair, or frustration to rage. God created Eve, to whom Adam emotionally responded, “Wow, she’s like me!” It seems reasonable that prior to the fall, “negative” emotions were simply the catalyst that produced more brilliant positive emotions.

Broken by Sin

After sin entered the world, feelings became twisted and warped. Before the fall, Adam and Eve knew nothing of shame, grief, depression, anger, fear, or discouragement as we experience them today -- the instruments or results of sin. Now, sadly, we sometimes almost wish we could go through life numb to avoid the wretchedness bad emotions produce.

If Not Feelings, Then What?

When Jesus prayed in the garden before his arrest, he was “deeply distressed and troubled” (Mk 14:33). Soon after that, he was arrested, tortured, mocked, insulted, lied about, and unjustly sentenced to death.

So, what is the example Christ left for us to follow, as expressed in 1Pt 2:21–25? He trusted his Father to set things right and lived to please his Father. This was the pattern of Jesus’s ministry from the beginning.

Jesus could live by truth because he lived in complete dependence on the Author of truth. Similarly, we can do nothing without Jesus’s help (Jn 15:5). Jesus clings to the Father; we cling to Jesus. When feelings seem ready to overwhelm us, we can receive his grace to help us live as he lived (2Co 10:6).