Bring Him All Your Emotions

Copyright © 2021 J. Matthew Nance.

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ISBN: 978-1-6642-1575-7 (sc)

ISBN: 978-1-6642-1574-0 (hc)

ISBN: 978-1-6642-1576-4 (e)

Library of Congress Control Number: 2020924432

WestBow Press rev. date: 01/06/2021

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TABLE OF CONTENTS

FEELING ALIVE!

FEELING BALANCED

FEELING SMALL

FEELING HOPELESS

FEELING GOOD

FEELING SAD

FEELING BULLIED

FEELING LOVED

FEELING GREEDY

FEELING DEPRESSED

FEELING EXULTANT

FEELING ENVY

FEELING SHAME

FEELING BLESSED

FOREWORD

There are times in life when you wish that your pastor would drop by for coffee and a long conversation about what you really feel. The isolation, joy, depression, hatred, and frustration of life may leave you wondering if God is in the middle of your emotion or if He is simply a spectator of your soul.

Through Bring Him All Your Emotions, you will enter a personal journey through scripture and your own heart. Pastor Nance takes on real heart issues with understanding and compassion. You will find yourself getting a sense of direction, taking first steps, acknowledging issues you didn’t realize you had, and arriving at new and refreshing emotional destinations.

If you take to heart the truths shared in this book, you will have no doubt that God cares for your emotional well-being. Bring Him All Your Emotions will cause you to celebrate how deeply God cares about every precious moment of this life He created for you.

James Lankford

US senator

You have turned my mourning

into joyful dancing.

You have taken away my

clothes of mourning

and clothed me with joy.

Psalm 30:11

Pour out your heart to Him.

Psalm 62:8

FEELING ALIVE!

Are we living by concepts that keep us from really living?

God doesn’t have emotion. Says who?

God doesn’t want us to be emotional. Really?

Pouring out deep agony in cries before God doesn’t give Him the dignity worship requires. Is that what you think or what God says?

The Creator spun this world into existence and now it’s up to us, with some help now and then from some higher power. Is God nothing more than an impersonal being somewhere out there?

Getting excited about a football game is good but getting excited about God in worship is just weird. Is worship of God supposed to be stoic because the expression of feelings in worship is irreverent?

Wherever these thoughts came from, it’s high time we challenged them with the truth of scripture.

Does God feel emotions or is He cold and mechanical? Is God personal or is He a mere cosmic force? Is He expressive, or is He more like a zombie? Since we are created in His image, the answers to these questions are of great importance. If God is unemotional, then our lives should be emotionally bland. Our existence should vary little from other animals, and we should expect each other to be basically like the walking dead.

So, what is the truth about God’s expressiveness? Look at His creation. The Lord created an amazing variety of life and colors. Do you think the God who created such a dazzling array of lights and colors wants us to exist in shades of gray? God is creatively and emotionally expressive. He wants us to be emotionally alive, especially in relation to Him. Consider the following:

God delights.

What makes God happy? Of course, His creation makes him happy. He made the world and was pleased to announce His creation as good. However, there is something that makes Him even happier. When He created man and woman, He pronounced humans as very good. His greatest delight is people. What is it that makes God happy? We do! God delights in you! Say aloud what the psalmist said:

He delights in me.

—Psalm 18:19

When God sees us trapped in self-destructive behavior, He reaches out to rescue us because He delights in us. God delights in us so much that He personally came to this earth to rescue us. The Lord is upset when sin keeps us from becoming what He created us to be. Through the cross of Christ, He rescues us from sin, and then He delights in us. Repeat after me:

Great is the Lord, who delights in

blessing his servant with peace.

—Psalm 35:27

What makes God happy? Blessing you! Are you His servant? God delights in blessing you! As you wholeheartedly serve Him, He gives you a sense of wholeness from the inside out. He makes you complete and at peace with yourself. Blessing you in this way delights Him.

God is often happy. He is normally filled with delight and is expressive in letting His joy be known. Jesus loved to be at parties. God is anything but a party pooper. If you create a tight bond with God, you will be spending much of your time celebrating. The future kingdom will be an eternal party. You could spend an entire lifetime basking in God’s delight and still not soak it all in. That’s why He put eternity in our hearts and in His plan for us.

God is sometimes sad.

You keep track of all my sorrows.

You have collected all my tears in your bottle.

You have recorded each one in your book.

—Psalm 56:8

God knows sorrow. He knows your sorrow. There is not a single tear you have shed that goes unnoticed by God. When you are sad, He is sad with you. He whispers to you through His own tears, telling you that when your heart hurts, He hurts. The Lord is acquainted with grief. Yes, Jesus wept.

God is sometimes angry.

God is holy, just, and must punish sin. He has a holy hatred of the sin that fragments and destroys the lives of humans. However, His anger is toward the sin, not the sinner. Once the sinner has turned away from the sin, the anger is gone, and in its place is God’s smile.

For his anger lasts only a moment,

But his favor lasts a lifetime.

—Psalm 30:5

When a person comes to the cross of Christ, genuinely contrite over having lived for self, and turns from sin to ask forgiveness, a transaction occurs. Christ makes the person a new creation! The person moves from a sentence of God’s judgment to the seat of God’s grace. The Lord permanently forgives and accepts that person and sees him or her just as He sees His own son—Jesus. The person moves from being under God’s judgment to being under God’s grace.

A good parent expresses displeasure over the wrong done by a child and then expresses favor when the child does right. The heavenly Father also expresses anger and favor in appropriate ways to guide His children.

God is gentle and caring.

The Lord is compassionate and merciful,

Slow to get angry and filled with unfailing love …

he does not deal harshly with us, as we deserve.

—Psalm 103:8

God expresses the whole realm of emotions from joy to sadness, from anger to tenderness. He cares deeply about us and shows His emotions to us. With some people, you must guess what they are feeling but not with God; He fully expresses Himself.

God loves. He shows His love. God loves us so much that He showed His love by becoming one of us. He lived on earth for thirty-three years. During those years, He poured out all His emotions for our sakes. Since that time, He has continued to show us His tender heart of compassion.

How does He do so? Did you feel the warmth of the sun today? Did you breathe air? Did you experience family and friendship? Did you have food to eat? Did your body have energy? These, and many other ways, demonstrate that God cares for us daily. Even though you and I have not given Him the admiration He deserves, He still faithfully loves us each day. We tend to be calculated and stingy with expressions of care while God pours it on in abundance. He is so much more expressive with His care than we are.

God made us to be emotional like Him.

God delights. God is sometimes sad and sometimes angry. God is gentle and caring. The Lord is emotional, and He freely expresses His emotions.

Few people have freedom to fully express themselves. Have you lost the intensity of your emotions? Have you lost part of what it means to be created in God’s image? God wants to restore your soul. He wants to reinvigorate your capacity to feel. He longs to give you the ability and freedom to fully convey your feelings. When deep emotions are shared and understood, life becomes fuller and richer.

I dare you to celebrate when there is something to celebrate. Laugh more. Grieve when you need to grieve. Be angry when you need to be angry. Don’t calculate the risk of getting involved. Take the risk, and care the way you should care about others. Be tender and gentle like He is. Be vibrantly alive with emotions! We are made in His image. Be like God and express yourself.

Maybe you become uncomfortable when other people become emotional because you have trouble sharing your own emotions. You might be jealous of people who can express themselves fully and wish you could give yourself such freedom. What should you do to overcome emotional constipation?

The book of Psalms is like a laxative that frees up our pent-up emotions. As you work through these chapters, find a few trusted friends, and start opening up with them. The chapter discussion questions will help you do so. Keep releasing your emotions, and eventually it will become a way of life for you, as it should. We were not made to be robots.

God wants us to share our emotions with Him.

Have you ever worked up the courage to share your feelings with someone, only to discover he or she just doesn’t care? That will never happen when you bring your emotions to the Lord. It’s good to share with trusted friends, but it’s even better to share your heart with the Lord. He always genuinely cares about what we are feeling, so bring Him all your emotions!

Ever notice that some friends can be happy with you but not understand your sadness? Other friends can’t seem to laugh with you but are more than willing to share your tears. As the Creator of all human emotions, the Father God is fully ready and waiting to care about every single thing you feel. So, bring Him all your emotions.

When you’re feeling good, He wants to celebrate with you. Whether you are feeling bullied or blessed, tell Him. Depressed? Take it to the One who can comfort like no other. Feeling envious? Overcome with greed? Been put to shame? God is especially good at helping us work through such negative emotions.

Pour out your heart to Him.

—Psalm 62:8

Need an example? A man we will call