I am not a very emotional person. Well, that’s a lie….we’re all emotional people, we just express emotions differently. I’m not a person that is very outwardly expressive with my emotions. I don’t process them in the typical feminine way- I don’t cry much, and I hate just sitting around to talk about “how I feel.” Gross.
However, I think it would be in poor judgment to deny that I have feelings and emotions. I often want to go against the typical female persona by asserting my lack of emotional response and hatred of all things pink and chick-flicky. But that does a huge disservice to femininity. My womanhood is defined by Christ, not culture. So I need to not only admit that I have emotions, but also strive to redeem them.
As I began to strive to redeem my emotions and reactions, one question kept coming to mind: What does that look like?
Good question, right?
First, it means that my attitude, my hormones, my moodiness, my “bad days”: those don’t get to determine my behavior and thought pattern for the day. I must fight to take every thought captive to the glory of God- that includes thoughts about others, thoughts about myself, and my thoughts about God. I must know the God of the Bible, not the God of my perception. I also must particularly fight against the enemy’s lies and idols.
It also means that my thoughts and affections should be influenced by one thing, and one thing only: Christ. He should be the only thing that gets to impact my thoughts, moods, emotions, and behaviors. Not friends, not work, not relationships, not boys, not girls, not children, not my situation. Just Christ.
This opens me up to a whole new realm of emotional response. My heart becomes broken over different things. When I truly begin to place Christ at the center, I am less focused on my own will and more in tune with His. I am less concerned about glorifying myself, and more concerned about glorifying Him.
This means that my heartbreak is not over a silly boy and whether or not he pays attention to me that day, or if he thinks I’m pretty. “Charm is fleeting and beauty is deceptive, but a woman who fears the Lord is to be praised” (Proverbs 31).
You know what will begin to break my heart instead? The same thing that grieves the Lord’s heart.
The lost.
The broken.
The needy.
I begin to experience the truth of Romans 8:22-25: “For we know that the whole creation has been groaning together in the pains of childbirth until now. And not only the creation, but we ourselves, who have the first-fruits of the Spirit, groan inwardly as we wait eagerly for adoption as sons, the redemption of our bodies. For in this hope we were saved. Now hope that is seen is not hope. For who hopes for what he sees? But if we hope for what we do not see, we wait for it with patience”
When was the last time you missed Jesus. Like, REALLY missed Him? I get to spend time with Him, talk with Him, but there’s some days where I see how easily my sin entangles me, and I just yearn to be with Him. I hate the separation! It feels like a long distance relationship some days. I long for the day when He comes back to get us. It’s one of the divine tensions about living in the “already, but not yet.”
So we wait, and we hope, and we boldly preach and share the Gospel. And you know what happens in this process? My heart begins to change. My emotional expression begins to change. As my affection for Christ consumes my thoughts and feelings, He begins to move me in new and scary ways.
I hate crying. Like, really hate it. But I have cried more in the past year than ever before because the Lord has burdened me with a heart for the lost…and also because some days I just miss Jesus! It sucks not being with Him, and some days I feel the weight of that more heavily than others. Seems a little silly saying that; but at the same time, I’m glad that the Lord would let me empathize with Him in this way.
He has a heart for the lost. He has a yearning to be with us and draw us near to Him. As I dwell on those aspects of God’s emotions, it begins to move my heart and create a response in me that I know doesn’t come from myself. But it also makes His Word come alive, and allows me to feel the weight behind His words. I begin to empathize with Him as I feel the tension in my desire for everyone to know the Lord versus my desire to go and be with Him as soon as possible. But the Lord is patient. And He is gracious enough to allow me to experience even a shadow of His heart.
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