Experiencing emotions are part of the human experience. God gave us emotions so there is nothing inherently bad about emotions. In fact, a lot of the memories I have were when I was experiencing certain emotions. Whether that emotion was elation, or sadness, or joy, or anger, or pain–emotional times are the times I remember the most.

Think about that–if you took just a minute to think back on your life, I’m guessing you can remember 5 emotional times you had in your life. Most of the biggest moments in our lives are accompanied with strong emotions.

However, even though emotions themselves are good things that help us deal with reality in a given moment, many times emotions can be a hindrance to our spiritual walk.

As opposed to the strong emotions I described earlier, I am talking about the rather mundane emotions that we experience throughout the day. Emotions can be an excuse to not do what God would have us do at times. Many times, our feelings we have prevent us from becoming the men and women Christ wants us to become.

Ken Boa said it best, “We must be weened of our dependence on feelings and press on to purity of intention and will even when positive sensations are absent.” I think what he is talking about is having discipline in our lives. We need to have discipline to do what is right as opposed to what makes us feel good. And as Boa said, we have to do what’s right even when it doesn’t make us feel good.

I know this is not a real popular thing in American culture right now. What’s “cool” and “in” is to just do and say whatever makes you feel good. Just check out social media. People do and say so many “happy” things. When you read Facebook, you would think sometimes that everybody’s lives are just one big, wonderful post!

I can’t remember who said this recently–but someone I was listening to challenged the listeners to do something fun and meaningful with or for someone and then DON’T post it on social media! Just do it because it is the right thing to do and God calls us to invest in others.

So, I will pass that challenge on to you for this week. Let’s all do something good for someone else (even if we don’t feel like it) and then don’t post it anywhere! Just do it because you are being obedient to Christ!

More to come…
Jeremy