Ministries:
Adult | Teens | Children

Pastor's Pen's:
2008 | 2007 | 2006 | 2005 | 2004 | 2003 | 2002 | 2001

Sermon Series:
Following Jesus
Earthly Cross
His Name Is
Apostles Creed
Dealing with Feelings
Jonah
Get Real
Promised Land Living

Grace Church
257 Kendall Street
Burlington, WI 53105

(262) 763-3021

Email:
Pastor Scott Carson

Secretary Patti Hall

PASTOR'S PENS 2003

Grace Church of Burlington February 16, 2003 “Some people carry their hearts in their heads; very many carry their heads in their hearts. The difficulty is to keep them apart, and yet both actively working together.”    Samuel Taylor Coleridge             Emotions – they surface at the strangest times. All of us have them. There is no use in denying that fact. We are all emotional to some degree. Try as we might, unlike Mr. Spock of Star Trek fame, there are many times when we struggle to control our emotions. There are times when our feelings take charge and afterward we are left with regret. We have feelings because God created us that way, creating us in His own image.             Often we forget that we are like our Designer. Our God is an emotional Being and has feelings. In Deuteronomy 32:21, God is speaking of His relationship to Israel and says, “They made me jealous by what is no god and angered me with their worthless idols.” God has feelings too. There are times when He is made angry and feels jealous. On other occasions He feels compassion and love. Matthew 9:36 speaks of Jesus’ love when it says, “When He [Jesus] saw the crowds, He had compassion on them, because they were harassed and helpless, like sheep without a shepherd.” God has emotions and so do we. We experience joy, excitement, compassion, love, anticipation, loneliness, fear, confusion, sadness, despair, anger, and even hatred. We can be both mad and glad. We are emotional beings.             The difficulty materializes when we have negative emotions and yet do not know how to deal with them. Or, worse they control or contaminate our lives. Dealing with negative feelings is often difficult. They do not always cooperate with us and sometimes our feelings are all out of whack. Often we consider our emotions as a bother, a hindrance to a well-balanced and fulfilled life.             If Scripture and Christianity are not practical, if they do not touch us where we live, they are useless. The writers of Scripture were convinced that being a believer makes a profound difference in the way that we live, though they did not expect it to be easy. They frequently made urgent pleas to stand fast, to persevere, to endure and to keep going.             Many people, though, even in the church, are emotional hostages.  Some people are confined and constrained by their fear of the intensity of such emotions as  inadequacy, sadness,  hurt, depression and anger.  For them, emotions are like land mines; they tiptoe through life trying to avoid dangerous feelings. At the first hint that a strong emotional response is on the horizon, they flee like a scared rabbit. They also avoid situations that appear to be emotionally highly charged, such as a heated argument with a loved one, visiting an acquaintance who is suffering from cancer, or spending time with a friend who is depressed. In order to spare themselves the trauma of uncomfortable emotions, they may refrain from reaching out to others. Often, they steer clear of professional challenges. This way they can avoid tripping over unpleasant surprises, such as feelings of inadequacy.             But the price is high. As a ransom, these individuals avoid huge areas of life in the way that some people avoid seeing scary movies. And they are too successful, they succeed at not having any bad emotions triggered but they also keep themselves from experiencing much of what is worthwhile and the fulfilled life that God intends for them.             God does not want us to be held hostage by our emotions. Today we are beginning a new series: Dealing with Feelings. God has designed us. He made us emotional creatures. The solutions for our emotional issues are in His Word.                I hope that you’ll join us each week as we consider various emotional issues. I hope too that you’ll invite a friend who might be struggling with these same issues to be your special guest.