Emotions

Mirrors of the Heart

Catherine Haddow

• Publisher: 10Publishing
• Year: 2017
• Print ISBN: 9781911272946
• eBook ISBN: 9781911272946

This is the eBook version of Emotions, the eBook can be downloaded onto a number of different devices including, Mac, PC, Kindle, etc. A help document can be found here explaining how to access your files.This eBook is available FREE with a purchase of the physical version of Emotions, click here to buy.

Our emotions are powerful. We experience them so tangibly that they can often feel all-consuming. At one time or another, we will all have experienced what Catherine Haddow calls 'tears, fears and sneers' — those darker, harder emotions. We often don't know what to do with them. Sometimes we feel helplessly controlled by them, unable to see anything other than the emotion. At other times, we try and hide them from others and from God. In this book, you'll see that our emotions are vitally important as they are 'spiritual smoke alarms' that can alert us to the state of our heart. Catherine presents her own 'tbH' model which, when followed, helps us to understand our thoughts, emotions and behaviours in more detail, each providing vital information about the compelling desires, flowing from our hearts. She then helps us to apply biblical wisdom to where we're struggling, inviting God to change and transform us from the heart of the emotion — the core of our being.

'The heart matters. It's the fountain of our personality from which everything flows. The deeply-embedded attitudes of our hearts are the key to wisdom, godly character and healthy living – or otherwise. Illustrated from her own experience and a number of case studies, Catherine offers us a sure-footed guide through the minefield of our own fallen and fickle feelings. Her sanctified version of CBT offers us a way of both understanding and managing them. We don't need to fear our emotions; they are God-given indicators to what's going on in our hearts. Best of all, he is at work in them and through them to make us more like Jesus. A good read for everyone involved in helping others to walk with him. That should be all of us, then!' Richard Underwood, Pastoral Ministries Director, FIEC 'It sometimes feels like the 'noise' of our emotions can drown out any rational thought about why we are reacting as we do. Emotions, Mirrors of the Heart gives a handy model to help us to get to the heart of why we feel the way we do and apply the Bible's truth there. I can see myself keeping these ideas in my back pocket for conversations with strugglers, including myself.' Agnes Brough, Associate minister for Women and Young People, The Tron Church, Glasgow

Emotions as mirrors of the heart

The heart is deceitful above all things and beyond cure. Who can understand it?

Jeremiah 17:9

‘Emotions are poor leaders, but good mirrors of the heart’ – these were words preached in a sermon at my home church a few years ago and they made a profound impact on me. We live in a postmodern culture that is dominated by the pursuit of emotions, and their unique meaning for the individual experiencing them. But a biblical worldview of absolute truths turns postmodernism entirely on its head, as we will explore in this chapter.

We have deceptive hearts

The idea that emotions are poor at leading us but good at showing us our hearts cuts straight to the chase of the battle of the Christian life. Our emotions and heart can deceive us – they tell us what we want, which is not necessarily right or the truth, and encourage us to selfishly pursue our own agenda. Yet in motivating us in all that we do – for everything flows from our heart – they also highlight the essence of our sin. This shows us just how watchful we need to be of our emotions.

Jesus knows our hearts

Let’s briefly look at how Jesus shows this to us. Mark 10:18–27 tells us the well-known story of the rich young man who asks Jesus how he can ‘inherit eternal life’ (v. 17). The young man has not grasped that eternal life is a gift from God rather than something he can inherit through works. He is confident in his salvation because he believes that he has kept God’s commands perfectly from his youth. Jesus’ reply that the young man should sell everything he owns and give it to the poor cuts straight to the heart of the problem and shows the rich man that he idolises money. The rich man, faced with the prospect of losing all that is dear to him, goes away ‘sad’ (v. 22). His heart idol – his love of money and all that it enables him to acquire – creates a powerful emotional attachment to all his worldly goods. When Jesus threatens his idol, he experiences extreme emotional discomfort. As Jesus comments to his disciples, ‘Children, how hard it is to enter the kingdom of God! It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for someone who is rich to enter the kingdom of God’ (vv. 24–25).

The rich man’s overt struggle to follow the second greatest command, ‘Love your neighbour as yourself’ (Mark 12:31), is revealed by his reluctance to give to the poor in the horizontal relational plane – that is to express his love to his fellow human beings. Moreover, this in turn clearly indicates his bigger covert struggle: to follow the most important command, ‘Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength’ (Mark 12:30). He is failing to love, on the vertical relational plane, the Lord his God. The question the rich man must face is who is he going to worship – God or his money?

What are our hearts saying?

We need to face up to similar questions about our own idols too. Though our specific heart desires may be different from the rich young man, the emotions we feel and their associated outward behaviours are a language which communicate so much about the ‘real us’ and about what is truly going on in our hearts. Like the young man, we have the same choice to make about who we are going to worship. We need to decide if we are going to do things our way or God’s way. The strong emotions we experience are in fact almost always a form of ‘spiritual smoke alarm’ going off. In the case of the difficult emotions this book considers, the alarm tells us that deep down, at a heart level, something needs addressing. Our daily interactions with others – on what could be termed the horizontal level – are a reflection of our vertical relationship with God. Our emotions are revealing something about our hearts, the ‘real us’, the ‘us’ that only God truly knows and what he most wants to change.

We are image bearers

However, I wouldn’t want you to go away from reading this book thinking that emotions are bad. These are God-given, and to experience a full array of emotions is to be human and made in the image of God. The stoical attitude of an unemotional ‘stiff upper lip’ is not supported by Scripture. The Bible is full of individuals experiencing a vibrant array of emotions, both good and bad. The psalms reveal the phenomenal impact and depth of love, joy, contentment, pain, betrayal, compassion, grief, indignation, sorrow, fear, peace and thankfulness. Even experiencing some of the very difficult emotions listed here is not necessarily ‘wrong’.

The key issue is that there is either a godly or a sinful way to manage our emotions. Emotions of all kinds can be good and biblical in energising us and driving us forward, but they can also lead us unhelpfully astray.

What exactly is an emotion?

It’s perhaps useful at this point to clarify exactly what an emotion is. It’s an elusive word that we hear a lot in everyday speech. When we get into discussions about emotions and feelings we can get tied in knots. Emotions are complicated as they are rarely felt in isolation. The boundaries between them are very blurred, for example someone displaying anger may actually also be very frightened. Also, our emotions are often something we find very hard to express verbally. So, to make sure we’re all ‘singing from the same hymn sheet’, here’s a couple of definitions for you:

A dictionary definition would describe emotions as a conscious mental reaction, subjectively experienced as a strong feeling, usually directed towards a specific object and typically accompanied by physiological and behavioural changes.

However, the Bible understands emotions as so much more than this. Our emotions reflect our image-bearing status of God, who experiences perfect emotions. Through the lens of Scripture, emotions are a language which force us – and others – to pay attention and respond. They provide invaluable communication about our inner selves and our true desires. And these desires are determined by the loyalties of our heart. Yet that language is sometimes very complicated for others and ourselves to decipher: our emotions are intertwined. They also communicate at two levels: on the horizontal about others, and on the vertical about God.

For the purpose of this book I will be using the terms ‘emotion’ and ‘feeling’ interchangeably.

Are our feelings reliable?

The answer to this is a resounding ‘no’: we cannot always trust our feelings. As a psychologist, I work with many people experiencing the grip of difficult emotions. I see first-hand the deep brokenness so many carry around as a result of being led and ruled by emotions. The weight and burden of suffering these feelings can so easily pull us away from our walk on the narrow road as we try to follow Jesus. For example, we see it in the:

• Teenage Christian girl who is sleeping with her boyfriend because they both prayed about it and they felt peaceful about it

• Young man who has left his third job in six months to head to Australia to be a pilot because he believes that God told him to do so and it feels right

• Young mum who hates herself because all she wants to do is shout at her children and doesn’t feel they are a blessing from God

• Lady who can no longer read her Facebook page because she feels so worthless compared to everyone else’s amazing lives

• Christians who are committing adultery because they feel God has fulfilled emotional needs through it that weren’t met in their marriages

• Dear elderly man in his twilight years who doubts his salvation and where he will spend eternity because he feels low and has no joy

We can summarise the problem with following our feelings as follows:

We are so easily led to believe that how we feel explains the reality of a situation. We believe that because we feel bad, the situation must be bad. Conversely, we feel good and therefore we conclude that the situation must be good. But the reality is that because of the Fall, we think the wrong things, we do the wrong things, we desire the wrong things and we also feel the wrong things.

A biblical worldview

As the summary above highlights, it is instead vital to look at our emotions through the framework of a biblical worldview – that is, through the lens of God’s perfect creation, humankind’s Fall and our redemption.

Creation

In Genesis 1 we see God creating a perfect world at the beginning of time and then two human beings to inhabit it. Genesis 1:27 says, ‘So God created mankind in his own image, in the image of God he created them; male and female he created them.’ Genesis 1:31 concludes, ‘God saw all that he had made, and it was very good.’ God created a perfect world and in Genesis 2 we view Adam and Eve living in perfect harmony with themselves, with each other and with God. How wonderful! We clearly see here a life free from doubts or fear and of perfect contentment with and acceptance of themselves and each other. It is also a life of direct communication and intimate relationship with God. Furthermore, in this world there is no death, no suffering (physical or emotional) or unhappiness, and no sin.

The Fall

Sadly, we know what happens next. God had given Adam and Eve the freedom to eat from all but one tree in the Garden of Eden (Genesis 2:16–17). Yet Eve took the forbidden fruit and ate it. Then she gave some to her husband and he ate it too. As Genesis 3:6–12 tells us:

When the woman saw that the fruit of the tree was good for food and pleasing to the eye, and also desirable for gaining wisdom, she took some and ate it. She also gave some to her husband, who was with her, and he ate it. Then the eyes of both of them were opened, and they realised they were naked; so they sewed fig leaves together and made coverings for themselves.

Then the man and his wife heard the sound of the LORD God as he was walking in the garden in the cool of the day, and they hid from the LORD God among the trees of the garden. But the LORD God called to the man, ‘Where are you?’

He answered, ‘I heard you in the garden, and I was afraid because I was naked; so I hid.’

And he said, ‘Who told you that you were naked? Have you eaten from the tree from which I commanded you not to eat?’

The man said, ‘The woman you put here with me – she gave me some fruit from the tree, and I ate it.’

Then the LORD God said to the woman, ‘What is this you have done?’ The woman said, ‘The snake deceived me, and I ate.’

Notice how following Eve’s and then Adam’s disobedience – the Fall – their perfect acceptance and belonging is immediately gone. Sin has entered the world, and the rest of Genesis 3 spells out that the consequence of this is death. Yet even now their life that had once been very good is replaced with physical and emotional suffering. The first indications of emotional discomfort are the shame Adam and Eve feel as their perceived weaknesses or defects in themselves are revealed publicly (v. 7). As a result their behaviour changes and they hide from God rather than talking with him (v. 8). Further discord arrives in the form of blame and guilt (vv. 11–13).

Of course, we too are fallen and therefore are sinful and fallible – in our thoughts, behaviour, desires and our emotions.

Redemption

However, although we are fallen, the wonderful news is that Jesus has come to save us, and free us from the guilt of sin. We have been rescued because Jesus, the perfect, sinless one, died on the cross and took the punishment for our sins – and not just our sins, but the sins of the whole world (1 John 2:2). Through his sacrificial death, we are free to live a new life through him and for him. The apostle Paul, addressing the church at Ephesus, puts it this way, ‘In him we have redemption through his blood, ...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half-title Page
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Contents
• Acknowledgements
• Introduction
• 1. Emotions as mirrors of the heart
• 2. Emotions as spiritual smoke alarms
• 3. tbH: It’s a heart matter!
• 4. Suffering: The sneers, the fears and the tears
• 5. The sneers
• 6. The fears
• 7. The tears
• 8. The battleground of our heart
• 9. Looking outwards, looking upwards
• Appendix 1: Emotions questionnaire
• Appendix 2: Using the tbH model yourself
• References