Every man, woman, and child are created with emotions. It’s part of our very being as image-bearers of God. Yet not every swing of our emotions is good. Anxiety, for example, is a rejection of the promises of God. It is a lack of trust in His never-failing care for His people. Yearning for an emotional high, devoid of God’s Word, is another trap that is sinful.     So how should we evaluate and govern our emotions biblically? In this podcast Scott Brown and Jason Dohm, joined by special guest Brian Borgman, answer this question, outlining Christ’s show of emotions as a model for us. Even as we must shun empty emotionalism, we should strive for the joining together of head and heart, doctrine and devotion, light and heat. Our goal should be to conform our will and emotions to the image of Christ, so we can exclaim with the Psalmist, “I have set the LORD always before me; Because He is at my right hand I shall not be moved. Therefore my heart is glad, and my glory rejoices; My flesh also will rest in hope” (Ps. 16:8-9).

Welcome to the Church and Family Life podcast. Church and Family Life exists to proclaim the sufficiency of scripture. And we've got with us Brian Borgman to talk to talk about godly emotions, happiness, you know all the things that people want the most. So Brian thank you so much for joining us today. Well, thanks for having me, Scott.

Great, yeah, Brian is the pastor at Grace Community Church in Minden, Nevada, one of the most beautiful places in the world, you know, where Bonanza Land, where they actually probably filmed Bonanza in his backyard. If you don't know what Bonanza is, you must not be very old. So anyway, Brian, it's so great to talk to you about this. You wrote a book called Feelings and Faith, Cultivating Godly Emotions in the Christian Life, and it's really a good book. I'm really glad you wrote this book.

You know, working my way through it was really a blessing, but you know, I've always been taken by something that's said about the Lord Jesus in Hebrews 1.9. You have loved righteousness and hated lawlessness. Therefore, your God has anointed you with the oil of gladness above all your companions." And I find myself quoting that all the time. Jesus was the happiest of all the disciples. He was always the happiest man, the most joyful, glad man in the room, and for all the right reasons.

And of course, we're given the reasons. He loved righteousness and hated lawlessness. And in some ways your book really explains all of that. And Maybe you could just begin with a biblical and theological understanding of our emotions, because you do that in the book. Yeah, well, I think, Scott, that one of the things, and Jason, I think one of the things that that that we often miss in the church is is the significance of the emotions.

It's like we're on two ends of the spectrum, right? We're either way over on one side where where we basically look at them as the caboose. They're not really that important. If they're there, great. If they're not, no big deal.

And then you have the other side of the spectrum where everything is just driven by the emotions. You make decisions by your emotions. You live by your emotions and really we need to have the the solid foundation of a biblical perspective And so basically when I think about the the foundations for understanding the emotions I would say that we begin with the character of God. Now of course there's there's a lot of debate as to the emotional language that's used in scripture as it's attributed to God. And I don't think we need to go into the weeds there, but the fact is that throughout all of scripture, all kinds of emotions are attributed to God.

God rejoices over us like like a bridegroom rejoices over the bride. He's quiet over us in his love. He rejoices over us with loud singing. He's a God who has anger. He's a God who has wrath.

He's a God who's full of compassion, right? So we have all of this emotive language that's applied to God himself throughout scripture. And so I'd say that's the starting point. If we wanna learn about what the emotions are, we begin with God and then we move immediately to the Lord Jesus Christ who is both God and man. He's the God man, 100% God, 100% man.

So that Jesus could say to the disciples, when you've seen me, you've seen the Father. So I take that to mean that in Jesus' incarnation, he is the exact representation of God's nature. So when we see Jesus, we're looking at the Father, but Jesus is also perfect humanity, right? So in a sense in the Lord Jesus, we have a reflection of the Father, but we also have man as man ought to be. And so as we read through the gospels, we see the whole panorama of emotion present in our Lord's life.

And I would just I would put in a little plug for BB Warfield's classic essay on the emotional life of our Lord. Belief Crossways republished that in one of those little booklets that they're doing. Profound. But Jesus is moved with compassion. Jesus is angry at the Pharisees.

Jesus is grieved at the hardness of their heart. Jesus rejoices in the Holy Spirit and you just have this whole panorama. And so what I'm saying is, is we have a perfect picture of, of not the defects of emotion, but the perfection of emotion. And then, then I would move just real quickly, I'd say that the Word of God is written in a way that's designed to move our affections. I think that that says something about God as He communicates and reveals Himself to us.

And we could go more into that if you wanted. And then I would just say all of that really sort of manifests itself or comes to fruition in our understanding of the image of God. So What am I as an image bearer? Well, I'm not just a brain. I'm not just a will.

I'm a body-soul person. And the faculties of my soul would be a mind, a will, and affections or emotions. And so my emotions are a constitutional part of what it means for me, not just to be a human being, but to be a human being made in the image of God. And so I would say that that in a sense is the theological foundation for understanding our emotions. Brian, the train analogy has me thinking about My Christian walk from my early days, my early religious, my early Christian life, the emotions were the engine.

I was in a highly emotional environment. Sundays were really important. If you didn't get the right emotional charge out of Sunday worship, it was actually a spiritual problem because you didn't have enough juice to get you through to the next Sunday. That's such a terrible position to be in. You are at the mercy of how good Sunday really singing is.

Now fast forward 40 some years later, I'm confessionally reformed. And we're sometimes probably accurately described as having emotions as the caboose. Nice to have it, But if the emotions don't show, no problem. Hey, I'm not a charismatic anymore. I'm a card-carrying cessationist.

I'm a confessional, confessionally reformed. But I want no part of religious life that is completely absent emotion. I want to know God and experiencing Him, and part of that is emotional. So I don't want to go back to the days where I was so hyperdependent on emotions, but I think we have a right. Scripture gives us warrant to desire joy in the Lord.

Yes. Amen. I would agree 110 percent, because I think that, you know, like Luther, we don't want to be like the drunk German that falls off one side of the horse then gets back on only to fall off the other side. I think that what we end up doing is we end up missing an important component of our relationship with God when we minimize our own emotions and to make the analogy and it's not a perfect one but just think about your relationship with your wife or with your children and then then just take all the emotion out of those relationships and and then try to even imagine what those relationships would be like. So Matthew Elliott in his really good, it's very academic book, but it's called Faithful Feelings, He actually says that life without emotion is like life in black and white.

The emotions is what gives color to life, and we're certainly not driven by them, but they are a component that we dare not ignore, because if we do, you know, we end up being sort of stoic and cerebral and Spurgeon said one time that he'd rather have fellowship with a warm-hearted Wesley and then a cold-hearted Calvinist. And yet we live in a culture that authenticates all emotions as legitimate, and we're always trying to find ourselves and be true to ourselves. But the problem is there are godly and ungodly emotions. Could you talk about cultivating godly emotions first of all? Then maybe after that we could talk about mortifying ungodly emotions.

Sure, sure. So you know, when if our Lord Jesus is the standard by which the Spirit of God is conforming us, right? So that the goal of our redemption is to be conformed to the image of the firstborn, right? Romans 8 29, we're being renewed according to the true image of him, Colossians 3 10. And so the spirit of God is working in us to conform us to the image of Jesus.

And I think of it as sort of an urban renewal project, right? The Spirit is working in us, so He regenerates us, which of course is the beginning, but that renewing of us is a renewing and a transformation of my mind for sure. So we can track with this pretty easily, right? Is the spirit at work through the word transforming my mind? And the answer is of course, Romans 12 2, among other texts.

Is he at work conforming my will to God's revealed will which is working obedience in me? And the answer is yes. So then why wouldn't we think he's also working in us and transforming our emotions? And so if the Lord Jesus is the perfect pattern for us, we're to walk even as this one walked, 1 John 2.6, then Our Lord Jesus actually is the standard bearer for what a godly emotional life looks like. And so the Spirit of God is constantly working in us.

And I would say that there's, in a sense, there's sort of two levels of cultivating godly emotions. So if you think of, let's say, working out, you might have just a regular routine where you've got your 30 minutes cardio and then, you know, maybe you do circuit training or something. But it's just sort of a general workout to keep healthy. But then if you're going to train for something, you know, let's say your shot put or discus or something, you're going to start working special muscle groups, right, So that you can get better at that particular thing. And I think that cultivating godly emotions in a sense works in a very similar way.

So just as an example, Psalm 16 eight, I have set the Lord before me, right? And I have set the Lord continually before me. And because he's at my right hand, I will not be shaken. So there's a sense where I'm growing and I'm gaining, growing in emotional strength and stability by what I put in front of my mind. You know, we all with unveiled face are beholding as in a mirror the glory of the Lord.

We're being transformed from one level of glory to the next. So there's in a sense sort of a general emotional fitness that happens by virtue of my own spiritual growth by God's grace and spirit, but there's also going to be things in my life that I recognize that I need to grow in. So for instance, let's say, well my wife is incredibly, she's far more compassionate than I am. And compassion is a godly affection or a godly emotion that I need to grow in. And so I'm going to then target that area.

And of course, the primary way I'm going to target that area is looking to the Lord Jesus Christ. And so it's as I have Christ before me, as I have him before me, obviously in the scriptures, maybe in good solid Christian literature, I am looking and I'm praying, I'm asking God to help me. And as I see the truth set before me of the compassion of our Lord Jesus, then I'm working on that particular affection to cultivate it and to grow it. You know, and our emotions are like every other part of our life. They need to be sanctified.

There's a progressive purification of putting off the old bad emotions, sinful emotions, and then putting on the new. Our emotional life is needful for sanctification. So we should find ourselves over the years putting away unprofitable emotions, sinful emotions. What are some of the sinful emotions that come to mind? Well, this is, I mean to me, biblically, this is pretty clear, but just, you know, for the listeners out there, we have to understand that there is sort of a move even among Reformed Christians to meld more and more the emotions simply a manifestation of our body.

So the emotions are seen much more in just physiological terms and of course I would say that the implications for that, for Christian counseling especially, are going to be devastating. But I would see, because of the fall, we have certain ungodly emotions that would, so for instance, outbursts of anger would be one of the very first ones. And I would say probably one of the most common ones. Nobody's going to get too upset if I say anger is an ungodly emotion. But I would also say that fear and anxiety can often be ungodly emotions as well.

And so if I am anxious or if I am fearful, Jesus actually diagnoses that for us as lack of faith. Okay. Now I realize that there may be people that really do have some physical issues where they undergo panic attacks or things like that. And so I don't want to just give a blanket statement. But I do think as I read my Bible, fear and anxiety, which are both emotions, Those are reactions to unbiblical thinking, just as sure as anger is.

And so, and if I could push it a little farther, sometimes, not always, But depression or despondency can be an ungodly emotion. There really is a whole panorama. You could include, I was actually say that every deed of the flesh, all of the lists of sins that we see, most all of them in one way or another are connected to the emotions. So, and the old timers would have used the term affections, what I'm drawn to. So, for instance, even lust has an emotional, a strong emotional component to it.

So, there really is sort of a whole panorama of ungodly emotions that we experience. Jealousy, coveting, the list could go on. Do you think people should repent of their anxiety, their anxious thoughts? Yes. Amen.

I do. Because, yeah, and why? Well, I would say because that anxiety is a rejection of the promises of God, many of the promises of God. Yeah, so I think, for instance, of something like 1 Peter 5.7, so cast all of your cares or cast your anxiety on him because he cares for you. So there's a reason why we're not to be anxious, right?

Be anxious for nothing but in all things with prayer and supplication, make your request known to God and the peace of God which surpasses all understanding will guard your heart and mind in Christ Jesus. Fear not for I am with you. Do not anxiously look about you for I am your God. And so anxiety is in a sense a false belief. And so my emotions are a gauge, right?

They're not a guide, they're a gauge. My emotions are indicating something about me. So if I'm experiencing anxiety, that is, in a sense, that's expounding something in my heart. And I think that the biblical diagnosis would be what's being exposed there is a lack of trust in God and in His promises. Anxiety is fear of the future of something that hasn't happened yet.

Okay? And so if that is what I'm doing, then I need to, I actually need to confess that as sin, and I need to turn from it, and my repentance is then going to manifest itself in me fighting the fight of faith to trust God and his promises to overcome an anxious heart. So I can just hear the counter-argument to that now, which is, guys, this is victim-shaming. People don't ask to be anxious, they don't ask to be afraid, they find themselves anxious and afraid and now you're shaming them for it and saying they need to repent. I think what we would say to that is we have all sorts of things that came to us through Adam because of the corruptions that are within us.

And if you want to say we're born that way, we're willing to embrace that and concede that, and that doesn't mean that we don't need to repent of these things. We cannot ask for anxiety and fear and find ourselves in anxiety and fear, and it's because things in our core are warped and twisted against God, and we need to stop being like those things and start being more like the Lord Jesus Christ who trusted his Father, was satisfied in his Father, and these things are actually not as incompatible as you think. We do need to turn from these things and become the new man. Yeah, it's not the insensitive counselor that says, cease striving, it's God. It's God that says, cease striving and know that I am God.

Like you said, Brian, cast all your cares upon Him. How many times, probably over a hundred times, there's the command, do not fear, or fear not. It's the most often repeated command in the entire Bible, do not fear. So it isn't insensitive to command someone to turn from sinful fear because it's sinful. It's sinful to do these things and the Bible calls them sin but we want to baptize them and say well you know this is just me and it's actually like That's the problem.

This is you. And we all know, you know, things happen to people that create an emotional life that gets built up over time. People who come out of homes of their divorce or abuse. There are all kinds of emotional damages that take place that really do require healing, and it takes a long time to walk out of that wilderness, So we have to be patient with one another. Yeah, repentance means a change of mind that results in a change of thinking or a change of action.

So what does repentance look like? You've already described it from the scriptures. Cast your cares on him. You have your cares, you're carrying them, you're burdened down by them, and you turn around and go in the other direction. You take the care and you place it on Christ.

Be anxious for nothing but pray. So you're feeling anxious and instead of harboring it, nurturing it, continuing in it, you take these things to God in prayer. There's a fundamental assumption that's just wrong, and that is that I can't help my emotions. I can't help the way that I feel and this is just me. And we always need to be compassionate.

We need to be patient. We need to be loving. We need to be patient with the weak and the faint-hearted and so forth. But here's the thing, is that if I just assume I can't help it, this is the way I am, I'm not understanding my emotions as God gave them to me to begin with, because my emotions helped me make valuations, they helped me to assess. And so if I have emotions that are continually indicating that I am that I am not trusting God, then I want to understand what those are telling me and then remedy that with with God's grace and God's help.

And so it's not loving to let somebody live in a state of perpetual anxiety because they had a rough childhood or because they had really terrible things happen. There is liberation through the power of God's Word, and the emotions are not king. God's Word is. And so through God's grace, we can really help people. Brian, your phrase, it's a gauge, emotions are a gauge, not a guide, is gold.

That is worth the price of admission. Yeah. Of course we're not charging, so draw your own conclusions. So hey, Jason, you started talking about emotions in the worship of God and among the people of God. Of course, when we gather, we want to be a joyful people.

The gatherings of the local church should be the happiest of all gatherings on the planet. So you're truly happy. Could you talk to us, Brian, about your thoughts on emotions in worship. We know they fluctuate. We know sometimes we come into the prayer meetings flat.

We know we often need to be warmed up by the singing in the church, even before we hear the preaching. We know that we're often colds, but talk to us about emotions in worship. Yeah, I think that this is something that as reformed people, and Jason alluded to this earlier, I think this is an area where we really need a lot of help because if you go to the Psalms, the predominant emotion that is in the Psalms is joy. And joy, I don't care how you try to suck joy out of joy, joy is a word of emotion, right? And so there is a sense where, again, if our emotions are indicators, if they're gauges and I go into worship and my heart is cold and distant, That is a red engine light on my dashboard.

In other words, that is not the way that I am supposed to be. It's not how God created me and it's certainly not how God recreated me. So in your presence is fullness of joy, at your right hand, pleasures forevermore. And so we're called to enter into his gates with thanksgiving and into his courts with praise. And there's a sense where our joy in God is a reflection of what he's put into us.

And so I would say that the emotions, we don't want empty emotionalism, but we do want the joining together of head and heart, of doctrine and devotion, or as Edwards put it, of light and heat. Both. Okay, I don't want just light without heat, but I certainly don't want heat without light. So I believe that the way that God has ordained worship, there's an emotional component. So take singing, for instance.

So Edwards in religious affections has this section on singing that is just remarkable. He says the only reason we sing is actually to stir the emotions, to stir the affections. Otherwise, why not just read the hymns as prose, right? Why sing it? Why put a melody to it?

Why actually, And of course there should be sort of a panorama also of emotional expression in our hymnody, right? So mourning over our sins as we sing Psalm 51, God be merciful to all, is a godly and appropriate emotion in worship. In a sense, jubilation, as we sing Christ the Lord is risen today, right, is an appropriate and proper emotion. And so I would say that the singing is designed to move the heart, but I would also and as a preacher, I say this and I've got a congregation that will give testimony that this is what I seek to do. A sermon is not designed just simply to disseminate information to God's people.

It is not my calling to bore everybody with details about the Amalekites. My calling is to raise the affections of my hearers as high as possible, but only with truth. That's what separates a godly emotion from empty emotionalism, is that the truth is central. So the truth is central in what we sing and the truth is central in what we preach. But if I preach in a way that somehow shows that I'm disinterested in what I'm saying, I'm not going to move anybody.

In fact, I'm going to be communicating something that goes like this. This guy really doesn't care too much about what he's saying, why should I care? But if I'm preaching with an earnestness because of the weight and the gravity of truth, and it's gripped me, not just my mind, but it's gripped the entirety of me. And I preach as a dying man to dying men. Then God uses that as a contagion to also move the listeners with truth.

And you know, the old timers used to talk like this. John Angel James in his book, An Earnest Ministry, The Want of the Times, talks about how do you melt a heart of stone? Well, it's not just by propositions, right? It's by, paraphrase, truth on fire. So I would say that the emotion should be engaged.

So people sometimes will say to me, what if I wake up and I don't feel like going to church, right? Sort of the old answer that I was always given when I was a new Christian was, well just go anyway. I would actually alter that answer a little bit today and I would say if I wake up and I don't feel like going to church, then I need to confess that to God as a sin, because I was glad when they said to me, let us go to the house of the Lord. And if I'm not glad and I don't wanna go, I need to say, Lord, forgive me for not having the right desires as I wake up today to enter into your house and to be with your people. And then after you confess it, then you ask God, please help me, give me the grace to do what I need to do.

And then a lot of times what we find out is that the power comes in the doing. And how many times have I had people, and I'm sure you've had it's the same experience, pastor I didn't even feel like coming to church today. I did anyway. God met me. God did something in my heart today.

And so I think that we need to stop being afraid of the excesses of charismaticism and reclaim joy and emotion in worship. So, you know, we started this out talking about the joy of the Lord Jesus Christ. He's the happiest of all the disciples. And there's this picture in the New Testament of Christ singing with his people. And he says, here I am and the children that you've given me.

And these are signs and wonders. But the happiness of the soul happens as a result of the holiness of the soul. And that's why I think what you've said is so helpful, is that we do need to repent of some of our emotions and turn to God and trust God and believe in his promises. I do pray for a happy church. I want to be a happy pastor.

I want to see more and more happy pastors. I really do. And it is sort of a malady. It's an affliction of many of the Reformed, you know, that they're a little bit too serious and not happy enough in the Lord Jesus Christ. So, okay, hey, thanks so much.

Hey, and anybody, go read this book. It's a really helpful book. Brian just details so many of these things with tremendous clarity. I really appreciate you writing the book. I hope it makes me a happier pastor and a better counselor.

Good deal, Thanks. And thanks for joining us on the podcast. Hope to see you next time. Hey, also, come hear Brian Borgman preach at our national conference next year on making disciples. I can't wait to hear him.

It's always a joy to hear him preach. And we also have a conference for leaders and pastors with Steve Lawson, Alex Strouck, and Kevin Swanson and myself as a pre-conference to our national conference and then also our singles conference, which we're going to have as a pre-conference, before our big national conference. I'll be speaking at both of them. I hope you can join us. See you next time.

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