Emotions | Part One | Pastor Brodie Kalamen

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Good morning.

How many of you have got the feels today?

You got some feelings this morning.

You're feeling cold.

I have those feelings too.

I had those feelings, but I'm still grateful.

How many of you are grateful?

That's right.

We're entering into February, which is a new month for us.

New month.

We're going into a new series.

And our series is on emotions, as you could have probably gathered.

Gain a grip on your heart and your mind.

And you know, you may look at February, and as soon as you think of February, what do you think of?

What was that?

Say really bad.

Birthdays, Valentine's, okay?

All you the women, you can nudge your husband.

Valentine's like it's coming close.

It's like how many days now?

11 days.

But for a lot of people, when they think of February, they think of it as the love month.

And those people who love love February.

But for in our society right now, it's actually recognized as a very difficult month for a lot of people.

They find that in this season, a lot of people go to a really dark place and they get overrun by their emotions.

In fact, February is a mental health awareness month.

It is one of the reasons why the BC government has established a family day, February 10th, next Monday, I believe, that's actually a day off to be able to help people go and connect with family members, friends, take a little bit of a breather, go on a bit of a holiday, and just actually get an opportunity to reset because this time can begin to weigh on people.

The season can begin to weigh on people.

And if you're an emotional being, which you are, and we're gonna we're gonna study that today, you're gonna feel affected by the emotion of the moment, the emotion of the environment that you're in.

So we want to focus on emotions.

We want to look at God's perspective when it comes to emotions, because we believe that God gave us emotions and He wants and is interested in us using our emotions to not only better our life, but better the lives around us and better our relationship with God Himself.

So let's open up in prayer and then we'll get into the topic today.

Father, we thank you this morning for your presence in the church.

We thank you, Lord, for your presence in our lives.

We thank you, Father, that we're not alone, but that you're here with us.

You're leading, guiding, instructing, counseling, comforting.

Uh you're you're with us, Lord.

You're you're moving with us.

And we just thank you that we're not alone.

That you're with us.

We're not isolated, we're not by ourselves here, Lord, but you're with us and you're here to help.

So, Lord, as we journey forward today, Lord, we we want to see through your lenses, Lord, the way you created us to be in our our uh God design in Jesus' name.

Amen.

Amen.

Uh before we begin, let's take a moment to do a little feelings test this morning.

Uh now let's be open with each other.

Turn to the neighbor that you're you're saying beside, and just share the feeling that you're going through this morning.

There's a lot of laughing going on.

I don't know how comfortable that is.

And uh I'm sorry if I I made you a little uncomfortable here, but I just want to I just wanted to demonstrate something with you this morning.

It's easy for us to share what we do.

Sometimes it's not as easy to share how we feel.

Because the fact of the matter is we're not as connected as we probably should be with our feelings, with our emotions.

Now, I know some of you are thinking, well, you should have your wife up here sharing today about that.

Because, but here's the lies that the lie is that all women are feelers and men are not.

But men, do you have feelings?

Tell me, do you have feelings?

Come on.

You gotta, you gotta realize this fact that we are a feeling, we are a feeling construct.

We were created with this feeling.

And I think uh we come to this place in in society where it feels like you know what we should just like reserve or neglect or repress where we're at when it comes to feelings, but the fact is we need to acknowledge them.

And we need to be able to communicate it, and not just in word, but in action and function, demonstrating how we feel, showcasing how we feel it's a healthy thing for us to feel.

Turn to your neighbor and say, it's healthy for me to feel, it's healthy for me to have feelings.

That's right.

Jesus made a point of communicating the most important commandment to people.

He says, Listen, there are the most important commandment.

In fact, there he said, there's one, but all the commandments can be wrapped up in this statement here.

It says, you need to love God with all your heart and all your soul and all your mind and all your strength.

And the second commandment is this love your neighbor as yourself.

There's no commandment greater than these commandments.

Now, if you really looked at these commandments, you'd realize that these commandments are laden with emotion.

The church should be an emotional church.

We should know how to love God with all of our heart, all of our soul, all of our mind, all of our strength.

Loving each other with all of our strength.

In the same way, loving each other, that's an emotional response, not only to God, but to each other.

Emotions are a big part of who we are.

When God is going to use you, he'll use you to reach other people, to reach out to God with your emotion.

Not just mentally, solely, but emotionally as well.

God's saying, I want you to have an emotional relationship with me.

Where you throw everything into it.

Heart, soul, mind, strength, everything.

Every part, every fiber of your being is thrown into your relationship with God.

I love the illustration of David.

David knew how to love God.

I don't care if you don't agree with his methodology, perhaps, like how he did or his demonstration of it, but David was a man after God's own heart.

He wasn't just about knowing about God, he was about loving God, chasing after God, embracing God, taking everything that God had to offer and embracing that in himself.

He knew how to love God.

In Matthew, it says this, that Jesus had a challenge.

God even recognized when people did this, when they loved with their lips, but they didn't love with their heart.

He said, These people honor me with their lips, but their hearts are from far from me.

Now, the last thing you want on Valentine's, the last thing you want is someone whose heart isn't into it.

Like just doing going about the straight function of the function of the the custom, function of the celebration of that day, and but their heart is absent.

Have you ever known somebody or uh to do something that and and even though they did it right, their heart wasn't in it.

How many of you know have known some time, someone?

I I love it.

There's something about grandma's cooking.

Grandma's cooking is different than the teenager up at up the street who just slaps your burger together and just throws it on your plate.

Grandma did something with that cooking where she just put her heart and her soul into it.

And mothers, fathers, you know, where they they put a piece of their emotion into it.

There's a difference.

God wants to use us emotionally, he wants to move us emotionally in our relationship to him.

So let's just take a moment here today.

And before we actually move forward, let's take steps to actually understanding our emotions.

Number one, God has emotions.

God has emotions.

Emotions.

Jesus was God in the flesh.

And if you look at the scripture, you see a demonstration of emotion through Jesus.

If you look for the emotion in scripture, you'll find it.

Jesus was happy.

He was thankful.

There was celebration at points in Jesus' life where he joined in with celebration.

There were times when Jesus was giving thanks.

Often he gave thanks.

He was joyful.

In fact, the scripture says he was anointed with the joy, the anointing of joy, he was anointed with joy even above his brothers.

He had a spirit of joy about him.

I don't think Jesus walked around with the stoic face, just like eyeing up people and criticizing here and there and engaging people's sin and oh, what's this all about?

Like he didn't look at community or people like that.

In fact, you can see Jesus who criticized the Pharisees.

He says, Listen, and other people who would try and keep the children away.

He says, Let the children come to me.

I welcome the children into my environment, into my world, because I want that emotion.

I want to be surrounded by that.

It's okay.

He was angry at points.

You can read that in scripture where he got angry.

He was sad.

There are times when he wept, times when he cried, times when he looked over people and he said, They're like people, they're like sheep without a shepherd.

And he began to weep over them.

He was moved with compassion.

It's okay to cry.

It's okay to be moved by God.

By move by the things that move God.

It's alright.

Emotions are a healthy part of who we are.

And recognizing them and just understanding them is very important.

God has emotions, and the only reason that you and I actually have emotions is that we were created in God's image as well.

We were created in the image of God, and like so we have this relationship to God that's an emotional relationship.

Feelings are actually a gift from God.

Now you might not believe that right away, but your emotions are a gift from God.

I can see it's a resounding response of like, yes, thank God for my emotions.

I just feel it right now.

Look how happy I am at this moment and grateful for my emotions.

It's just bubbling out of me.

It's just, this is emotions are a gift from God.

They are a gift from God.

They may not always seem that way, but even there are good emotions, there are difficult emotions, but they're there from God.

Emotions are a great asset of who you are.

They're part of what makes us human.

I enjoy, like I enjoy electronics, I enjoy robotics, I enjoy technology, I enjoy all these things, but I would never want to be in a relationship with a robot that just responds to my every activity and command and response.

I want someone in my life who responds emotionally to me.

I give, I receive.

There's a reciprocation of emotion.

God gave us emotions.

They're a gift from God.

It's your emotional ability that allows you to love.

It allows you to create and be faithful and loyal and to be generous and all of these things.

Emotions are attached to the good things in life.

That's what makes life worth living, are the emotions that you share and the experiences and the that you share with each other.

It's a part of our life.

One of the most astounding verses is actually in Genesis, where it says, Let us make man in our image.

We're made in the image of God.

And part of the joy of our faith is when we come to know God, we come to know the emotion of God.

I know people who were really hard.

And when they came to know Jesus, they softened right up.

They had been hard emotionally, and God over time began to soften their heart and make it more like His.

And they became, they became moved by the things that move God.

There's this is a great experience of this last 21 days of prayer we had.

Prayer is a great way to engage God, but as soon as you enter into prayer, you engage God not just on a on a communicative level, but like verbal, but you're engaging God on an emotional level.

You begin to feel what God feels when you pray.

And sometimes that's a dangerous thing because I begin to feel things that I'm not quite comfortable with.

Or I begin to feel or get impassioned with things that'll start to move me and direct me.

Like you start praying for the mission, for the mission field, your heart gets moved for missions.

You start praying for people, your heart becomes moved and attached to the things that you are believing God for.

That that or who you're believing God for.

Worship is another emotional experience.

It's the Bible says, clap your hands, shout unto God, it says kneel down before God.

There's all different expressions of worship.

And a lot of that worship, dance is an expression, say hallelujah.

That means like turn an expression to God that says, yes, God.

It's an emotional response to God.

If you become better in your emotion, recognizing, understanding, releasing healthy emotion, your worship, your prayer walk, your your uh your experience with God in terms of the scripture and the reading of scripture will benefit.

You'll just move into a different place.

I I know that there have been times in my life where I was surrounded by people who engaged in worship in a very, very emotional, like they were all in.

And I'll tell you, it was contagious to me.

It's contagious.

I was in the Ukraine, and uh these people had very little that I was with, and they were gonna do like a seven-day prayer fast, and I was joining with them.

And every morning, early in the morning, they hadn't eaten the night before.

They were grabbing hands.

We were dan like, and of course, you just join right in, right?

And you're joining in and you're dancing around, and in it was right out of my culture zone, right out of my comfort zone.

But when they engaged in worship, it was like all out.

We're gonna dance, we're gonna sing, we're gonna shout, we're gonna move in worship.

And to me, it was really uncomfortable, but I found it really liberating too.

Because it took me to a place that I hadn't experienced before.

Actually, in fact, you go to a lot of places in the world and their expression is that way.

You come to Canada and things change.

We sit in rows, not circles.

You go to Israel, it's a different experience.

You most places I've gone around the world, I've experienced their worship, and their worship is much, much different than Canada.

Maybe it's because we wear big minus 30 jackets and like we come in, maybe it's because we dress, but even the rest of the world, they they come and they know how to engage with God, and they're not afraid of their emotions.

Sometimes we we say, maybe emotion isn't a gift from God.

Maybe our feelings aren't a gift from God.

Maybe feelings and emotions are things we should oppose and resist because they could have dangers to associated with them.

But in fact, God wants you to embrace it.

Amen.

So we need to feel what God feels.

Feel what God feels.

Let God move you in a place of feeling of where God move is moving you.

Um, another thing we should learn about our emotions is the fact that we avoid extremes.

As much as I say I emotion is such a critical part of who we are, there can be an extreme part of emotion.

There are people who are emotional.

They're like uh it's emotionalism, it's whatever feels good.

All that matters is how I feel.

Everything else doesn't matter.

It's what I'm feeling that matters.

And emotionalism is an extreme.

At its extreme, it's saying the only thing that matters in life is how I feel.

So it doesn't matter what I think, it doesn't matter what's right or wrong, it doesn't matter what's popular or unpopular, good or bad, what matters is doing what you feel.

And if it feels good to do it, and it allows emotions to determine your life.

And this is a problem.

The emotions will dominate your life.

And this is a problem because if you allow emotions to be your God, then God isn't God.

Your emotions are your God, so you can't be led by your emotion.

Emotion is not God.

What you feel is not God, and God needs to be God, and your emotions still need to be subject to the Lordship of Jesus Christ, still need to be subject to the to Jesus and to God.

Um the other side of emotionalism is stoicism, stoicism, being stoic.

And this is a that feelings, it's the opposite side of the pendulum.

It's where feelings are unimportant at all.

They're not important at all.

And stoicism is the exact opposite.

It basically says feelings aren't valid, and that feelings ought to be repressed, and feelings and emotions ought to be put down, and feelings don't matter.

And the fact is that we lean one way or the other in terms of our life, and we have to find a way that where we come to that center point.

This is the common tension in life where you get pulled in so many different ways.

If you have a guitar and you're tuning that guitar up, if you just leave it loose, it's not gonna sound very good at all.

And if you tighten it way too tight, you're gonna snap that string.

You gotta find that.

Place where that note and the heart where there's harmony between in the tension.

There's that middle place in that tense spot.

And so oftentimes in our lives, God actually brings people in our life to help move us forward in terms of our emotion.

So you're oftentimes attracted to someone, like someone who's a thinker.

Like for me, I just want, I just need the facts.

But God brought me someone like my wife, and she said, How was your day?

And I'm like, Well, I did this, and I kind of go through my schedule.

I did this, I met with this person.

She's like, whoa, whoa, whoa.

What was that like?

I'm like, what are you asking?

And I know right away.

I'm just sitting at the counter going, oh boy.

Did you ask these questions?

And of course, they're always feeling questions.

And because she's my opposite, right?

She's my the other side.

And I'm like, well, I didn't really ask those questions, but I probably should have.

Now that you're asking, it would have been good to know.

And the thing is, you you find that middle place and that middle range.

Both of those are extreme positions, being emotional and being stoic.

We want to land in the middle.

And because I believe that God's best design for our life includes our emotions.

Healthy place for us to be growing, healthy place for us to be moving forward.

And the challenges in our society and our culture, and especially our season this year.

And I don't know if it's because people get their credit cards bills right now after Christmas or what.

The whole psychology of this is all about.

But we hit this dip in February.

Maybe people are looking forward to love and they're like, man, I'm single, or I don't have people in my life, or I'm I am, I feel alone, and they get becomes the whole nature of the season just begins to become a weight.

And you have to get yourself out of that weight and realize, okay, what is this emotion?

Why am I feeling it?

What's triggering it?

And move forward.

So emotions, God gave us them for a reason.

God wants us and our worship to Him to be emotional.

He wants our connections to each other to include emotion.

Sometimes I forget Christians are different.

Because I'm a Christian.

And I just do things differently.

When I see people, I give them a hug.

Because for me, God loves people, I love people.

I give good hugs, good, that's right.

So I get my hair cut.

And this girl who cuts my hair afterwards, I pay the bill, and she comes out from behind the counter and she just stands there, and I'm like, I'm giving you a hug, it's what I do.

It's like I and one person they said to us the other day, I hug in threes.

Like I do everything in threes.

This is like, they just, because as a Christian, we don't realize that this is so different than perhaps other experience, other people experience life.

Because of Christ in me, there's an expression that comes out of me that's godly, that's life-giving, that's emotional, that's healthy, and not and people don't know what to do with it.

Is it weird to give hugs?

Maybe they're uncomfortable, but they always take them.

It's not like I go to the gym and there's some big guy like working out on his waistband.

Hug it out, buddy.

Hug it out.

Come over here.

I saw you were stressed out on that last rap.

Come on, hug it out.

You can do better next time.

Come on.

I I know boundaries, okay?

But but you also know when to say that I love you to someone.

When you say I love you, it's not a bad word.

It's a four-letter word, but it's not a bad word.

I love you is not bad to say.

It's not something that we should hold back.

God had such great love for the world.

He loved us while we were still sinners, he died for us.

His great love for us allowed, he chose to bring his only begotten son into the world so that we could have eternal life.

That love for us was so big.

I don't think we engage God's love to the fraction that we that we have opportunity to.

The Bible says his banner over us is love.

It's love, love, love, love that we should feel, it should be dripping off of us.

That love.

It's like we should be saturated in the love of God.

That love that's just like we're swimming in love.

Like, and we sing some of these songs in worship.

I'm sure people in our songs that it's like, he kissed me with the kisses of, I'm like, oh man, it's so weird, right?

But privately, you know, you listen to the song, you're like, wow, God really loves me.

That's a good song.

I'm just gonna say it publicly, and we probably won't sing it publicly, but wow, God is awesome.

Isn't God awesome?

Isn't God awesome?

Like, I have no problem lifting up my hands to God and saying, Okay, God, here I am.

Just love me and let me love you back.

Here I am, God, I love you.

I love you, God.

Like I say that in worship because I don't sometimes if I can't sing the song, I just say, I love you, God.

I love you, God.

I love you, God.

Like, and it's not something that's it's good, it's healthy for me to say it, it's healthy for my kids to hear it.

It's you know, you should tell your kids you love them.

You we really should.

Like, I know this isn't like, wow, boom, professor.

Like, it's not like we didn't know this, but we should really say this to each other.

I love you.

The word, uh like, and the the fact is uh we're not really good at it.

So that's why we're doing this series.

Because I want to get better.

How many of you want to go on that journey with me?

And it's not gonna happen today, okay?

I I literally have 13 pages of notes, and I looked at it this morning, I was like, I'm probably gonna get through like two.

Because this is a journey that we're on.

Some of you are terrible at emotion, some of you are better than others.

Some of you you look at and you're like, is there anybody whole?

Like, knock.

But others of you are good at it, and we need to learn from each other and grow from each other and actually uh actually become better in our emotion.

Uh, I really think that people don't need uh like they don't need a friendly church.

Like, they need friends.

People who are really good at being friends.

I I'm glad I'm friendly.

Like, it's great.

I'm friendly.

I can Nathan, my buddy here, came from uh came from, where are you, minus 38 today or something like that?

It's really cold where he's from.

So he got on a plane, left his kids at home.

Woohoo! Come down.

He's like, he's in Kelowna, living it up here.

And so he comes in.

It's great if I'm like, I just shake his hand and give him a smile.

I'm like, I'm friendly.

There's a difference than being a friend.

That's honoring God with your lips versus honoring God with your heart.

And I think a lot of our experience in life, it has this big gap between like we're good at the emo, we're good at the perhaps some of us are better than others, we're good at the activity of it, but we're not good at the heart of it.

So the emotion is really important.

The emotion, the energy that we put into our into our lifestyle and the ability to actually be honest and true and real.

When I I think I gave you a hug today, didn't I, Nate?

Yeah, I'll give you one later too.

That's good.

Yeah, I do it in threes, so by the time you leave.

The word emotion isn't used that often in the Bible.

In fact, if you look for the word emotion, you're gonna say, I don't know, Brody, this isn't a very uh spiritual lesson we're learning today.

The Bible doesn't talk that much about emotion itself, but the Bible does use words like passions, it uses words like affections, or the number one term for emotion that the scripture uses is the word heart.

Love the Lord your God with all your heart.

Heart.

And today we still use that word.

That word heart, I give you my heart, I give you my heart.

Heart is the symbol of love, heart is a symbol of emotion, it's the core of who we are, it's the source of life, it's the place where you you give from that place, that source.

And even today we say, we say these things, but the mind represents the intellect, but the heart represents the emotion.

And even today we have people who are who uh look at an individual, and they've got two forms of assessment on that individual.

They look at their IQ, and they look at now at their EQ.

Their IQ is their intellectual quotient.

How smart are you?

How capable are you?

The other side they're looking at now, and they're learning to assess even better, is the EQ of an individual, their emotional quotient.

How moody do you get?

How well do you work with others?

How how how um how flexible is your capability when you're working with different individuals?

And today some of the top employers are not having trouble finding people with high IQ, they're having trouble finding people who have a high EQ.

And I'll say this: that people who are looking for a spouse can find a spouse, they can be looking and finding someone that they're interested in that may have a great IQ, but their EQ is terrible.

Their emotional ability, their ability to share and to actually become close and connected with an individual, that part becomes much more difficult.

So there is a point where we need to develop this.

Number four, God gave us the book of Psalms in order to help us understand our emotions.

If you had a hard time with some emotions in your life, uh you need to spend a lot of time in the book of Psalms.

And I know you who do because I've looked at your Bibles, and Psalms is like almost all tattered and bent and highlighted and circled.

You know, they've got, they, they've uh you've gone through it, you learn it.

The book of Psalms is there to help us identify and understand our emotions.

What do I do with these emotions?

So when people talk about the scripture and they say, you know, the Bible is not very connected emotionally, you have to look at the book of Psalms.

And so today, really, I want to affirm to you and accept you today, and and if you're an emotional person, I'm saying to you today, it's okay.

It's okay to have emotion, it's okay to experience emotion, it's okay to feel.

And if today you've come into church and you're like, man, I've I've got emotions, and I don't know if people will understand, and I don't know if this isolates me from other people or puts me in a different category or place, I want to say to you today, it's okay to have emotion.

God created you, He designed you with emotions in place, and together we're gonna move through this journey of actually helping you understand your emotion, learn how to manage it, and learn how to channel it into the right areas so that we actually grow in our emotional quotient.

We need a church, not of just a high IQ towards God, but a high EQ towards God.

When we come into his presence, we don't just worship him in truth, we worship him in spirit as well.

And that makes us better as individuals, it makes us better as a church, it makes us better as husbands and wives and moms and dads and people and employers and students in school.

It makes us better when we're walking at a in a whole in a place of wholeness.

Can you hear what I'm saying today?

So, Father, today we thank you for your presence with us.

We thank you, Lord, that you're not just here on an intellectual level, but you're here on an emotional level.

We thank you, Lord, that you're here to deal with the feels.

You're here to help us, Lord, move forward in our feelings.

And we ask, Lord, that you would take this opportunity, Lord, where we're just quiet before you and and Lord, we just sub, we just release to you, submit to you our feelings today and our emotions today.

And Father, some of these emotions we don't understand, some of these emotions we're a little confused with, some of these emotions we don't know where to go with.

But Father, I know that you as the our designer and our creator, Father, you have a purpose for them, and you have a purpose for us.

And we're not disqualified because we feel, but we're qualified because we feel.

We thank you, Lord, that you used men in Scripture like David, you used men like Moses, you used men like uh Gideon, you used men like Peter, you used men like Jonah, you used women, Lord, who were like Mary and Magdalene, Mary Magdalene, and Father, you used Martha, those who felt, Lord, those who were feelers, you use them, Lord, to bring about change and make a difference.

And so, Father, today we ask that you would uh help us, Lord, as we move forward today.

And as every eyes closed and every head's bowed, if you're here with us today and you're thinking, man, I'm struggling with my emotions, Pastor Brody.

I'm struggling with the place in my life right now I'm in.

And I'm overrun by my emotion.

I'm overrun by my mental state.

And I would just say to you today, there's hope for you today.

There's hope in Jesus, hope in Jesus.

But the first step is to invite Jesus to come into your life, to invite him into your heart, into your emotional place, the source of your life, and to have authority in that place.

And we do that by inviting him, making an invitation for him into our life.

And so it happens by a prayer, and you may think that these prayers are just simple words, but we believe that prayer has power and that these words put together can make a difference in your life.

And so today I just want to lead you in a prayer.

And it will be the first step to actually finding that place of emotional health is by accepting Jesus into your life.

So if you are in that place today and you're saying, I want to do that, I'm gonna ask you to pray along with me, and I'm just gonna invite the whole congregation to pray this prayer along with me together.

Heavenly Father, today is a day of new beginning.

I want to know you and be known by you.

I believe that Jesus is the Son of God and the Savior of the world.

Right now I give you my heart, I give you my life from this day forward.

I choose to follow you, to obey you, to be led by you.

I receive your love and new grace for me.

Today is a day of new beginning.

I turn from my sin and I trust in you.

Make me a new person, starting in my heart.

Amen.

Father, create in us a new heart.

Create in us a clean heart.

And Father, today we open up our heart to you and we welcome you in Jesus' name.

Amen.