The emotions and how to deal rightly with them has been greatly neglected by Christians, but the Holy Spirit is bringing more and more understanding of this in these times. Because we have undervalued the emotional part of our being, we live with suppressed emotions that do great damage under the surface to a person. It's wonderful to walk in healthy emotions, and it's imperative that we do so since the emotional part of us is the motivator of behavior.
Because God is Creator and Lord of humans and made each part of us beautiful, He has as much interest in a healthy emotional life as He does in a healthy mental and volitional life. They all go together. C.S.Lewis says that if you lose the good of one part, you lose the good of the other (speaking of heart and head). We don't function rightly with our minds (even if we are intellectually bright) if our hearts and emotions are asleep, not engaged with God's emotions.
Marshall points out that we typically think that "any control over the emotions must come from the will." But that easily becomes unhealthy suppression of emotions, and while the will may succeed in stifling emotions, it doesn't have power to produce emotions. For the emotions to be healthy and life-giving, they, like the human will and mind, must be subject to the spirit of the person; the author connects the emotions with the part of the spirit that has direct communion with God, either through spoken or unspoken communication.
Worship is the primary means through which we commune with God and taste His love and emotions. (In an age of massive emotional trauma, it's easy to see why the Spirit of God is awakening so much worship, particularly in music and the arts, etc.) Because of this, Marshall connects the gifts of tongues, healings, and miracles with this aspect of the human makeup and our walk with God and people. I'll let you read his rationale for this in the book.
I want to focus the rest of this posting on "hope, the neglected virtue." It is biblical hope that opens the human heart and keeps it open in the face of great difficulty. I'm going to share parts of my own notes on hope that are a blend of material I have gleaned from this book, from Leanne Payne, Joseph Pieper, and Oswald Chambers. I pray you will be helped and blessed as I have been with fresh understanding of how vital hope is for having an open and tender heart towards God that is able to receive from Him and others:
Hope is the confident expectation of something good. Hope has 3 basic roots: confidence, expectancy, security. “Hope, because it is confident, secure and expectant, creates in the person who has it an inner attitude of openness towards God, openness towards other people, and openness towards life. This is of extreme importance, because we will experience only what we receive, and we will receive only what we are open to. - Tom Marshall
We don’t measure our spiritual capacity by intellect but by the promises of God - I Cor.1:20(O.Chambers). If you are appropriating the promises of God, then you have hold of the virtue of hope. (I Peter 2:3-9)
We are to make every effort to gain these virtues. Grace never opposes moral effort; it opposes merit achieved by effort…Some don’t stand firm in their healing, because they don’t go on to “construct a soul” (May 20 reading of “My Utmost for His Highest”).
Hope leads to magnanimity (the aspiration of the spirit to great and noble things); and humility (an attitude of the will that acknowledges that God is Creator and I am creature) protects magnanimity from pride.
Hope is imperative to healthy emotions (Psa.42). Tom Marshall says, “The attitude of openness and expectancy that the Bible calls hope is vitally important for our emotional balance…Every good and perfect gift comes from our Father who is totally unvarying in His goodness (Jas.1:17; Rom.8:28)…Often we perceive situations as threatening or beyond our capacity to manage, and so we react defensively in fear, or anger, or irritation. But when we have an open attitude towards God…we see situations and circumstances from a place of inner security, we measure difficulties and problems against the ability of God who is for us and on our side.”
For emotional healing (one of the greatest needs in the Church today), hope is significant in three ways:
1. It gives the Holy Spirit access to cleanse and heal the hurts that often lie buried in our feelings…it is the expectant, trusting openness of hope that allows the HS into the emotions to deal with buried needs.
2. It enables the HS to remove emotional hang-ups that may have inhibited growth in this area of our personality. Many Christians are spiritually and mentally mature, but remain emotionally immature, and Paul says we are to grow up into Him…(Ep.4:15). The Holy Spirit is the Spirit of adoption who brings us into maturity as sons and daughters. He can remove the blockage, whether it be fear of failure, self-hatred, inferiority complex, etc.
3. This attitude of expectant welcome allows the Holy Spirit to express His nature in us. Openness is the key to how the fruit of the Spirit is grafted into our nature. The various manifestations of the Spirit’s nature are meant to be experienced in our feelings because they are themselves feelings and because feelings are the most powerful motivators of behavior.
Two enemies of hope:
1. Despair: a premature determination that you are not destined for fulfillment. This is a decision we’ve made, even if unconscious, and we must take responsibility for it. Repentance is needed.
2. Presumption: the perverse anticipation of fulfillment; the presumption that I’m ok as I am and that God will change me and therefore I can be passive about any moral effort on my part. This too requires repentance.
Humility teaches us that we are not complete and that any progress we make through moral effort is by God’s grace. Magnanimity teaches us that we are great and noble and must live up to God’s fullness for us.
How to nurture hope
1. Begin with confession and repentance of the sin of despair or of presumption and receive God’s forgiveness.
2. Begin regularly practicing the Presence of the Lord Jesus. We start this in conscious and intentional worship and adoration, times of personal and corporate worship, gazing on Him and allowing Him to define us. This requires discipline and patience and permission to fail. Hope is strongly connected with worship! Hope grows as one concentrates on the One Who is the Source of all good things and Who will never fail in any promise (Josh.21:45).
3. The regular exercising of the gift of tongues, if you have that gift, is a simple way to nurture hope.
Thank you, Lord, that you are the God of hope. Fill us with all joy and peace in believing so that by the power of the Holy Spirit we may abound in hope. (Rom.15:13). Show us, Spirit of God, where we have allowed despair or presumption to keep us from the healing and motivating virtue of hope in these days of testing and difficulties. Make us radical worshippers of Jesus in these dark days! Thank You that you are doing this for Your Church - we worship YOu alone...
Have a wonderful week! Next week we'll conclude this book with chapter 25, The Word Made Flesh. (Once again...a reminder that the next book is Wounds that Heal by Stephen Seamands.)
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