When the father put us into Christ, he created an internal environment within us that would always be centered around his passion for his son, Jesus. He sees us in Christ and loves us with the same identical love that he has for Jesus. His declaration that “This is my beloved son in whom I am well pleased” (Mark 1: 9-12), is the cornerstone of our relationship in him. He loves our placement in Jesus!
In Christ we learn to love life in all its forms. We enjoy the journey. We celebrate who God is for us, no matter the situation. We rejoice in his name and his nature; Our passion is derived from his intention. We relax under pressure because he is our peace. We let go of fear because he is our perfect love. In troubled times we rejoice because His joy is a huge source of strength to us. Wherever we look, no matter the circumstances, he makes provision of himself. We learn to live a life of celebration.
Because life contains many emotions, it is vital that we develop a spirituality that empowers us to be content, constant, and consistent with the nature of God. Suppressing our emotional makeup can lead us into an intellectual relationship that uses logic in order to attempt to experience who God is for us. When our inner man of the spirit is not partnering with the Holy Spirit, we try to partner with God in our head rather than our heart. In this context we become bound by logic, which is many times more dangerous than emotion.
We partner with the Lord when we understand and receive the fullness of his passion for us in Jesus.
We allow ourselves to become vulnerable to the joyful, restful, kind and loving nature of God. We enjoy his goodness towards us. By surrendering our will to his, everything in his nature creates a God-given upgrade in our personality. We become like him in our emotions, thinking and perspective. His loving kindness and gracious personality conform us to his image.
What God is consistently, becomes our truest identity. Transformation comes by the renewing of our mind (Romans 12: 1-2) in the context of being “in Christ”. If our thinking is to go to the required level, our logic must give way to wisdom. Logic will keep our experience with God earthbound and shallow. Our thinking becomes conservative and our experience of God is defined by a traditional, middle of the road approach to spirituality that prevents us from encountering God in the heavenly places. Knowing God becomes more scholastic than experiential. When head knowledge rules our academic approach to God, it prevents us from having amazing, astonishing experiences with him that transform every facet of our lives. Logic will often talk us out of living by faith. It’ll rationalize our spiritual potential away from the supernatural towards a form of God that has no power.
Wisdom is the understanding of how God sees, thinks and likes to do things. It gives us a language that empowers faith and enables us to overcome in all things. When our emotions partner with wisdom we experience this passionate disposition in all our life situations. We count everything as joy, and we learn the power and the beauty of rejoicing and thanksgiving. We are therefore not available for negative thinking that impacts on our emotional outlook. We learn to become glad, peaceful, unworried individuals who are basking in the cheerful nature of God, which upgrades are courage. (tharseo means “to take courage and be of good cheer”). It is used in Matthew 9: 2, 22, 14: 27; Mark 6 :50, 10: 49; Luke 8: 48; John 16: 33 and Acts 23: 11.)
Rendering ourselves unemotional or controlling our feelings (so that we can function) for too long is damaging to our health and relationships. Emotions are a release for us. They are a unique expression of Christ in us. They can be liberating in our restoration and a place of celebration in our life. God gave us emotions so that we could experience him in all of his creation. In Christ our emotions have been redeemed from negativity. They are no longer subject to the world, the flesh, and the devil. When our old nature was crucified in Christ our susceptibility to negative emotions died with him-2 Corinthians 5: 17.
Emotional highs are built on the stable platform of the fruit of the Spirit- Galatians 5: 22-23. That means that our high encounter with God’s passion for us is not to be followed by an emotional low. Joy, peace, rest, love and patience etc, when they are practiced constantly will put us into the same emotional state of being as the Lord. He is in us and we are in him. Lows are much shallower and more temporary when experienced through God’s loving Nature. Weeping may last for a night(temporary) but joy comes in the morning(permanent) and kicks it out of the house-Psalm 30: 5.
Obviously, there are some lows that are difficult and powerful in the extreme. We had times of intense pain and grief; personal attack and judgment; severe oppression and misunderstanding.
In those times God is our salvation. He gives us the comforter (John 14: 16-18, 26-27; John 16: 7, 13-15). The comforter empowers our emotions to not be troubled. He teaches us the way of peace, joy, patience, and rest. In the worst of times he guides our emotions into the grace of God so that we can experience relief and gain a release. We learn redemption as we discover a long-suffering with joy(Colossians 1: 11); faith and patience (Hebrews 6: 12); love overcoming fear (1 John 4: 18), and mercy triumphing over judgment (James 2: 13).
Love, joy and peace are the norm for someone placed in Christ. For Negative emotions we have the comforter, who empowers our heart in difficult circumstances, so that the enemy does not get a stronghold in our pain and sadness. The comforter calls time-out on sorrow and weeping in order to restore us to the joyful nature of God. Being in Christ emotionally is a standard norm of heaven and a continuous experience of life in the Spirit.