Investing your Emotions in Heaven

Can You Imagine What He Felt?
Can you imagine what it must have been like for God to walk around His creation after the fall of man? John 1.14 describes the “word become flesh.” We sometimes fly past passages like this as “something we already understand.” Let’s not gloss over that truth this time. There is a great deal more to be gleaned from the text in John 1.14 than a factual statement about who Jesus is.
Jesus is God in the flesh, fully God and fully man.This is a foundational doctrine of the Christian faith. This isn’t just a doctrinal truth, though. There are a number of relational realities and emotional elements that come into play when we think about the dynamics of God stepping foot on a fallen world. If we want to be disciples, we need to look deeper than doctrine and understand the heart of God through the person of Jesus. 

A holy God that seems at times unapproachable makes himself totally available and relatable to us in the person of Jesus Christ. We might as well take advantage of that and learn to take perspective with Jesus and learn from the way he exercised his emotions. Jesus felt so many of the emotions that we feel as walk through life;

• He was stirred deeply and upset at the state of the person with leprosy in Mark 1.40.
• He was amazed at the faith of the Centurion in Matthew 8.5-13… he “marveled.”
• In Matthew 9.36, he was moved with compassion for the lost.
• In John 11.35, he wept and experienced grief in the face of death when losing a friend. (Even though he knew he could raise him!)
• He rejoiced in the unfolding of the Father’s plan in Luke 10.21, even though it would ultimately end in his death.
• He was consumed with sorrow in Matthew 26.38 in the Garden before his crucifixion, because of the weight of sin.

What do all of these emotional expressions have in common? They all are pointed heavenward. What grieves God, grieves Jesus. What brings joy to God, brings joy to Jesus. Jesus’ full emotional energy is pointed at heaven and the things of heaven. 

Here’s the challenge—do you find in scripture Jesus wasting emotional energy being fanatical about a sports team or a political movement? Do you find Jesus spending emotional energy worrying about the perceptions of other people? Where does Jesus’ emotional energy go? Where should you spend yours?