Human beings are complicated creatures designed and created by God to reflect his glory. Our lives consist of many things, including physical, intellectual, social, spiritual and emotional components. These different characteristics make us each a unique person.
Out of all of these distinct parts of our lives, our emotional self is one that we often struggle with the most. Emotions are powerful but hard to define–even confusing! So we often tend to neglect our emotional health—even denying some of what we think are the more negative emotions.
As followers of Christ we are called to accept our emotions as a beautiful gift from the loving God who made us. They are, after all, core to who we are. In fact, God himself, in whose image we are created, is an emotional God who cares deeply and passionately about the world. To try to stifle our emotions is to risk becoming less than what God intends—what Pete Scazzero calls “empty shells with smiley faces painted on them” (Scazzero, Emotionally Healthy Spirituality, p. 44).
Only as we learn to accept the gift of our emotions can we be transformed by God into the people he intends us to be.
