Cultivation of a Christ-Like Emotional Life

Introduction: The Call to Cultivate a Christ-Like Emotional Life

0:04 The following message was delivered at the 1991 Reformed Baptist Singles Conference. With that review behind us, we come to take up in a very practical vein what I am calling counsels concerning the cultivation of a Christ-like emotional life.

0:26 I hope I've laid sufficient groundwork biblically and theologically and in the explicit study of the characteristics of our Lord's emotions so that I need not persuade you that you and I ought to cultivate a Christ-like emotional life. I hope you're convinced on that point. But now the question is, how do I go about it? What are the specifics of cultivating such an emotional life?

0:55 Well, as time permits, I wish I had seven, the number of completeness, but I have six counsels to give you. Maybe you'll come up with the seventh in our discussion tomorrow, God willing. But if you and if I together are to cultivate a Christ-like emotional life, counsels, if not couched in these words, at least capturing these concepts, must be counsels that become part and parcel of our spiritual experience. And the first is this.

Counsel 1: Immediately Repent of Un-Christ-Like Emotions

1:29 Cultivate the spiritual discipline of immediately repenting of your own sins. Of every un-Christ-like emotion which registers in your consciousness.

1:45 Cultivate the spiritual discipline, and I do this for some of you taking notes, cultivate the spiritual discipline of immediately repenting of every un-Christ-like emotion which registers in your consciousness. Unlike us. Our Lord, who had no indwelling sin, you and I, though united to Christ, and the reign of sin has been broken, we have the ugly reality of remaining sin. And as we saw, as the result of the fall, sin has infected our emotional constitution. And just as surely as we, as the children of God, are under obligation to cultivate the spiritual discipline of immediately repenting of words that are not like Christ's words, of deeds that are contrary to the law and example of Christ, we must cultivate a spiritual discipline in which we repent immediately of any un-Christ-like emotion which registers upon our consciousness.

3:10 This is just saying in another way what the Apostle says several times in the epistles in terms of the put-off and put-on motif of Christian growth. For example, in Colossians chapter 3, we are exhorted in verse 5,

3:31 Therefore your members which are upon the earth. And then he specifies certain sins. But it is not enough simply to, Put certain things to death. He says in verse 12, Put on, therefore, as God's elect, holy and beloved, a heart of compassion, kindness, lowliness, meekness, long-suffering, forbearing one another, and forgiving one another, if any have a complaint against any, even as the Lord forgave you, so also do ye.

4:07 This put-off, put-on motif is found several times, in the Pauline literature. And what I am saying, in a different way, is that if you would cultivate Christ-like emotional experience, you must cultivate the spiritual discipline of immediately repenting of every un-Christ-like emotion which registers upon your consciousness. Take, for example, Ephesians 4 in verse 31.

4:43 Here we are commanded, Let all bitterness,

4:50 the moment there registers in your consciousness a spirit of bitterness towards God or towards man. God gave me a rod. The moment...

5:05 Christ never thought that, even when his Father was emptying the vials of his wrath upon him. He never once thought, My Father gave me a rod, dear. That's a wicked, un-Christ-like thought. Repent of it, the moment it registers on your consciousness.

5:26 Repent of it! It's wicked! It's evil! It's believing the devil's original lie that God's a meanie.

5:34 And some of you may actually be sitting in a pool of that very emotion, of bitterness against God. I frankly don't understand how a man can be a Christian and wallow in bitterness against God. What's God owe you anyway? The only thing he owes me is hell.

5:50 Anything beyond hell is all grace.

5:54 And when I hear people say, Well, I'm fighting bitterness against God. I wonder, have they ever seen their sin? But apparently it is possible for a true Christian to fall into a temporary lapse. But oh, don't let it become a pool in which you wallow.

6:08 The minute it registers, let all bitterness be put away from you. All wrath, that is sinful wrath, and all anger,

6:19 not righteous, holy anger, but anger growing out of offended dignity, my so-called offended rights. Anger growing out of selfishness and petulance. The moment you're conscious of that spirit of anger that would take God's wrath into your own hands, that wishes ill upon the object of your anger, let all of it, not some of it, or only that which will break out into overt deeds, let all bitterness and wrath, and anger, and clamor and railing, those are the outward manifestations, be put away from you with all malice, ill will. I am never like Christ if I have ill will to anyone.

7:05 He had no ill will even to those who impaled him on a cross and spat upon him and mocked him. His words were not, Father, send your thunderbolts upon them. His words were, Father, forgive them. They know not.

7:20 Father, forgive them. There was no malice in the heart of the Son of God. The emotion of malice never once tramped through his spirit with its muddy feet. God says don't let him tramp and stay in your own heart.

7:35 You and I must cultivate that spiritual discipline that the moment any unchristlike emotion registers in our consciousness, whether we're driving down the street and someone goes right through a stop sign carelessly and recklessly, cuts us off, we slam on the brakes and there rises up a spirit that wants to bash them then and there. Say, oh Lord Jesus, you wouldn't have felt that way. Cleanse me in your precious blood. Eyes wide open, milliseconds after you feel it, go to the fountain open for sin and uncleanness.

8:13 You get into work and the boss makes demands that are absolutely unconscionable and even beyond your contractual arrangement. You don't go into the ladies' room, you don't go into the ladies' room, you don't go into the ladies' room, you don't go into the ladies' room in a huff and there watch the steam come out of your ears. You say, oh Lord, this spirit of bitterness and wrath is wrong. It's registering on my consciousness.

8:34 It's not like your son. It is not like your son. Lord Jesus, wash me in your blood. Cleanse me of that sin of resentment.

8:48 He that covers his sin shall not prosper. But whoso confesses and forsakes them shall obtain mercy. Proverbs 28, 13. And you will never grow.

8:57 In Christ-like emotional life unless you cultivate the spiritual discipline of immediately, not at the end of the day, not on Saturday night to prepare for the Lord's day, but cultivate the spiritual discipline of immediately repenting of every un-Christ-like emotion which registers on your consciousness. Whatever that un-Christ-like emotion may be, directed to others, or directed to God, or directed to your circumstances, self-pity with your lot, self-pity with your ongoing burden of singleness, and I do not minimize the burden of singleness, but self-pity is not your right.

9:51 It is on Christ. And you need to repent. And any time it tries to come back in, tell him it's not welcome, and if it sneaks in through a crack under the door, and you see it, plead the covering of the blood of Christ and turn from it. That's my first counsel.

Counsel 2: Plead for the Holy Spirit to Form Christ-Like Emotions

10:10 You will not make any progress in the cultivation of Christ-like emotional experience without cultivating that spiritual discipline of immediate repentance toward anything that is un-Christ-like registering in your consciousness. Second counsel. Cultivate the discipline of pleading for the Holy Spirit to form Christ-like emotions within you.

10:44 Cultivate the discipline of pleading for the Holy Spirit to form Christ-like emotions in you.

10:54 Now, what do I mean by that word of counsel? Simply this. We read in our Bibles, Galatians 5, 22 and following, the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, long-suffering, gentle, goodness, faith or faithfulness, meekness, self-control. Against such, there is no law.

11:22 You live by those graces, and notice how many of them come to light at the level of the emotional constitution. Love, joy, peace, long-suffering, gentleness, goodness, marginal, self-control, surely touches the emotions. Where do they come from? They are the fruit of the Spirit.

11:47 They are not plants that grow in the Adamic soil. They grow as the Spirit's work flourishes in our hearts. And though we are indwelt by the Spirit, and we possess the Spirit, we are still to plead for greater supplies and for increased motions of the Spirit's operation within our hearts. And if you are not in the Spirit, if you would have a Christ-like emotional life, then I urge you to cultivate the discipline of pleading for the Holy Spirit to form Christ-like emotions in you.

12:27 In that place of business, there's that person who is like sandpaper in his or her disposition. Every time they're around you, they rub you raw. You simply don't have enough natural patience to have anything toward them but a tolerable, truly distant civility. You're not going to have genuine yearnings for their salvation.

12:51 You're not going to be willing to pay the price to cultivate the kind of friendship that will earn you the right to preach the gospel to them. It's not in you! Ah, but it's in our Lord Jesus. All this dwells in Him.

13:05 He was able to love the unlovely and show compassion to the outcast and patience and long-suffering with the least. Beautiful of people. And He's able to create His own gracious emotions in you. The kind of 1 Corinthians 13 love that bears all things, that suffers long.

13:30 Love suffers long. That means God's going to put you with people that make you suffer. What's long-suffering but suffering for a long time? I don't understand a word if it ain't that.

13:40 That's why some of you are never going to get married. You're looking for somebody with whom you never have to love them biblically because love suffers long. You want someone with whom there'll be no suffering, at least not for a long time. I mean, have I read something into the verse?

14:00 Love suffers long. If you're waiting to find Miss Wright or Mr. Wright with whom you'll not have to exercise the love that suffers long, forget it. Only such men and women are in heaven.

14:28 And in heaven they neither marry nor are given in marriage. You've got it all messed up. You don't know what a rotten sinner you are until you get married. Then you can find out what a great Savior Christ is.

14:44 That when you begin to really discover how much sin is yet in you that's drawn out in the multi-level intimacy of marriage, then you know how much sin is in you. But then you go to Christ for much more grace than you ever had appropriated in Him before. And then you grow in grace in ways you never did before. You have to cultivate, cultivate the discipline of pleading for the Holy Spirit to form Christ-like emotions.

15:16 And He delights to do it to the magnifying purpose. Amen. And this is where I pray God will get some of you and get you good. Because I love you enough to believe unless God gets you here in great measure you're going to be crippled in your spiritual life.

Counsel 3: Determine That Emotions Do Not Determine Reality

15:41 Here's the third counsel. Determine to believe that emotions do not determine reality. Determine that emotions do not determine reality. Many people live on the horrible notion that their feelings are ultimate.

16:11 If I feel it to be so, it must be so. What I fear of what is, that's heresy. This is what God's is. And what God says is, is.

16:34 You get something in all that double talk? Look at our blessed Lord. We see it shining through so clearly in the cross of Christ. We see it shining through in the temptation of Christ.

16:45 And I want to focus on just those two incidents in the Gospels. He stands in the waters of Jordan. The heavens are open. The Spirit of God descends upon Him in some visible bodily form.

16:58 And out of the heavens a voice speaks. This is my beloved Son, in whom I'm well pleased. For these 30 years passing through every single stage of human development and experience and maturation, I've never seen Him think of thought, look a look, say a word, touch an object. What He's done and has become is well pleasing to me.

17:28 And according to the parallel passage, He not only spoke that about Him, He said it to Him. You are my beloved Son, in whom I'm well pleased. What's the next incident in the life of Jesus? Then the Spirit driveth Him into the wilderness to be tempted of the devil.

17:50 How in the world He put the two things together. I'm well pleased with my Son. I drive Him into the wilderness to come into hand-to-hand combat with all the distilled essence of evil and wickedness the devil hints. I tell you, if Jesus was to judge His Father's heart from His feelings, He'd have had hard thoughts about His Father.

18:21 From the openings and the words... You think there would have been a vacation on the Riviera, all expenses paid.

18:31 But the Spirit drives Him into the wilderness to be tempted of the devil. And so weary did our Lord become by that ordeal, not only through His fasting, but through those intense wrestlings with the powers of darkness, that one of His creatures, Luke tells us, an angel had to come and minister to Him. But you see, Jesus did not doubt reality by His feelings. He interpreted reality by the words of His Father.

19:11 And that comes to an even greater expression on the cross. For the Father spoke again prior to our Lord's going to the cross. And when He's upon the cross and pours out the billows of His wrath, there was taken from our Lord every last felt sense of the favor of God. The only thing He could feel was the displeasure of God.

19:36 That's all He could feel. All Thy billows and Thy waves are gone over me, is the prophetic utterance of Psalm 69. Psalm 22. My God, my God, why have You forsaken me?

19:49 Why are You so far from my groaning? See my bone. All He felt was forsakenness. All He felt.

20:09 Yet how did He address my... Why?

20:24 He did not forsake His faith in the fact that God was His Father and was His God. He didn't say, Oh God. He said, My God. I have but a...

20:44 But the measure of reality is not what I feel, but what You've said. And You said, Behold my servant whom I uphold. You promised to uphold me in all the ordeal of my suffering. And though all I...

21:01 Is... All I...

21:07 Is not the measure of reality. What You've said is the measure of reality. And I believe that Golgotha represents the greatest act of faith if I may say our Lord had to exercise faith found anywhere in the scriptures. When the sins of all His people of all ages were being heaped upon Him and the wrath of God unmixed was poured out upon Him, yet He clung to God as His God.

21:41 Calvin captured this when he writes, Although He suffered agony beyond measure, yet He does not cease to call God His God. When He cries out that He's forsaken by Him, we've already pointed out the difference between natural feeling and the knowledge of faith. There was nothing to prevent Christ from mentally conceiving that God had deserted Him. According to the dictation of His natural feeling and at the same time retaining His faith that God was well disposed to Him.

22:20 And this appears with sufficient clearness from the two clauses of the complaint. For before He gives expression to His trial He begins by saying that He flees to God as His God. He repels by this shield of faith the appearance of dereliction which presented itself in opposition. In short, in this dire anguish His faith was unimpaired so that in an act of deploring that He was forsaken He still trusted in the present help of God.

22:58 And this is where some of you are chronically crippled in your Christian life. You have made for so long the determiner of reality and you've got to stop it because Jesus didn't do it. The determiner of reality was the Word of God not His feelings. And once you have established on Biblical grounds that you have been brought to faith and repentance and that Jesus Christ is your righteousness and all the promises of God are in Him, yea and nay then you need to begin to deal with realities determined by the Word in any given set of circumstances. In Christ sealed with His blood comes this promise to every child of God to every child of God comes this Word He knows our frame He knows we are dust He will not chide neither will He keep His anger forever. Lo, I am with you each and every one of the days even to the consummation of the age when you pass through the waters I will be with you and through the fire it shall not kindle upon you. Those promises are yea

24:23 and amen in Christ. You say, but I don't care what you feel. You will never feel anything akin to what our Lord felt upon the cross. When the fiery billows of the wrath of hell poured down upon Him out of heaven and all He felt was abandonment all He felt was separation but He didn't make His feelings the measure of reality.

24:51 And some of you will have no stability until you determine to believe that your emotions do not determine reality. You wake up tomorrow morning and you feel like the Lord is near you wonderful but it's not your feelings that makes Him near you it's His own promise. So when the feelings leave He's still near you though you don't feel Him. That means you can go to pray to Him with just as much peace with you as you go when you feel He's with you.

25:31 And for those of you with more radical mood swings you dear women in terms of the way God's made you with your hormonal changes monthly and then coming at that difficult period in your life and it's no laughing matter for some of you who have severe PMS it is severe. I've counseled with women. The whole world seems to stand on its end but remember in the midst of all of those funky, freaky, uncontrollable feelings God hasn't twitched one inch from His throne and He's not retracted one promise and you can look up and say oh God even though I can't feel it like I can after my hormones get straightened out you've got to learn to do that or you're never going to make any progress in the Christian life and I wouldn't wish any man in the world on you. If I were involved in counseling any couple about getting married one of the questions I'd ask when it got serious enough is have you begun to learn to regulate the cycle of your monthly emotional mood swings by the word of God? If you're not mature enough to come to grips with that

26:55 you're not ready to get married. You'll cause some guy to wish God had made him a eunuch and he never got in that mess. But God knows that and you can come to Him. Don't be embarrassed.

27:10 Tell God He made you that way. And the problem's been complicated because of the entrance of sin, I know but He understands that. But it doesn't change anything. Is the cross because you've got an unusual amount of hormones creating an unusual amount of fluid pressure upon certain parts of your brain that make you think crazy?

27:35 Is the cross suddenly rooted out of history and the Holy Ghost rooted out of reality and the intercession of Christ? Are you ready to say all that reality vaporizes because of your hormones? We've got an awful little God and you men your problem may not be your hormones in the same way there are other pressures that you feel in a peculiar way as men. God knows when it produces doubts about yourself and doubts about your identities that really matter.

28:10 ...to believe that the emotions do not determine reality but that reality is determined by the Word of God.

Counsel 4: Determine That Emotions Do Not Determine Your Path of Duty

28:22 But I must hasten on to council number four and this is equally crucial with three you usually stand or fall together. Determine to live so that your emotions do not determine your path of duty. Determine so that your emotions do not determine your path of duty. As reality is defined by the Word of God so is duty.

29:00 And here again Christ is the great example Gethsemane is the most vivid example of it. Where were Christ's emotions when once the Father allowed him to feel of what Golgotha would mean. He knew from the time he left the Father's presence in heaven that he came to this earth to die. The scripture says he set his face steadfastly to go to Jerusalem.

29:34 He said in strange words in another occasion I have a baptism to be baptized with and how am I straightened until it be accomplished. He was under a holy compulsion pressing him to the cross. He says I'm hedged in the old English word straightened means hedged in. He said I have a baptism to undergo and I'm pressured and hedged up straightened until it be accomplished.

30:06 He was under a holy compulsion pressing him to the cross. He says I'm hedged in the old English words hedged in. He said I have a baptism to undergo and I'm pressured and hedged up it is accomplished. I'm moving not with reluctant half steps to the cross, but with determined full steps, wide-eyed. I walk to the place of my destiny. And when he gets in Gethsemane, what it would actually mean to undergo the realities of that destiny, the cup of the Father's wrath and abandonment in the darkened heavens and the tasting of the wrath of God was put to his lips and it was more than he could bear. It overcame him. He staggers and he falls and he's in such an agony that the small capillaries burst, a medical condition called hematidrosis, I think it is, mingles with his sweat. And what happens to his emotions?

31:10 Look at Mark 14 in verse 36. And he said, I have a father, term of endearment, all fatherhood. Possible unto thee, remove, be it not what I will, but what thou wilt. His emotions are telling him, I can't bear it. His emotions are saying, I want a path in which the cup is bypassed. So he boldly prays, remove this cup. Everything in his whole emotional constitution and all of its holiness, unstained, unsullied by selfishness. And sin says, the cup is too much. Remove it. How be it? Not what I will. And his will

32:13 to have the cup removed was not sinful. If so, he would not have been a perfect savior.

32:23 It would have been sinful for him to have gone to the cup with a cavalier attitude. That would have been to make light of the fierce wrath of Almighty God. It was holy that Christ should pray, remove the cup. Nevertheless, not what I will. When my will is under the influence of all of my consciousness of what the cup will mean and what the cup will entail and the horrible impressions the cup will bring, I have an aversion. Life is not the aversions that are the mingled combination of my feelings and my perceptions. Lo, I come to do thy will, O my God. Those were the words I uttered when I left your presence, Father. A body thou hast prepared

33:18 me. Lo, I condemn thee to do thy will. Nevertheless, not my will, but thine be done, if I must walk over the belly of all of my sanctified feelings. Duty is determined by the Father's word, not my feelings.

33:41 You want to be Christ-like? That's it. When you come to the place where you don't deny your feelings exist. I've gotten to know her. I have no reason to believe she's spiritually minded. She's got things in her eyeball. She's got ambitions that are contrary to spiritual mindedness and to a hope that will be established upon kingdom principles and seek first the kingdom. But, O God, nevertheless, my emotional affinity to her is not going to be the rule of my life, but my commitment to do your will. And, O God, I've told you, I will not marry a woman who will not be a helper, that I'll love loosely

34:44 to the world, that I'll love the things of the Spirit, and not the woman who picks that picture, though everything in me longs for her, loves her, and I'm ready to give her up, because your word demands it. That's what we're talking about. And you flip it around,

35:12 and you say, O God, if I give up this one, it may not be another one. But, O God, I've seen, I've seen, I've seen character traits, and I've addressed them. I'm not looking for the perfect man, but I am looking for a man who's following you with a perfect heart, for a man who wants to follow you, who's willing to receive my admonitions, willing to let me be a helper answering to his needs. He's got to argue me down every time I try to point out a fault from the word of God, and he's got a better way with words than I do. And, O God, though everything in me longs for him and yearns for him, he's not the man. He's not the man. He's not the man that I see in your word that would be according to your will. O my Father, if it be possible, nevertheless. That's what we're talking about. Don't you dare enter

36:10 romantic relations until you've sorted out this issue. I'm determined to live so that my emotions do not determine my path. This must be God's choice. I love it. Nonsense.

36:28 You could get infatuated with a very devil. Not have a twitch of emotion with a godly saint who is God's gift to you. In the beginning.

36:41 You see, infatuation is irrational and therefore morally neutral. Infatuation is no indication of the will of God. None what so ever. Nor is the absence of it an indication of the will of God as to whether or not you ought to allow a relationship to develop to the place where you can begin to know. This is where some of you are all. Unless you feel so much on your feel-o-meter. You'll never even look twice at a godly man that's interested in you. And God isn't going to bend His Standard to your arbitrary standards. You show me in the Bible where you've got to have thirty-five and a half degrees on the feel-o-meter before you respond to the interest of a godly young man? You show me from the Bible how happy I'd be in his pattern

37:52 of dating. Show me from the Bible. I've yet to see it in the Bible. And you men sitting around waiting for Miss Wright to sweep you off your feet. Fantastically I got to wear these shoes now. I know you have lots of red under Prince George's feet. I know you've been through some rough times. This looks so much funind alive. Not that you'd play with it.

38:02 feet with a glance of her eyes before you have some holy moxie to start pursuing with a godly, gracious, tenacious pursuit? I don't understand the men in my generation. I see so many godly young women, and I know them well enough to know they're not fakes as much as I can know someone else, and I say, what is wrong with a generation that resisted the pressure to buy biblical sense, submissive keepers at home and mothers of children? What is wrong that they don't pursue them to the place where they either have to get the cops to say, get the guy off my case, or they're down at a marriage altar, one or the other?

38:56 I'm telling you, and I say this with my wife here, and she understands the spirit in which I say it, because she and I could be mother and father to three quarters of you, and big brother and sister to the rest of you. I've said, if I were 25 years younger, and in most of the churches that you represent, there'd be one of you. One of you wouldn't have a chance. One of you. It wouldn't be long before one of you would be tracked down and wedded and bedded and married. I don't understand it. You men, are you all fuckers? And plop into your arms when you show an interest? Don't you feel

39:41 a manly challenge to say, I'm gonna win her? Nervous. The first time she said, no, I don't want to date. You find out from the other guys, no, she doesn't like you. You roll over and play dead. The concept of manly, the concept of the aggressiveness of the man.

40:11 The problem is right here. You haven't learned to determine to live so that your emotions don't determine your path of duty. If you have no calling for which celibacy advances the kingdom of God, 1 Corinthians 7, if you are not a eunuch from birth, or made a eunuch by man, or have been made a eunuch for the kingdom of heaven's sake, that's the parallel to 1 Corinthians 7, you ought to assume that pursuing a wife is not given duty. And if you pursue a wife, you're not given duty. You're not given duty. You're not given duty.

40:45 If you pursued other things with the wimpiness with which you pursued a wife, you wouldn't have anything in life, probably not even a shirt on your back tonight. Whoso finds a wife finds a good thing. Some of you think that, well, that means I sit around and wait until something just pops up somewhere. That's not the concept of the word of God. The whole imagery of the Lord is our spiritual husband. Seeking us, winning us, wooing us. Read the great imagery in Ezekiel of God, the husband of Israel. In Ephesians chapter 5, and I'm convinced that buried down in the midst of some of that, this isn't a panacea for all of you, but some of you and perhaps more than I realize. The problem is, you've never come to the place where you're determined to live so that your emotions don't determine your path of duty. Now, someone may abuse that and go out and say, Pastor Martin said this, Pastor Martin, I don't care what you say. I got the tapes to prove I didn't say it.

Counsel 5: Live with Emotions Under the Control of the Holy Spirit

41:47 And then, counsel number five. Determined to live with your emotions under the control of the Holy Spirit. Now, in the beginning, this may sound like a contradiction of one of the observations we made about our Lord, but it isn't. Determined to live with your emotions, I didn't say neutered or suppressed, but I said determined to live with your emotions under the control of the Spirit.

42:19 Okay? The longer I live, the more I'm fascinated by the last of the nine-fold fruit of the Spirit. What is it? Self-control. Isn't that amazing? The fruit of the Spirit is control of myself.

42:32 Well, if it's the Spirit, how come I do it? The fruit of the Spirit is controlling myself. Now, if it said the fruit of the Spirit is God-controlled, I could understand that. But it says the fruit of the Spirit is self-control.

42:49 Well, if I'm in control of myself, then what is God controlling? Well, if you're in control of the will, the Lord is God- squishy. Or as you say, I was necessarily in the control of my common sense in Enc movimiento that God is the called one of the natural law. The slip Friday, controlling myself, how is the Holy Spirit doing? And if He's doing, how do I do it? Well, because you see in the work of redemption, after God has saved us, He does not work apart from us or against us, but with us and by us. Philippians 2, 12 and 13. Work out your own salvation with fear and trembling, for it is God who works in you, both to will and to work for His good pleasure.

43:18 I can do all things. Oh boy, you're really bragging. Oh, through Him who strengthens me. I do them, but He strengthens me. He doesn't do them apart from me. I don't do them apart from Him.

43:33 That sounds like double talk. If so, that's Bible talk. I'm sorry, that's what God has said. I can do through Him who strengthens me. The fruit of this control. Work out your own salvation. God works in you, to will and to work for His good pleasure. And what I'm saying in this fifth counsel is determined to live with your emotions, under the control of the Spirit. That means under prayerful, godly self-control. That's the Ezekiel 24 example. Isn't that a beautiful example of it? Here's a man still so in love with his wife, though no spring chicken, God says she's still the desire of his eyes. He's only got one set of eyes

44:21 as far as a romantic interest. He says, I'm going to take away from you the desire of your eyes. And the natural thing, emotionally, would be to weep and to wail and to sorrow and grieve. But God says, look, because I want you to be assigned to the nation of Israel. Of what I'm going to do to them, I am forbidding you openly to weep, openly to carry on in the morning that would be natural. I'm telling you, you can sigh and no more. And what does the text say? And in the morning, my wife died and I did as the Lord commanded. Self-control.

45:01 Self-control, even over the heart-wrenching emotion of grief when God took away not some old battle axe that he wasn't getting along with anyway.

45:13 So that when she breathed her last, he clicked his heels and says, Hallelujah, Lord, free at last, free at last. No. She was the desire of his eyes.

45:25 Still the darling of his heart. He still had pet names for her. It's one of the biggest indications of the health of a marriage longer than 10, 12, 15 years. I asked the couples, what are your pet names?

45:38 Usually the couples that come to me when their marriages are bad enough to need to see me, they don't have any pet names. Very, very indicative.

45:46 Song of Solomon, my dove, my love, my fair one. See, God's interested in those little things. You didn't know about that, did you? That's all in the Bible.

45:55 It's all in the Bible. It says that the prophet in spite of all pent-up grief, in spirit wrought self-control, he did what the Lord said. Now, you see, he wasn't suppressing his emotions thinking they were evil. He was controlling them to a higher end in the revealed will of God. Now, bring that over into the New Testament.

46:21 Romans 12, 15. Very simple text. It says, Rejoice with those who rejoice. Weep with those who weep.

46:32 You get up one morning, you're walking down the street, and you feel like you get the world on your back.

46:38 You're not judging reality by what you feel, but it doesn't change the fact that you're in a dump. You've prayed. You believe God hears. God knows. God's going to bring you out of it. Weeping may endure for the night. Joy cometh in the morning. But I mean you really are under it.

46:52 You've got a juniper tree tied to your back.

46:56 And you meet your brother. He comes down the street whistling the doxology. He's singing hymns, and he's glowing like a candle. And he looks at you and says, How you doing brother in the Lord? Rejoicing.

47:13 You're down in the dumps. What does God say you do? Throw a bucket of cold water on his joy by just My Lord's good to you, but he ain't good to me.

47:24 God says you rejoice with those that rejoice. You can control your emotional state. Forget yourself. Say, What is it that's made you rejoice?

47:34 Well, this is what God gave me in the Word. This is what God gave me in answer to prayer. And you forget yourself! And you let your heart put alongside his heart.

47:45 It's warm and glowing with rejoicing. And before long, what are you doing? You're rejoicing with him who rejoices. The fruit of the Spirit is self-control. Next morning, your brother comes down the street. He's still on cloud nine rejoicing. You're still with your juniper tree. And today, he says, My brother, you didn't look so well yesterday. You're not looking so good this morning either. My brother, there's an awful lot I want to share with you that God's done for me that's made me so full of joy and thankfulness. But tell me, what's eating at you? And lo and behold, it's not just some wispy, nebulous feeling. He's been brought to great trial and sorrow. He's found out that his wife has got breast cancer. He's found out that his teenage kid is involved in dope. He's found out that his father is going to be dying in the next...

48:44 I mean, real heavy stuff has come on him. This brother who's ready to click his heels, and he's on cloud nine. He says, Brother, those are real concerns. And he lays his heart alongside his brother's heart, and before long, tears come down his cheek as he puts his arm around him, and he weeps with the one who's weeping.

49:06 Now, you see, how can we fulfill that simple injunction if we don't know the control of the Holy Spirit over our emotions? Not the suppression of our emotions, no. Not the negation of our emotions, but being delivered from the tyranny of feeling that my emotions must be altered at any given point for any one of my fellow believers. No. Determined to live with your emotions under the control of the Spirit so that when it's necessary to weep with those who weep, you are able to weep with those who weep. He whose spirit is without restraint is like a city that is broken down, a city with its walls broken down, the writer to Proverbs says. And some of you have never learned the control of your spirit by the Holy Spirit in the realm of your emotions. Then my last counsel is this. Determined

Counsel 6: Live in Constant Hope of a Perfected Emotional Life in Heaven

50:09 to live in the constant hope of a perfected emotional life in heaven. Determined to live in constant hope of a perfected emotional life in heaven. You know, we make too little of heaven, but the Bible says in Romans 8, we are to live in heaven. We are saved in hope. Hope.

50:38 What is biblical hope? Not wishful thinking. It is confident expectation of divinely promised and divinely pledged future blessings. That's what biblical hope is. And we're saved in hope. We only get the down payment here. At our best moments, we've only got the down payment, the Arab arm. We've only got the earnest.

51:02 We've only got the first pledge. And like the Thessalonians who turned to God from idols to serve the living and the true God and to wait for his son out of the heavens. Dear young men and women, brothers and sisters, we desperately need a much more heavenly minded brand of Christianity.

51:22 The problem with some of you is you want all the holy emotions of heaven down here and you just ain't gonna have them. Then you wouldn't be antsy for heaven. God has determined to carry on the work of grace on earth so that we'll never, never, never get too comfortable down here. He's gonna make us antsy for heaven. Have you wondered sometime if God can perfect the spirit the moment it leaves the body at death so it can be right at home with God in all his holiness and with Abraham and Isaac? I'm gonna do more than he does down here. No lack of power. If he can do it the moment that spirit leaves the body, he does something in such an instant that makes it perfectly at home in the presence of Christ. Well,

52:09 I don't know all the reasons, but here's one of them. He doesn't want to do so much down here that ever makes us feel that this is our ultimate resting place. We're pilgrims and sojourners. We're just passing through and God wants us to be antsy to get home.

52:27 So whatever you experience in your emotional life, don't have expectations that go beyond the word of God. The flesh will always be lusting against the spirit and the spirit against the flesh. And though you may make great progress in being delivered from the tyranny of your emotions, being delivered from the horrible tyranny of being led about by your emotions like a pig is led about by the ring in its nose,

52:56 determined to live in the hope of a perfected emotional life in heaven because there and only there will we see him as he is and will perfectly love him, perfectly love all of his saints. We'll have perfect communication perfect affinity of spirit and God never wants us to get too comfortable down here. So have a realistic expectation fused to this determination to live in the light of that hope. Not only of a perfected ethical life so that I'll never break the law of God with my words and deeds, but a perfect emotional life. I'll never feel a feeling that won't please God. And every feeling I ought to have to please God and make me perfectly happy in God, I'll have every single one and I've got a sneaking suspicion and I'm so glad to hear an esteemed man who's gone before me preaching on this the other day. He's the only man I've ever heard talk about it. I've been afraid to talk about it publicly for fear people think I was crazy, but since he did, I can hide under his skirts. It was A.W. Tozer

54:08 and he spoke of the growth that will go on in heaven. To me, it's one of the most marvelous things to think that while God is God and I am the creature, the distance between the creature and the creator and the creature can never be bridged. The infinite the infinite can never be attained by the finite. But to think that I will grow in my capacity to feel and then every bit of that capacity will be filled up with nothing but holy feelings.

54:37 Grow in my capacity to love and then it'll all be filled up with nothing but love. Grow in my capacity to feel the sense of delight in doing the will of God, following the Lamb with us wherever he goes and then God will increase the capacity to feel delight and fill it with nothing but holy delight. And forever and ever we can grow and expand and still be nothing but creatures. And he will be the great and the infinite creator and out of his fullness we'll receive for all eternity. That's the heaven that gets me excited. And part of it will be my emotional life. I'll have emotions of love and zeal for God's honor in heaven, the likes of which I haven't begun to know down here. That's enough to make you want to go home, isn't it?

55:25 And to pray even so come Lord Jesus.

55:30 Jesus Christ, the pattern for our emotional life. May the Lord be pleased to take these things and to help us all that we may be more and more like our Savior in this crucial aspect. Of our God-given experience and constitution as the Lord's creatures and the Lord's servants. Let's pray together.