Feelings are a normal part of the human experience. As Christians, we know that God created us as emotional beings and that our feelings come from Him (Psalm 139:13-14). Though our feelings can sometimes lead us astray, they are also an important aspect of our relationship with God and others. Here is an overview of some key biblical perspectives on feelings:
Feelings Are God-Given
The Bible affirms that our capacity to feel emotions is a gift from God. When God created humans, He gave us the ability to experience the entire spectrum of feelings – joy, sadness, anger, peace, grief, contentment, and more (Genesis 1:27, Ecclesiastes 3:4). Our feelings help us relate to others, avoid danger, and experience the fullness of being created in God’s image. Jesus Himself displayed a wide range of human emotions, showing that feelings are not contrary to godliness (John 11:35, Mark 3:5).
Feelings Should Be Expressed Healthily
The Bible encourages the healthy expression of our feelings, while cautioning against extremes. We see David freely pour out his feelings to God in the Psalms – whether joy, anguish, fear or loneliness. Jesus encourages us to acknowledge our feelings to Him in prayer, trusting His compassion and grace (Matthew 11:28-30). However, we are warned not to be controlled by emotions like rage or debilitating anxiety (Ephesians 4:26-27, Philippians 4:6-7). With God’s help, we can develop self-control over destructive feelings.
Feelings Can Reveal Our Heart’s True Condition
Our inner feelings can often expose what is really happening in our heart. Jesus said that “out of the overflow of the heart, the mouth speaks” (Luke 6:45). When our words and actions don’t match our inner feelings, it indicates a deeper heart issue. For example, if we act loving to someone outwardly but inwardly harbor anger, it reveals an area we need to bring to God for healing. Paying attention to our feelings helps us identify sins, wounds and lies we have believed so they can be addressed.
Feelings Should Not Be Trusted Above God and Truth
While feelings have value, they make a poor master. Our hearts are deceitful and our perceptions are flawed (Jeremiah 17:9, Proverbs 14:12). We cannot always trust our feelings to accurately reflect reality or lead us to wise decisions. God calls us to submit our feelings to the authority of His perfect Word, which always brings light and clarity (Psalm 119:105). We must test our shifty emotions against the solid foundations of biblical truth.
Feelings Can Lead Us to Worship
Our emotional experiences can lead us into deep and meaningful worship. Throughout Scripture, we see an interplay between the people of God’s circumstances, feelings, and worship. In times of suffering, they poured out raw laments to God (Psalm 13, 22). In times of joyful blessing, praise overflowed (Psalm 98, 100). Rejoicing, mourning, confidence, sorrow – God welcomes all our authentic feelings in worship as expressions of trust in Him.
Feelings Should Not Be Ignored or Suppressed
Since God gave us emotions, it is unhealthy to completely ignore them or funnel them out of our awareness. This usually backfires, with repressed feelings simmering beneath the surface before eventually erupting. If we stuff down our true feelings over time, it can even lead to depression and physical sickness (Proverbs 12:25). God wants us to acknowledge our feelings and bring them to Him openly and honestly in prayer (Psalm 62:8).
Feelings Can Reveal Where We Need God’s Comfort and Wisdom
Painful emotions like grief, insecurity, heartache and fear can actually alert us to our need for God’s comfort and wisdom. Just as physical pain signals something amiss in our body, emotional pain signals places in our heart that need God’s healing touch. Sitting with uncomfortable feelings and asking God to meet us in them often leads to deeper intimacy with Jesus and spiritual breakthroughs (2 Corinthians 1:3-5).
Feelings Must Be Submitted to God’s Will
Since feelings are unreliable and passing, God calls us to submit them to His perfect will. Jesus modeled this in anguished prayer in Gethsemane, surrendering His crushing emotional turmoil to follow God’s plan over His own desires (Luke 22:42). We follow His example when we release our tight grip on strong feelings that conflict with God’s Word and will. In submission to Christ, we can receive supernatural peace (Colossians 3:15).
Feelings Can Grow and Mature Through Spiritual Disciplines
The Bible encourages activities like meditation, fasting, solitude, confession and community to help us mature both emotionally and spiritually. As we grow deeper in faith and intimacy with Christ, the Spirit produces increasing peace, self-control and steadiness of feeling over time (Galatians 5:22-23). Our emotional health and stability grows as we prioritize these “spiritual disciplines” that connect us to Jesus.
Loving God Includes Our Feelings
Jesus said the greatest commandment is to “love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength” (Mark 12:30). Loving God with our whole heart includes engaging our emotions and directing them toward Him. We were designed to feel joy, awe, passion and gladness in relationship with God. Our feelings find their ultimate home and healing in Christ’s love.
Feelings Are Temporary, But God’s Truth Remains
Because human feelings waver and shift, God calls us to anchor our lives in eternal truths about His loving character. The Psalms are filled with this rhythm of raw, honest feeling flowing into renewed perspective on God’s faithfulness (Psalm 13:5-6). When emotions threaten to overwhelm us, we can declare Scriptural truths aloud until our feelings come back into alignment with reality.
In Heaven, Feelings Will Be Purified
For Christians, this life is not the end of our emotional journey. The Bible promises that one day, God Himself will wipe away every tear and make all things new (Revelation 21:4). Although emotions can be painful and confusing now, in eternity they will become an uncomplicated way to express our joy and intimacy with Christ forever. The purest pleasures of feelings await in glorified bodies and souls.
Jesus Understands Our Feelings
A great comfort is this: Jesus understands our shifting human emotions, because He too experienced them during His earthly life. Scripture says Jesus was “a man of sorrows and acquainted with grief” (Isaiah 53:3). He felt the depths of human emotion, including anger, sadness, abandonment, agony, compassion, joy, intimacy, and peace. Because Jesus became human, no feeling we experience is foreign to Him. We can freely share all our heart with our High Priest, who sympathizes with our weaknesses (Hebrews 4:15).
The Holy Spirit Produces Godly Feelings
Though feelings can lead us astray, the Bible also teaches that the Holy Spirit works within us to produce Christlike emotions: “love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control” (Galatians 5:22). As we walk in step with the Spirit, our natural self-centered feelings are transformed and redeemed. His love in our hearts inspires empathy, courage, zeal, compassion and hope. Our emotional life is meant to flourish by the Spirit’s power.
Feelings Are Temporary, God’s Truth Is Eternal
Feelings come and go, but God’s promises remain steadfast. The Psalms often flow from despair to trust as the writer preaches truth to his own wavering emotions. Though we feel one way today, tomorrow may be completely different. But anchoring our hearts in God’s faithful Word allows us to endure the ups and downs. We have a sure, unchanging hope that transcends fleeting emotions. Jesus is the same yesterday, today and forever (Hebrews 13:8).
Honesty About Feelings Deepens Intimacy with God
Rather than minimize emotions, God welcomes full transparency about our inner lives. The example of David and other psalmists shows that honestly expressing our feelings to God – both positive and negative – is cleansing for our souls. Bringing our real, messy, complex emotions to our Father deepens intimacy with Him. God can handle all that we feel – and meet us there with His steadfast love and comfort.
The Goal Is Not Eliminating Feelings but Redeeming Them
Since God gave us emotions, the solution is not to erase them altogether. Instead, Scripture guides us toward redeeming our God-given feelings. As we grow in the Spirit, engage spiritual disciplines, submit to God’s Word and will, and offer all our feelings to Jesus in prayer, they become increasingly sanctified. Our feelings can come under the lordship of Christ and serve holy purposes.
In Christ, We Have Stability of Feeling
Though our moment-to-moment feelings fluctuate, the Bible promises Christ-followers an anchor for their souls amid the ups and downs. Jesus gives us a deep centeredness and steadiness, being “the same yesterday and today and forever” (Hebrews 13:8). His Spirit produces lasting fruit: “love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control” (Galatians 5:22). Our feelings can have continuity by abiding in Christ.
Feelings Give Insight Into Our Hearts
Rather than deny emotions, the Bible encourages paying attention to our feelings as insightful messengers from our inner world. “Guard your hearts above all else, for it determines the course of your life,” Proverbs 4:23 warns. Our emotions – both positive and negative -highlight what’s happening in the hidden places of the heart. Examining emotions carefully allows us to identify and bring to God inner hurts, conditioning, sins or lies that need His healing.
Feelings Highlight Our Need for God
Intense or painful feelings like grief, anger, insecurity and anxiety often have a way of revealing how much we need God. Rather than suppress difficult emotions, we can allow them to point us to Christ who promises rest and hope to the weary (Matthew 11:28-30). As we turn raw, honest feelings toward God in prayer and scriptural meditation, we affirm that that our only true refuge is in Him. Painful feelings can remind us how much we depend on God’s grace.
The Fruit of The Spirit Brings Healthy Emotions
“The fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control” (Galatians 5:22). As we walk with the Holy Spirit, our natural emotions are brought under His redemptive influence. His work in our hearts brings emotional health and stability, replacing sinful feelings like rage and anxiety with Christlike qualities. Our emotional lives flourish as we live by the Spirit.
We Can Set Our Hearts and Minds on Eternal Truths
The Bible instructs us to set our hearts and minds on realities beyond fleeting emotions, anchoring ourselves in God’s eternal truths. “Set your minds on things above, not on earthly things,” Colossians 3:2 urges. “Whatever is true, noble, right, admirable…think on such things,” Philippians 4:8 directs. As we fix our focus on God’s faithful character and the hope of heaven, feelings come back into proper alignment.
Jesus Provides Emotional Healing and Freedom
Jesus came to heal broken hearts and set captives free mentally, emotionally and spiritually (Luke 4:18-19). His death and resurrection provide forgiveness for sin that weighs down our emotions. The Holy Spirit brings supernatural healing to places of emotional pain and bondage. As we walk with Christ, old emotional wounds find liberating release, and we gain self-control over destructive feelings.
We Can Develop Emotional Maturity
Scripture encourages maturity and self-control in our emotional lives through spiritual disciplines and abiding in Christ. As we grow deeper in faith, we become less controlled by passing emotions and more anchored in God’s steadfast love. With the Spirit’s help, we can increasingly submit feelings to God’s will, avoid reactive outbursts and develop patience in trials to produce godliness (James 1:2-4). Our emotional lives mature in Christ.
We Should Be Quick to Listen, Slow To Speak About Feelings
The Bible cautions about being quick to express every fleeting emotion, advising patience in sharing feelings. “Be quick to listen, slow to speak” (James 1:19). Bringing raw emotions to God in prayer first allows them to be filtered through His lens of truth. Then when we do open up, we can speak carefully in love (Ephesians 4:15). Wisdom requires thoughtfulness in expressing emotions that honors both truth and relationship.
Feelings Can Reveal Idols of The Heart
Painful emotions like excessive anger, anxiety or sadness sometimes indicate areas where our hearts have made idols out of desires or relationships. The ache of a controlling feeling exposes our need to dethrone false gods from the throne of our hearts intended for Christ alone. By surrendering those idols to Jesus and receiving His healing, our feelings can come back into proper alignment with Him.
We Have Hope Of Divine Comfort and Joy
For Christians, painful or confusing emotions in this life are only temporary. We have the hope of eternity where, “He will wipe every tear from their eyes. There will be no more death or mourning or crying or pain, for the old order of things has passed away” (Revelation 21:4). Though feelings overwhelm us now, we can find strength in the coming joy of heaven.
In summary, the Bible offers much wisdom on human feelings – both affirming their God-given value and providing guidance for their expression. As Christians, we take comfort that Jesus understands the shifting tides of our inner emotional world. We have hope that the Holy Spirit can increasingly sanctify our feelings until one day they align completely with the joy of eternity in God’s presence.