We love them. We hate them. But we certainly cannot ignore them. Emotions can be wonderful things we love or horrible things we hate - depending on how we're feeling at the time. Sometimes we feel at their mercy and think that God would have been so much wiser to have made us without them. But we can't get away from it: God made us to feel. Emotions thinks through the place of emotions, how we view them, handle them and glorify God with them. We see that the mature Christian life involves a fully-functioning emotional life and that emotions flow from the heart. We focus on how we can grow in good and godly emotions. We look at emotions and reading the Bible, emotions and singing praise to God, and the best way up when we are feeling down.

Graham Beynon

Emotions

Part 1: Understanding emotions

Part 2: Emotions in practice

Preface

Part 1 Understanding emotions

1 Approaching Emotions

An emotional world

An emotional Christian world?

Getting our bearings

Dangers ahead

Thinking, feeling, acting

The way forward

Questions for reflection

2 What do perfect emotions look like?

The emotional life of Jesus

Fully feeling

The challenge to feel

The challenge to feel rightly

We are not seeking feelings

Emotions and values

3 Getting to the heart of emotions

The control centre of life

Our hearts' desire

The heart and feelings

The state of our hearts

It's all about love (and hate)

Paul's story

Examples of a right heart

Jan's story

A window on the heart

Brian's reflection

Contributory factors

Questions and ideas for reflection

4 How to get emotional

Do nothing: emotions are expected

Chris's story

Sarah's story

Recalibrate your heart: emotions are commanded

Let's sum up

Pray: emotions are to be asked for

5 Putting emotions in their right place

Thinking, feeling and acting

The place of the mind

The place of the will

When we're feeling down

Beware: wrong use of emotions!

Emotions in perspective

Part 2 Emotions in practice

6 Emotions and the Bible

From head to heart

Reading the Bible in colour

Given words to speak

Jeff's story

The fully feeling Bible reader

Questions and suggestions for reflection

7 Emotions and God’s praise

What exactly are we doing when we sing?

So why do we sing?

Implications

Such a good experience

8 Emotions and the church

Made for community

Spurring one another on

Kate's story

Expressing feelings together

Differences in community

Emotions in community

9 Feeling down

The painful cry

Spotting the difference

Speaking truth to yourself

Praying

Getting on with living

Jane's story

Getting on with obeying

Depression

Pressing on

10 Knowing what to expect and facing the future

Expect mixed feelings

We can't live on a high

Feeling and seeing

Matt's story

Expect the normal Christian life

Appendix: A note to those in Christian ministry

1. Application to our own life

2. Ministry to the whole person

3. Evaluating our own ministry

4. Our preaching

5. Our care of people

Notes

Chapter 1 Approaching emotions

__We love them. We hate them. But we certainly cannot ignore them.__

Emotions can be wonderful things we love or horrible things we hate - depending on how we're feeling at the time. Sometimes we feel at their mercy and think that God would have been so much wiser to have made us without them.

But we can't get away from it: God made us to feel. Emotions thinks through the place of emotions, how we view them, handle them and glorify God with them. We see that the mature Christian life involves a fully-functioning emotional life and that emotions flow from the heart. We focus on how we can grow in good and godly emotions. We look at emotions and reading the Bible, emotions and singing praise to God, and the best way up when we are feeling down.

'At last! A sane and sensitive book on emotion in the Christian life, an area where extremes prevail and balance is rare. There is something of huge value here both for touchy-feely believers and Christians who have scarcely allowed themselves to touch an emotion in years - as well as everyone in between. The section about ministry and emotion is especially valuable.'- Julian Hardyman, Senior Pastor, Eden Baptist Church, Cambridge  
   
 'In a field prone to controversy and extreme attitudes, Graham Beynon has written an admirably balanced book. Solidly founded on a biblical framework of emotions, it provides a very practical approach to the place of feelings in everyday life and, in particular, in our Christian experience. I cannot think of a better book to understand, to appreciate and to recover the value and the joy of emotions.' - Pablo Mart

The Good Book Stall

The subject of emotion in Christianity is an emotive one in itself. Here Graham Beynon attempts to steer a way between the equally unhelpful poles of hating and distrusting all emotions and wallowing in them rudderless. It is, as he says, ‘a journey of exploration into the Bible, into the writings of church history, into modern thought, and into my own emotions.’ Many interesting testimonies from ordinary people are featured and the tension between modern thought-processes and those commanded by Christ is set out. What it comes down to in the end is that, as in all things, we should look to Christ as our pattern for appropriate expression of emotion, and accept that steadiness and emotion are not mutually exclusive. The book aims to be both a blueprint and an encouragement to persevere in that and succeeds in the second aim slightly better than it does in the first. I had a feeling that there was much more the author could have said but was constrained by the length of book people are willing to take the trouble to read. A more than adequate signpost in the right direction, though, via prayer, meditation on God’s word, and worship.

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