Emotional Maturity

Psalm 103:8 The Lord is compassionate and merciful; He is slow to anger and demonstrates great loyal love. He does not always accuse, and does not stay angry. He does not deal with us as our sins deserve; He does not repay us as our misdeeds deserve; for as the skies are high above the earth, so his loyal love towers over those who fear Him. As far as the eastern horizon is from the west, so he removes the guilt of our rebellious actions from us. As a father has compassion on his children, so the Lord has compassion on his faithful followers.  Vs.14 For he knows what we are made of; He realizes we are made of clay.

God has emotion in His dealings with us. So do Jesus and the Holy Spirit. Jesus wept, was angry, astonished, rude (to the Pharisees), grieving, happy and so on. The Holy Spirit reflects those same emotions toward us.

Religious people give us the idea that Jesus moved in a kind of weird spiritual distant fashion floating a foot above the ground. This is the error of dualism and no understanding of the term “He emptied Himself...” in Philippians.  Actually, Jesus was among us as a human with all the spectrum of human emotion and feeling. Why do we act as though we have no emotion? How come some of us take great pains to disguise our emotions with a spiritual aura? When we do we are no different from the Pharisees.

Church is not just a place to parade our (often fake) spirituality. It must become a place where we can bare our soul to one another. Our souls need healing and the Lord touches us in our emotional life by revealing His emotions to us through the honesty of others.  

It is time to take off our masks. Not for the purpose of critiquing one another but to let the Lord come in and gently expose and remove negative patterns in our lives. Let’s think about some we often see reflected in our midst but we never seem to confront or correct because we don’t know how. If you feel like squirming please be assured that all of us do from time to time.

We are transitioning from child to adult in our emotional life and we often have bits and attitudes that don’t make the leap into maturity. The events of life can lock us into childlike emotional patterns that are visible to everyone but ourselves. Some common issues in Church life that cause ongoing stress for the whole body have very simple roots.

Defensiveness is an emotional response under which we can hide: Generally this is visible by the use of many words alternating from accusation to self justification. The emotional child demands that others apologize. This is an attempt to satisfy an ego that is out of control. Maturity has no such expectation of others, rather an emotionally mature person functions like a shock absorber when offended.

Redemption comes for fragile egos if there is open frank admission of shared blame, an end to the many words and heartache.

Another troubling attitude in church life is the unemotional non-response that is merely a mask for anger. Many have sought to perfect this childlike and defiant cloak for what can be a general undercurrent of rage. People do sense your anger which is cloaked by coolness. They avoid you because they do not wish to feel the sting. Many unresolved issues compound to build this complex mask, the Holy Spirit wants to get under it and set you free.

The attitude I often see from the front is a form of spiritual pride that robs us of the simple joy of appreciating the contributions of others. I will call it the “I know that already” prideful attitude that sucks the joy out of everyone around us. These folk are wearing a mask of superiority that is really insecurity. When the love of Jesus penetrates their hearts they will re-discover the simple pleasures of fellowship and the Word of God without assessing the possible motivations or humanity of the speaker.

Hopefully today you will see that it is possible to be quite mature spiritually but still an emotional baby. There are many more examples we could find but the point today is to call for honesty, transparency and love. As we utilise these tools we can allow the Holy Spirit to build-up and restore the emotional person we so often neglect or hide.

Colossians 3:12 Therefore, as the elect of God, holy and dearly loved, clothe yourselves with a heart of mercy, kindness, humility, gentleness, and patience, bearing with one another and forgiving one another, if someone happens to have a complaint against anyone else. Just as the Lord has forgiven you, so you also forgive others. And to all these virtues add love, which is the perfect bond. Let the peace of Christ be in control in your heart (for you were in fact called as one body to this peace), and be thankful. Let the word of Christ dwell in you richly, teaching and exhorting one another with all wisdom, singing psalms, hymns, and spiritual songs, all with grace in your hearts to God. 3:17 And whatever you do in word or deed, do it all in the name of the Lord Jesus, giving thanks to God the Father through him.