A Case for Emotional Experiences Being Important

If I am honest with you, I am very skittish about the idea of an 'emotional high.' What I mean by that is an experience in which a person presumably has an encounter with God and as a result has a sudden and dramatic shift in direction or thought. For example, many kids will come to Look Up Lodge this summer, hear some very powerful teaching, experience some very powerful encounters with truth, and maybe leave camp 'on fire' about their relationship with Jesus and in awe of His glory. For better or worse, this happens.

The reason I am skittish about it is that I experienced many of these 'emotional highs' while I was growing up, but they were actually quite vacuous in the grand scheme of things. They are often fake, have little meaning, or result in being steered away from truth. These situations happen in real life all the time, and it is the story of probably more than half of the people I talk to that have walked away from the faith.

The problem with this is that they didn't have the faith they thought they had. I don't mean than in the 5-point Calvinist sense, but in this statement: unsustained faith is always found on something unsustainable. The reason I was so bummed by the feeling I got three weeks after camp as a high school student was not because I had seen full truth and just lost it, but because I had been given a feast of truth and expected it to sustain me until my next 'injection,' which I presumed to be the next year at camp. Following Jesus is a path of continually being grounded in the deepest reality that exists, which is the truth that by His death and resurrection we can be reconciled to our  Father. Following Jesus rarely if ever is manifested as a long jump, but it is quite Biblical to talk about faith as running  race with endurance. Evidence is in Hebrews 12, 1 Corinthians 9:24-27, Galatians 5, and many other places.

Today, I struggle with doubting the legitimacy of many of these 'long jump' or 'emotional high' experiences. I have seen many people stumble and I have personally experienced the pain of the falseness that can happen. The problem with this is that like running a race with endurance, an extremely powerful emotional experience is completely legitimate. In order to exalt truth above my comfort, I will now attempt to make a case for the legitimacy and Biblical backing of God using powerful emotional experiences to transform lives in a real, meaningful, and impactful way.

In Exodus 3, God encounters Moses in the form of a burning bush that was not consumed. It's little strange and a crazy story all around, but there is no doubt that Moses is emotionally affected. He is afflicted with compassion for His kinsmen back in Egypt, fearful about God's call for him, and, above all, completely wigged out that God appeared to him. Later, in Exodus 33, Moses and God have a conversation in which God basically tells Moses that looking right at Him would result in death. Similarly, in Isaiah 6, Isaiah sees God in a vision and is absolutely wrecked. He laments his very existence because he, a man 'of unclean lips,' saw the immortal, omnipotent, perfect, and just God of everything that exists. As a last example in this brief context, examine the case of Saul of Tarsus, who encountered Jesus, was struck blind, and didn't eat for several days (see Acts 9).

There is no denying that these experiences were emotional, if not the sort of 'emotional high' that was mentioned earlier. What can we learn from them? First, God definitely uses highly emotional experiences for His purposes. Secondly, these experiences were not just temporary; Moses, Isaiah and Paul spent literally the rest of their lives living and proclaiming God's truth. Thirdly, these experiences were not just calls for feeling, but a call to action. I may be wrong, but I cannot think of a single place in scripture where someone has an emotional experience, walks away when reality sets in, and it's a good thing. In fact, John 6 seems to speak strongly against that (miracles given: easy; hard teaching given: see ya).

In conclusion, let God move emotionally in you if He wills to do so. In fact, we should often be in awe of a pursuing love we could never earn, warrant, or repay. That's fine. But be careful. Cling to truth, love the Word, and respond to Him by not just by feeling love, but by acting love. Feelings fade, but the Truth does not.