(upbeat music) - Here's an email from a long time listener named Sharon. Dear Pastor John, I have listened to every episode of Ask Pastor John. - Good night. - Yes, wow, and countless sermons over the years at DesiringGod.org and I love what the Lord has done through you in my life and in the life of my children.

Thank you. My question, what role do feelings and emotions play in the decisions of the believer? I desperately try to lead my heart with my mind, but the heart holds so many feelings and emotions that inform us and seemingly drive us in different directions through life. On things like career choice, attraction to a spouse, et cetera.

So what role should our feelings play in our decision making? - Thank you, Sharon, for your trust. I mean, it makes me tremble to think 500 pieces of counsel, how many times must I have gotten things a little bit skewed that I hope I don't mess her up too much.

Here's my effort. The answer to the magnitude of the role of the emotions in our decision making is this, massive, big. It is a big role in our decisions, whether we want them to or not, and whether we know it or not. And here's something even more, even more significant, I think, than the fact that our emotions play in our decision making about what to do, they play a role even more powerfully in the thousand things we do every day that we don't make a decision to do.

You know what I mean? I mean, yeah, maybe 10 times during the day, you step back and have a hard decision and think it through with the pros and cons. And then there are 10,000 facial expressions and tones of voice and gestures and things that really make a moral difference in the world that you didn't give any premeditated thought to whatsoever.

Where are those thoughts coming from? I mean, where are those actions coming from? Well, they're coming out of the abundance of the heart. The mouth is speaking and the face, the eyebrows are going up or the mouth is frowning or the gestures are acting or the body language is leaning away or leaning in.

And oh my goodness, we are who we are quite apart from premeditated decisions. Oh my, if I could devote energy to becoming the kind of person whose spontaneous acts were godly and loving and upbuilding and kind, I wouldn't worry too much about my decisions. I mean, 'cause that's such a small part of my life.

I mean, people tend to feel like their decision are the big parts of their life. They're not the main parts of their lives. We are who we are by the spontaneous overflow. So out of the abundance of the heart, the mouth is speaking, the face is smiling, frowning, arms are gesturing, the tones of voice are on and on and on.

So we better focus. So the point of all this is we better focus on our attention to becoming a kind of person not perfecting a kind of list or a kind of rational set of criteria by which we will hone our reasoning skills and make all of our important decisions.

That list will never be long enough to cover everything. And the heart acts before we could consult it anyway on most of the things we do than before we engage in any reasoning process. That heart is a profound set of feelings and commitments and convictions and preferences. So Proverbs says, "Keep your heart with all vigilance for out of it flow the springs of life." And that heart includes emotions big time.

But Sharon is not asking mainly about that. She's asking about decisions where we do think over what we should do, what role do feelings play there. So let me go to the most standard text and draw out a couple of things. Do not be conformed, this is Romans 12, two.

Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewal of your mind that by testing you may discern what is the will of God, what is good, acceptable, and perfect. What does the renewal of the mind for the sake of decision-making involve? And verse two says that the effect of this renewal is that we approve.

Now the Greek word, dokimazo, never means merely do something, it means approve it. That is you do it because you assess it and you approve it. And that concept of approving is a valuing. This is more than mere rational response to an act. This is a moral weighing of an act by virtue of the preferences, the approval capacities of your soul.

The word always includes a measure of approval, not just discernment. It means recognize and prefer or approve, want more than other things, treasure more than other things, which means that the renewal of the mind that produces that kind of refining of rational processes is more than that. It's the renewal of our preferences, our desires, our longings, our deepest wants.

That goes into the renewing of the mind. And the confirmation of that for me is over in Ephesians 4 where Paul says, "Be renewed in the," in this amazing phrase, "spirit of your minds." I always wonder, what is that? Being renewed in your minds all sounds intellectual. Being renewed in the spirit of your minds is, oh, when Paul talks about mind and the renewal of the mind, he's got more in mind than merely rational capacities.

This mind has a spirit, it has a bench. Like, let this mind be in you, which was also in Christ Jesus who made this massive approved decision to humble himself. Now, why does that matter? In Ephesians, five verses earlier, Paul tells us why it matters that we be renewed in the spirit of our mind.

Here's what he says. The Gentiles are darkened in their understanding, alienated from the life of God because of the ignorance that is in them due to the hardness of their heart. So if you walk with Paul down, down, down, deep into the root of things, you might've thought he would end by saying they're alienated from God and they're darkened in their understanding because of the ignorance that is in them, period.

So let's get about changing ignorance. And that's not where he stops. He says because of the ignorance that is in them due to the hardness of their heart. Beneath the intellectual problem of ignorance of God is the moral problem, the emotional problem of the heart. It is hard against God.

So the reason the mind must be renewed so that it can decide good things in the spirit of the mind is not just rational or factual. That's not our deepest problem. Our deepest problem is feelings and preferences, not reasoning. Reasoning is affected by sin, for sure, but the deepest problem is our hard heart.

So my conclusion from this is not that we check our minds at the door when we enter the house of wisdom, like, oh, thinking doesn't matter here. I've got some emotions to deal with. No, that's not where I'm going. But that we realize that every decision, the ones that she mentioned, every decisions are a complex response of heart and head or this spirit of the mind.

And that's okay. I want her to feel okay about that 'cause she seems to be worried that if her emotions are involved, that might mess things up. We are to be renewed in both. Neither is perfect. The rational faculties are not perfect and the emotional faculties are not perfect, and neither is useless.

When the mind has done what it can do in discerning the pros and the cons of a situation, so I think that's what you should do, weighs the pros and cons of job possibilities and by all means, spouse who you're gonna marry and so on. That's not wrong to weigh the possibilities with your mind.

The psalmist says, however, delight yourself in the Lord and the Lord will give you the desires of your heart. So when you have done all the rational weighing you can, the renewal of your mind being deep is centered on delighting in God and therefore those desires that grow up, they're not negligible.

They should be paid attention to as they accord with God's will. - That is gold. Thank you, Pastor John. And thank you for the superb question, Sharon. Sharon has listened to every APJ episode. That's about 68 hours worth of audio recordings. Wow. And if you wanna listen to all of them or if you wanna listen to just a few select episodes or if you just wanna listen to the top 10 most popular episodes all time, you can do that from our landing page online at desiringgod.org/askpastorjohn.

And there, look for the buttons where you can toggle between recent episodes and popular episodes. Well, we are gonna break for the weekend. On Monday, a podcast listener named Bryce wants to know how can we trust the Bible? And John Piper will have an answer. I'm your host, Tony Reike.

Have a wonderful weekend. (upbeat music) (upbeat music)