Do Christians carry more emotional stress than non-Christians do? It's a good question from Amanda, a 24-year-old listener to the podcast who writes in. Pastor John, thank you for this podcast. Do you think Christians feel more than unbelievers? Before I became a Christian, my life was challenging, of course, but I almost seemed to be numb or uncaring towards sin.

On becoming a Christian, and as I continue to learn more and more about the faith, I'm finding my emotions growing stronger and stronger. Right now I'm walking through a season of loneliness because I no longer date unbelievers. Now I feel like I have almost too much empathy because others' pain and troubles bring me to tears.

My chest becomes heavy and my soul aches as I wrestle through so many life questions. I guess you could say God is molding me, which I'm eternally grateful for, but it has taken a toll on me too. I've been encouraged to hear that a number of great Christians experience great emotional stress and struggle, even David in the Psalms, but it's almost paralyzing for me at times.

Is this normal? As Christians, we're called to have faith, confidence in Christ, and be filled with a joyful spirit, but now I find my spirit to be often heavy. I guess you could say my prayer life lately. Sounds like Psalm 88. Pastor John, how would you counsel Amanda? Well, this is a wonderful question to receive.

I don't mean that Amanda's heaviness is wonderful in itself, but oh my, what a refreshing problem to wrestle with. The first thing I want to do is give her a big hug and say, "You are a walking miracle." Do you realize how many millions of 20-somethings are so wrapped up in their private worlds that almost all they do is think about how they look or how they sound to others and whether anyone likes them or thinks they're cool?

Here you are, struggling to keep your spiritual nose above water because of the weight of empathy you feel for the suffering of others around you. So forgive me if this sounds wonderful. First a word about your lead question. You say, "Do you think Christians feel more than unbelievers?" Well, if we only talk about natural feelings, the answer is it will vary from person to person.

Some believers will feel more than some believers, and some believers will feel more than some unbelievers. But if you're talking about spiritual feelings, the kind that only the Holy Spirit can awaken, then it is true that believers in Jesus will feel more than unbelievers. Unbelievers don't feel any of these.

They're a miracle produced by the Spirit of God. That's why I said, "Amanda, you're a walking miracle." When we are born again, the Spirit gives life to our hearts that was not there before. We have new life. We see Christ and his Word and his world differently, and therefore we feel Christ and his Word and his world differently.

Many of these new feelings will overlap with natural feelings in their appearance, and to the world outside will be virtually indistinguishable. They'll think that your joy over the beauty of a starlit sky and your sorrow over the loss of life in a natural disaster, they'll think these are simply the same sort of feelings they have from time to time.

They can't see how these feelings are spiritually new, how they are profoundly of a different nature than theirs because of their connection with Christ, their connection with salvation, their connection with eternity, their connection with holiness, their rootedness in the Holy Spirit. They have no categories for grasping what you feel.

The emotional life of the new creation in Christ is of a different order than what the world experiences. So let me say a word, Amanda, about your particular challenge of feeling almost paralyzed by the physical oppression of the burdens of these sorrows that other people's sufferings are causing you.

Seems to me from the Bible that two things are crucial. One is that your new sensitivity is a good and necessary part of what it means to be a new creation in Christ. 1 Peter 3:8 says we are to have a tender heart that feels sympathy with others. Romans 12, 15, weep with those who weep.

Romans 9, 3, Paul feels unceasing anguish in his heart for his perishing relatives. Galatians 6, 2, we are to bear one another's burdens. So yes, Christians are to take on the suffering of others in a way that we never did when we were not Christians. We are to take them for the sake of helping others, not just sinking with them.

Love does not just go down with others. It's willing to, but it wants to feel with others so that we can help them survive and flourish, which leads now to the second crucial thing we have to consider, namely, mature growth in grace means that interdependent graces must grow together.

Now, I know that's probably too vague for anybody to grasp. Let me say it again and then explain it with an analogy. Mature Christian growth, which is what I think is needed in Amanda here, mature growth means that interdependent graces must grow together. So explanation. One of the problems with growing tomatoes is that the tomatoes are, at least in my experience, I'm a lousy tomato grower, they're often too heavy for the branches to support, and so they bend down and lie on the ground and rot.

Now it seems to me that's what Amanda is experiencing. The wonderful tomato of empathy, beautiful, red, juicy tomato of empathy has grown in Amanda's life faster than the stalk and the branch of doctrinally informed faith to support it, faith that can sustain the weight of being bent down to the ground so that nothing rots in the Christian life, and that big, beautiful tomato of empathy, therefore, in Amanda's life is threatening to lie on the ground and be ruined.

That's what she's documenting. I'm being ruined by this paralysis of empathy. So my simple counsel, Amanda, is that you set your heart and your mind to pursue the kind of growth and strength that would enable you to support by faith what God is doing in your heart. You need the strong fiber of God's wisdom and sovereignty and goodness in the root and the stalk and the branches of your life so that you have the firmness to hold up the emotions that you feel and they don't crush you.

And here's what I have in mind. 2 Peter 3.18 says, "Grow in the knowledge and the grace of our Lord Jesus." So both knowledge and grace, they need to grow together. They are interdependent, and they need to grow together. Spiritual knowledge and experiential grace need to grow together. So Amanda, be glad, be glad that your heart is graciously tender and seek to add the tough fiber of doctrinal knowledge and truth to the branches of your life.

God does not mean for you to be paralyzed by your empathy or your sympathy or your intense feelings of affection or love. He means for it to produce the action of love, not the inactivity of oppression. This is what the revelation of His fullness is for in the Bible.

So He will do it. Yeah, that's really good. That's a great question to stabilize us to face the emotional stresses of this life. Thank you, Pastor John. And Amanda, thanks for the excellent question. And thank you for listening and supporting this podcast. You can stay current with the Ask Pastor John podcast episodes in your phone or your device by subscribing through your favorite podcast catcher.

And you can search our past episodes in our archive and send us an email of your own, even suggestions for Pastor John on how to grow better tomatoes, which sounds like he's got a steak and a twisty type problem to me. You can do all those things through our online home at DesiringGod.org/AskPastorJohn.

Well how do we avoid overthinking the Christian life? It's a relevant question for a podcast like this. It spends a lot of time thinking about the Christian life. But we can also underthink the Christian life too. So how do we avoid both ditches of overthinking or underthinking the Christian life?

That's the question we close the week out with on Friday. I'm your host Tony Ranke. We'll see you next time.