Do Christians Carry More Emotional Stress Than Non-Christians?

00:00:00.000 | Do Christians carry more emotional stress than non-Christians do?

00:00:08.520 | It's a good question from Amanda, a 24-year-old listener to the podcast who writes in.

00:00:13.160 | Pastor John, thank you for this podcast.

00:00:15.840 | Do you think Christians feel more than unbelievers?

00:00:19.880 | Before I became a Christian, my life was challenging, of course, but I almost seemed to be numb

00:00:24.640 | or uncaring towards sin.

00:00:27.360 | On becoming a Christian, and as I continue to learn more and more about the faith, I'm

00:00:31.040 | finding my emotions growing stronger and stronger.

00:00:35.240 | Right now I'm walking through a season of loneliness because I no longer date unbelievers.

00:00:40.280 | Now I feel like I have almost too much empathy because others' pain and troubles bring me

00:00:45.160 | to tears.

00:00:46.920 | My chest becomes heavy and my soul aches as I wrestle through so many life questions.

00:00:52.600 | I guess you could say God is molding me, which I'm eternally grateful for, but it has taken

00:00:57.240 | a toll on me too.

00:00:58.960 | I've been encouraged to hear that a number of great Christians experience great emotional

00:01:03.400 | stress and struggle, even David in the Psalms, but it's almost paralyzing for me at times.

00:01:10.000 | Is this normal?

00:01:11.580 | As Christians, we're called to have faith, confidence in Christ, and be filled with a

00:01:15.160 | joyful spirit, but now I find my spirit to be often heavy.

00:01:19.680 | I guess you could say my prayer life lately.

00:01:22.200 | Sounds like Psalm 88.

00:01:23.200 | Pastor John, how would you counsel Amanda?

00:01:26.560 | Well, this is a wonderful question to receive.

00:01:30.800 | I don't mean that Amanda's heaviness is wonderful in itself, but oh my, what a refreshing problem

00:01:42.520 | to wrestle with.

00:01:44.680 | The first thing I want to do is give her a big hug and say, "You are a walking miracle."

00:01:52.440 | Do you realize how many millions of 20-somethings are so wrapped up in their private worlds

00:02:01.800 | that almost all they do is think about how they look or how they sound to others and

00:02:09.320 | whether anyone likes them or thinks they're cool?

00:02:12.640 | Here you are, struggling to keep your spiritual nose above water because of the weight of

00:02:20.440 | empathy you feel for the suffering of others around you.

00:02:25.160 | So forgive me if this sounds wonderful.

00:02:28.960 | First a word about your lead question.

00:02:32.000 | You say, "Do you think Christians feel more than unbelievers?"

00:02:40.160 | Well, if we only talk about natural feelings, the answer is it will vary from person to

00:02:46.520 | person.

00:02:47.520 | Some believers will feel more than some believers, and some believers will feel more than some

00:02:52.880 | unbelievers.

00:02:54.760 | But if you're talking about spiritual feelings, the kind that only the Holy Spirit can awaken,

00:03:03.800 | then it is true that believers in Jesus will feel more than unbelievers.

00:03:10.480 | Unbelievers don't feel any of these.

00:03:13.760 | They're a miracle produced by the Spirit of God.

00:03:17.520 | That's why I said, "Amanda, you're a walking miracle."

00:03:21.160 | When we are born again, the Spirit gives life to our hearts that was not there before.

00:03:29.280 | We have new life.

00:03:30.600 | We see Christ and his Word and his world differently, and therefore we feel Christ and his Word

00:03:38.320 | and his world differently.

00:03:42.000 | Many of these new feelings will overlap with natural feelings in their appearance, and

00:03:49.320 | to the world outside will be virtually indistinguishable.

00:03:54.120 | They'll think that your joy over the beauty of a starlit sky and your sorrow over the

00:04:00.480 | loss of life in a natural disaster, they'll think these are simply the same sort of feelings

00:04:05.680 | they have from time to time.

00:04:07.620 | They can't see how these feelings are spiritually new, how they are profoundly of a different

00:04:17.640 | nature than theirs because of their connection with Christ, their connection with salvation,

00:04:23.320 | their connection with eternity, their connection with holiness, their rootedness in the Holy

00:04:28.540 | Spirit.

00:04:29.760 | They have no categories for grasping what you feel.

00:04:34.520 | The emotional life of the new creation in Christ is of a different order than what the

00:04:42.160 | world experiences.

00:04:45.260 | So let me say a word, Amanda, about your particular challenge of feeling almost paralyzed by the

00:04:56.880 | physical oppression of the burdens of these sorrows that other people's sufferings are

00:05:04.260 | causing you.

00:05:06.160 | Seems to me from the Bible that two things are crucial.

00:05:12.300 | One is that your new sensitivity is a good and necessary part of what it means to be

00:05:20.200 | a new creation in Christ.

00:05:22.720 | 1 Peter 3:8 says we are to have a tender heart that feels sympathy with others.

00:05:30.680 | Romans 12, 15, weep with those who weep.

00:05:35.080 | Romans 9, 3, Paul feels unceasing anguish in his heart for his perishing relatives.

00:05:43.040 | Galatians 6, 2, we are to bear one another's burdens.

00:05:48.760 | So yes, Christians are to take on the suffering of others in a way that we never did when

00:05:57.920 | we were not Christians.

00:05:59.960 | We are to take them for the sake of helping others, not just sinking with them.

00:06:07.520 | Love does not just go down with others.

00:06:11.840 | It's willing to, but it wants to feel with others so that we can help them survive and

00:06:20.400 | flourish, which leads now to the second crucial thing we have to consider, namely, mature

00:06:28.720 | growth in grace means that interdependent graces must grow together.

00:06:37.280 | Now, I know that's probably too vague for anybody to grasp.

00:06:40.520 | Let me say it again and then explain it with an analogy.

00:06:44.360 | Mature Christian growth, which is what I think is needed in Amanda here, mature growth means

00:06:54.080 | that interdependent graces must grow together.

00:07:02.040 | So explanation.

00:07:04.040 | One of the problems with growing tomatoes is that the tomatoes are, at least in my experience,

00:07:11.960 | I'm a lousy tomato grower, they're often too heavy for the branches to support, and so

00:07:21.080 | they bend down and lie on the ground and rot.

00:07:26.520 | Now it seems to me that's what Amanda is experiencing.

00:07:31.900 | The wonderful tomato of empathy, beautiful, red, juicy tomato of empathy has grown in

00:07:40.640 | Amanda's life faster than the stalk and the branch of doctrinally informed faith to support

00:07:50.080 | it, faith that can sustain the weight of being bent down to the ground so that nothing rots

00:07:59.280 | in the Christian life, and that big, beautiful tomato of empathy, therefore, in Amanda's

00:08:06.560 | life is threatening to lie on the ground and be ruined.

00:08:10.960 | That's what she's documenting.

00:08:12.320 | I'm being ruined by this paralysis of empathy.

00:08:19.100 | So my simple counsel, Amanda, is that you set your heart and your mind to pursue the

00:08:27.880 | kind of growth and strength that would enable you to support by faith what God is doing

00:08:37.880 | in your heart.

00:08:40.120 | You need the strong fiber of God's wisdom and sovereignty and goodness in the root and

00:08:49.320 | the stalk and the branches of your life so that you have the firmness to hold up the

00:08:57.480 | emotions that you feel and they don't crush you.

00:09:02.200 | And here's what I have in mind.

00:09:03.200 | 2 Peter 3.18 says, "Grow in the knowledge and the grace of our Lord Jesus."

00:09:11.920 | So both knowledge and grace, they need to grow together.

00:09:16.800 | They are interdependent, and they need to grow together.

00:09:21.200 | Spiritual knowledge and experiential grace need to grow together.

00:09:27.760 | So Amanda, be glad, be glad that your heart is graciously tender and seek to add the tough

00:09:40.400 | fiber of doctrinal knowledge and truth to the branches of your life.

00:09:48.720 | God does not mean for you to be paralyzed by your empathy or your sympathy or your intense

00:09:55.360 | feelings of affection or love.

00:09:57.840 | He means for it to produce the action of love, not the inactivity of oppression.

00:10:04.680 | This is what the revelation of His fullness is for in the Bible.

00:10:10.280 | So He will do it.

00:10:13.280 | Yeah, that's really good.

00:10:15.280 | That's a great question to stabilize us to face the emotional stresses of this life.

00:10:19.760 | Thank you, Pastor John.

00:10:21.360 | And Amanda, thanks for the excellent question.

00:10:23.920 | And thank you for listening and supporting this podcast.

00:10:25.640 | You can stay current with the Ask Pastor John podcast episodes in your phone or your device

00:10:30.200 | by subscribing through your favorite podcast catcher.

00:10:32.840 | And you can search our past episodes in our archive and send us an email of your own,

00:10:36.840 | even suggestions for Pastor John on how to grow better tomatoes, which sounds like he's

00:10:41.040 | got a steak and a twisty type problem to me.

00:10:45.160 | You can do all those things through our online home at DesiringGod.org/AskPastorJohn.

00:10:52.600 | Well how do we avoid overthinking the Christian life?

00:10:56.360 | It's a relevant question for a podcast like this.

00:10:58.520 | It spends a lot of time thinking about the Christian life.

00:11:00.840 | But we can also underthink the Christian life too.

00:11:03.560 | So how do we avoid both ditches of overthinking or underthinking the Christian life?

00:11:08.000 | That's the question we close the week out with on Friday.

00:11:10.600 | I'm your host Tony Ranke.

00:11:11.600 | We'll see you next time.

00:11:12.120 | [BLANK_AUDIO]

00:11:20.640 | [ Silence ]

Do Christians Carry More Emotional Stress Than Non-Christians?

Chapters