Trust God with Your Emotions!

Trust God with Your Emotions!
Wherefore gird up the loins of your mind, be sober, and hope to the end for the grace that is to be brought unto you at the revelation of Jesus Christ. (1 Peter 1:13, KJV)
WE ARE IN THE GOOD COMPANY of the apostles when we seek to put in a word for reason in the expression of our Christian life and character.
Peter and the other New Testament preachers were fervent in their exhortations to Christian believers that they should always exhibit the loftiest kind of spirituality regardless of the human circumstances.
Why did Peter, then, add a practical dimension of caution that the child of God should "gird up the loins of [his] mind" and be sober-minded in the daily expression of his Christian worship and witness?
It is my interpretation that the apostle was cautioning the believers that their human emotions were not to be allowed to get out of control. I think he was pleading for the kind of spirituality that comes with the filling of the Holy Spirit and is marked by our walking in heavenly places in Christ Jesus, and certainly is not degraded by dethronement of the sentinel we call reason!
The spirit of the prophet is always subject to the prophet. When the Spirit of God moves into a man's heart, He will never make a fool out of him. He will make the man happy but He will never make him silly. He may make him sad with the woe and the weight of the world's grief but He will never let him become a gloomy cynic. The Holy Spirit will make him warm-hearted and responsive but He will never cause him to do things of which he will be ashamed later.
Peter was not promoting or predicting a cold and lifeless and formal spirituality in the Christian church when he advised believers to gird up the loins of their minds and be sober.
He was saying to the early Christians as he hopes to say to us now: "Brethren, if ever there was an hour when we needed to be serious about our Christian faith, this is the hour! We need to be sober men - and spiritual men!"
No Christian church ought to be a mere tombstone, even though the tombstone is probably the most sober of all things. A tombstone will just continue to sit throughout the years, showing no change whether in cold or wind or snow or heat, in peacetime or in war, no matter what the developments in history.
The tombstone just sits there, always in the same orthodox position, faithfully reminding the passing visitor that Mr. John M. Jones 1861–1932, lies there. That's the story and witness of the tombstone!
I admit that there are some churches like that. In order to keep sober and formal and quiet, they are contented to stay dead! But that is not the kind of church that Peter would have chosen and neither is it the kind of congregation with which we want to be identified.
Peter had some basis of concern for writing to Christian believers with this expression of caution and the Holy Spirit has seen fit to pass it along to us. I think we see in this the Bible method.
The Bible, like everything else God has made, has method in it. I can see His method in the fact that this Bible verse begins with the connecting word, "Wherefore." It looks back at something that is to be done.
The biblical method is to lay down strong foundations of truth and these foundations of truth are declarations of God. Principally, they are declarations of what God is doing or has done, or both.
Then, after this foundation has been laid, it is the Holy Spirit's method and desire to show that this revealed truth constitutes a moral obligation.
It is at this point that I am in controversy with some elements of leadership in our Christian churches today. It is my considered opinion that one of the greatest weaknesses in the modern church is the willingness to lay down foundations of truth without ever backing them up with moral application!
Must have moral application
The great American evangelist, Charles Finney, went so far as to declare bluntly that it is sinful to teach the Bible without moral application. He asked what good is accomplished merely to study a course in the Bible to find out what it says, if there is to be no obligation to do anything as a result of what has been learned?
There can be a right and a wrong emphasis in conducting Bible classes. I am convinced that some Bible classes are nothing more than a means whereby men become even more settled in their religious prejudices.
Only when we have moral application are we in the Bible method!
When we give ourselves seriously to Bible study, we discover the Holy Spirit's method.
"This is what God did, and this is what God did. Therefore, this is what you ought to do!" That is always the Bible way.
You will not find a single book of the Bible that does not have godly exhortation. There is not a single Bible portion that God wants us to study just to get a cranium full of knowledge or learning.
Moral application of spiritual truth
The Bible always presents the truth and then makes the application: "Now, if this is true, you ought to do something about it!" That is the meaning of moral application of spiritual truth.
In the case before us, Peter had just recited some of the great and gracious things God has done:
Praise be to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ! In his great mercy he has given us new birth into a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead, and into an inheritance that can never perish, spoil or fade. (1 Peter 1:3–4)
"Therefore," he continues, "prepare your minds [gird up your loins, KJV] for action; be self-controlled; set your hope fully on the grace to be given you when Jesus Christ is revealed" (1:13).
Girding up the loins is a biblical figure of speech. Peter did not have to explain it because everyone knew what he meant by the analogy. It had to do with their manner of dress.
People wore a kind of tunic in those days, a Mother Hubbard style of garb, we might say. Some of these garments were simply like a blanket with a hole cut in the middle and then strung down over the body.
In a sense, this flowing garb was always in the way, whether the person was working or walking. The tunic was always in the way so it was handled in this manner: if the person was very poor, he simply took a piece of dry leather and cut it in such a way that it could be tied around the waist and pulled into a loop. In this fashion, the person was girded.
With that belt or girdle tied and holding the garment close to the body, a person could run or walk or travel or climb or work and the garment did not hinder either hands or feet.
There is a good New Testament illustration that we all remember. John the Baptist came to his ministry wearing a cumbersome tunic made of camel's hair. He was a man of great activity, but he was a poor man. We are told that he girded his garment with a leather girdle. The rich and the affluent were able to use more expensive woven belts and girdles, but they accomplished the same thing - freedom of feet and hands for necessary walking and activity in everyday life.
Peter tells the Christian believers that they are to gird up the loins of their minds.
I trust no one holds the idea that our minds are not a part of our inner life.
Let us deal with this principle first insofar as it relates to the natural man, unconverted persons, the sons and daughters of Adam and Eve.
In general, the natural man born into this world and growing up in it, regardless of his rank or station, education or possessions, will be by his very nature indifferent and careless and disorganized within his inner life.
Popular and accepted manner of life
The popular and accepted manner of life is followed by the average man, not because he thinks that is all there is, but because he really doesn't think about it at all.
Even a sinner, if he really gives himself to serious thoughts, will rebel against the tyranny of the popular and accepted ways. There have been many unconverted men throughout history who rebelled against the ways and the manner of the day in which they lived. I admire independence of spirit in men, for it takes a serious-thinking man to stand up and refuse to bow and bend; but the average man will not give himself to this kind of stern thinking.
The average man has only petty things to think about: Is there enough time left on that matter?
Who will win the World Series? How much profit will I make on this deal?
He does not give himself to thought about those things that touch character, that seek to touch his inner life. He keeps everything on the shallow surface of his life - that's the sinner I am talking about.
The sinner is careless and disorganized and indifferent, except for the area where he has to tighten up his belt. He may be an expert in some field - mathematics, science, industry or business - and in his field he is forced to do some careful thinking, but it does not reach over into moral thinking. It is not the kind of thinking that will touch his inner life or his conduct.
The average man's life is all ungirded and ragged and at loose ends while he is carefully thinking and applying himself in his own prescribed field. He has never learned to think through to the truth and then make the necessary personal application to his own needs, his own standard, his own person.
Peter insists that it is the converted, born-again men and women who are to gird up the loins of their minds.
I do not believe we do Peter any injustice to infer that he expected this to be one of the first things we will do after we are converted to Jesus Christ - to gird up our minds and become sensitive to eternal values!
Two aspects
There were two aspects of girding up the loins in the Old Testament figure of speech. First was the preparation for working and toiling without hindrance, and second was readiness for sudden departure and travel. Both Peter and Paul use this phrase in urging spiritual preparation and readiness in writing to New Testament Christians.
It is only after we yield to Jesus Christ and begin to follow Him that we become concerned about the laxity and thoughtlessness of our daily lives. We begin to grieve about the way we have been living and we become convicted that there should continue to be aimlessness and futility and carelessness in our Christian walk.
I have been forced to admit that one of the things hardest for me to understand and try to reconcile is the complete aimlessness of so many Christians' lives.
They certainly are not shooting directly at anything, so if they should hit it, they would not know it, anyhow! Many of their lives are at loose ends. They are not girded up!
Probably the worst part of this situation among us is the fact that so many of our Christian brothers and sisters have unusual gifts and talents and capacities - yet they have not exercised this discipline of girding up the mind and spiritual potential in order to make the necessary progress in the Christian life.
Why should a pastor have to confess total failure from year to year? Why should he have to go from one church to another, starting something, trying something - only to admit failure again?
I don't think he has ever really girded himself. He has abilities but they are not disciplined. He has a fine mind but it is not girded up. He is like a man with a treasured Stradivarius violin that has never been put in tune. He has never taken time to sit down and tune that priceless instrument, therefore he gets no melody and harmony from it.
Must be sober and thoughtful
All Christians must be sober and thoughtful at this point of carelessness and looseness. Twenty years from now, what assessment will be made of our Christian lives, our maturity and spiritual growth and progress? Will someone say of us: "He's the same old man - a little thicker, a little balder, a little heavier - but he has made no progress in his inner spiritual life. He failed to grow and mature because he never learned the discipline of girding up."
I fully believe that it was Peter's expectation that laxity and carelessness and aimlessness would all be repudiated and forsaken by the serious-minded Christian believer.
What does this say to the average Christian who refuses to think about these factors because they will touch his moral and spiritual life?
I am thinking here of the average Christian as I have known him. He is willing to make a gesture of brief meditation, but only enough to ease his conscience, and then he reverts back to his aimless life. In spiritual matters, he is actually tossed around like a cork on the waves, a puppet of circumstances. He does not know what it means to navigate a straight course for God, like a ship on her way to the harbor.
We have been schooled theologically to excuse this kind of Christian life on the basis of weakness and frailty, and we tell ourselves that it is not really sinful. Personally, I think there must be some kind of limit to the time that believers can continue their selfish and aimless habits of life without bordering on sin!
Actually, I think that we can get so prodigal with our talents and so careless with our time and so aimless with our activities that we will be faced with the fact of sin in our lives - for we know what we should do and what we should be, but we would rather excuse our failure!
The book of Proverbs tells us about the man who lies on his bed, turning like a door on its hinges, while the weeds grow up in his garden, choking and killing his crop. Then, when harvest has come, he has nothing and is reduced to begging for help.
Now, staying in bed when he should be cultivating his garden may not be overly sinful - but I think there is no argument but what a willfully lazy man is a sinful man.
It follows then, in my estimation, that a person who is intellectually lazy is a sinful person. God had a reason for giving us our heads with intellectual capacity for thinking and reasoning and considering. But what a great company of humans there are who refuse to use their heads and many of these are Christians, we must confess.
Many a preacher would like to challenge the intellectual and thinking capacity of his congregation, but he has been warned about preaching over the people's heads.
I ask, "What are people's heads for? God Almighty gave them those heads and I think they ought to use them!"
Truth never goes over heads
As a preacher, I deny that any of the truths of God which I teach and expound are over the heads of the people. I deny it!
My preaching may go right through their heads if there is nothing in there to stop it, but I do not preach truths which are too much for them to comprehend. We ought to begin using our heads. Brother, you ought to take that head of yours, oil it and rub the rust off and begin to use it as God has always expected you would. God expects you to understand and have a grasp of His truth because you need it from day to day.
I have been reading in the works of the saintly Nicholas Herman, better known to us as Brother Lawrence. He recommends that Christian believers should nourish their hearts on high and noble thoughts of God. The question revolves around our daily use of our minds and thought life - sensational magazines and soap operas and doubtful stories will forever keep us from nourishing our hearts on noble thoughts of God!
The Holy Spirit knows us well and enforces the exhortation to gird up our minds, to pull up our spiritual standards, to eliminate carelessness in word and thought and deed, and in activities and interest!
Now, let us think of what Peter must have had in mind when he added the words, "be sober," to the discipline of right thinking.
Sobriety is that human attitude of mind when calm reason is in control. The mind is balanced and cool and the feelings are subject to reason and this statement is proof enough for me that the Holy Spirit will never urge believers into any kind of spiritual experience that violates and dethrones reason.
All of us are aware of instances where men and women have taken part in unreasonable and unseemly acts and then excused them on the grounds that they were moved by the Spirit.
Frankly, I must doubt that! I doubt that the Holy Ghost ever moves to dethrone reason in any man's mind.
In regard to my own personal and spiritual life, I must testify that the highest, loftiest and most God-beholding moments in my own experience have been so calm that I could write about them, so peaceful that I could tell about them and analyze them.
Always in control
I do believe that the human reason, blessed and warmed and shining with the love of God, must always be in control.
Think of the completely opposite picture, that of drunkenness. If you walk past the corner bar, you are likely to find a fellow staggering out of the bar, drunken to the point that reason has actually been dethroned and human judgment is completely impaired.
Someone a long time ago called liquor "a liquid damnation" and wrote about the man who opens his mouth and drinks down something that makes "his brains go out." Actually, the emotions get completely out of control - that's what happens to a drunk man.
Out of control - and the first sign is that he gets too happy and talkative. Then he gets affectionate and generally with people whom he did not even know until an hour earlier.
Then he will probably get sad, and because his emotions are out of control, he wants to tell the bartender and everyone who will listen about the wife who doesn't understand him and the family that doesn't appreciate him.
That's what liquor does for many unthinking, weak and careless people in our day; it robs them of all control of their emotions and judgment. Most of them are sorry and embarrassed and ashamed the morning after; but they refuse to thoughtfully gird up their minds, so weakness becomes a pattern.
The Apostle Paul stands with Peter in this serious-minded approach to the use of our faculties under the guidance and blessing of the Holy Spirit. He wrote to the Ephesian church with a caution to be wise in the understanding of the will of the Lord and advises them:
Do not get drunk on wine, which leads to debauchery. Instead be filled with the Spirit. Speak to one another with psalms, hymns and spiritual songs. Sing and make music in your heart to the Lord, always giving thanks to God the Father for everything, in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ. (Ephesians 5:18–20)
Peter and Paul thus join in urging us to practice and display the loftiest fruits of the Spirit of God with the Spirit Himself in control of our emotions and our affections, our worship and our praise. Yes, brothers, the Spirit will make the believing child of God generous but He will never make him foolish! He will make him happy but He will never make him silly! The Spirit will warm the inner life of the Christian's being but he will never lead him to do the things that would cause him to hang his head in shame afterward.
Thank God for enduring joy
I say "Thank God" for the kind of enduring joy which comes to the believer whose emotional life is in the keeping of the Spirit. I stand with the dear child of God whose reason is sanctified and who refuses to be swept from his mooring in the Word of God either by the latest popular vogue in religious fad or the ascendence of the most recent sensational personality in gospel circles.
The child of God will not be swept away by fear nor feeling nor love of anything earthly; he is sailing by the stars!
The illustration is about the young sailor who was pressed into service at the helm of the ship.
"You see that bright star?" he was asked. "Just keep that star a little off your port bow and you will stay right on course."
But when the ship's officer returned, the sailor had the ship far off course.
"Why didn't you keep your course by that star?" he was asked.
"Oh, I passed that star miles back," he responded.
Well, he had lost his star, and some of God's people in our churches are showing a lot of impatience with our determination, by the grace of God, to navigate with His star out there ahead of us.
I confess that we do not have as much popularity and acclaim and we do not preach to the largest crowds and there never seems to be excess money floating around, but we are looking with hope to the future. In the long run, it will be something very precious to know that when men's minds were all at loose ends and going to pieces, we were able to gird up the loins of our minds by the help of our Lord Jesus Christ!
We are not Christian dreamers engaging in idle and wishful thinking. We know who we are and to whom we belong and we know where we are going. Ours is a forward look in hope and expectation and we are surely among those whom Paul describes in writing to the Thessalonian church:
So then, let us not be like others, who are asleep, but let us be alert and self-controlled. For those who sleep, sleep at night, and those who get drunk, get drunk at night. But since we belong to the day, let us be self-controlled, putting on faith and love as a breastplate, and the hope of salvation as a helmet. For God did not appoint us to suffer wrath but to receive salvation through our Lord Jesus Christ. (1 Thessalonians 5:6–9)
Amen! We are looking forward to it because God Himself has said it by His Spirit, and He cannot lie!