Loving God With Our Emotions - Malcolm Lithgow

·40 min·3 clips

Malcolm Lithgow reveals how his deepening relationships made him more emotional, challenging common church views on feelings.

Malcolm Lithgow, speaking at Burleigh Heads Church of Christ, introduces a January series called 'Reset and Renew' focused on personal growth. He shares that his own emotional year prompted this topic on loving God with emotions. Lithgow maps out the talk: first examining two perspectives on emotions—traditional Protestant views, exemplified by a Martin Luther poem distrusting feelings, and modern 'follow your heart' approaches. He then proposes a third way grounded in the Bible, citing Romans 12 to show emotions like love and hate are integral to Christian living. The host references Presbyterian theologian John M. Frame, who argues in 'The Doctrine of the Knowledge of God' that emotions are no more inherently broken than reason, both being corrupted by sin and redeemed through God. Frame's example of writing book reviews illustrates how feelings and reasoning interact, guiding each other in decision-making. Lithgow applies this to life choices like marriage or church selection, where feelings play a significant role. He categorizes emotions: dangerous ones like pride and anger, mixed ones like fear and grief, and helpful ones like love and joy. Focusing on anger, Lithgow notes God's anger in scripture is only directed at obstacles to salvation, not general injustice, and suggests transmuting anger into grief, as Jesus did, to foster compassion. He shares a 60 Minutes story where grief led to legal change, unlike anger. For mixed emotions, Lithgow emphasizes ensuring the right object and motive, using biblical reflection. The episode includes interactive moments where listeners discuss their 2024 emotions. Lithgow concludes with tools for emotional management, such as daily reflection and filling the mind with God's word, and closes with a prayer and Colossians 3 passage on putting on love and peace.

As heard by us

A warm, practical sermon on bringing anger, grief, and the wider emotional life into Christian discipleship.

Emotional life is treated as part of discipleship rather than a detour from it. Drawing on an emotional year and deepening relationships, the speaker considers how feelings can serve love of God.

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Why you'd press play

You want faith to address difficult emotions, including anger and grief, without treating every feeling as a guide.

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