Is There a Biblical Way to Think About Our Emotions?

Is there a biblical way to think about our emotions? That's just one of the questions we'll be answering on today's edition of CORE Christianity. You can also post your question on our Facebook, Instagram, or Twitter accounts. If you want to watch Adriel right now, he's live on YouTube, and you can send him a message that way. And of course, you can always email us your question at questionsatcorechristianity.com. First up today, let's go to Becky in Antioch, California. Becky, what's your question for Pastor Adriel?

Yes. I was curious about the leviathan that is mentioned in Job. In reading that, I can't see that it could be anything except for a dinosaur when it's the size that is described, and I just wondered how you felt about that.

Hey, Becky, thanks for that question. Well, you know, there are some who do take the leviathan in the book of Job to be a dinosaur, obviously created by the Lord. A little bit earlier, so you're referring to Job 41, beginning in verse 1, where we read, Can you draw out leviathan with a fishhook or press down his tongue with a cord?

Can you put a rope in his nose or pierce his jaw with a hook? This is a great sea creature. Earlier, actually, in Job 40, verse 15, we also have this description of the behemoth, which I made as I made you.

He eats grass like an ox. Behold, his strength is in his loins and his power in the muscles of his belly. So there are people who will point to those passages and say, look, is this a biblical description of dinosaurs? Another way of looking at this when we're talking about the leviathan specifically, Becky, is that in the ancient world, the sea was viewed as this place of chaos and destruction, this place where the monsters lived, and God was the one who was over the chaos of the ancient world. In Psalms, chapter 74, beginning in verse 13, you have this kind of language, again, with the leviathan. You divided the sea by your might. You broke the heads of the sea, monsters on the waters.

You crushed the heads of leviathan. There, the leviathan is pictured as this mini-headed sea creature, this sea monster that God rules over, that he crushed, that he destroyed when he delivered his people. Part of the language that we have here is just the picture of God's power over all of his creation, even the great creatures that he made that are often a terror to his people. In that sense, it would have been and was a great comfort for God's people to hear about God's power over these terrible creatures.

As I said, Becky, there are some people who do take those references there in Job 40 to the behemoth and then 41 to the leviathan to be descriptions of dinosaurs. I appreciate your question. God bless. This is Core Christianity with Pastor Adriel Sanchez.

One of the ways you can ask your question is to email us at questions at corechristianity.com. Glory in Modesto, California wrote to us and she says, Why is it that when I'm angry or sad or feeling any emotion, the emotion immediately floods my heart? But often when I'm praying or reading the Bible, my heart doesn't experience any feeling. I wouldn't say it's empty, but it kind of feels that way. I find this troubling and I'm wondering if it's normal for most Christians. Well, yeah, Glory. First, I would say I think this is normal for most Christians.

I think a lot of us, if we're coming into Christianity from the outside, we join the church. This was my experience. Early on, there were a lot of feelings, a lot of emotion, a lot of excitement, sort of that honeymoon phase. Then after a while, those feelings slowly went away.

That for me personally, it really troubled me and I know it really troubles a lot of people as well. I thought, well, goodness, what happened? Did the Lord leave me? Did I sin in some way?

How come I don't have those exciting feelings anymore? But the reality is I think a part of faith maturing is getting to the place where we realize faith and feelings are two different things. We don't walk by feelings, we walk by faith.

I love the way C.S. Lewis put it in Mere Christianity. When he was talking about love, he said, look, don't concern yourself with whether or not you have the feelings of love. Do I feel like I love this person? Do I feel like I like them?

Ask yourself the question, what would I do if I did and just do that? It's the same thing in our relationship with the Lord. What we find as we do that, as we're committed to seeking the Lord, to pursuing the Lord, even when the feeling isn't necessarily there, is that oftentimes the feelings follow. Now, that's not always the case, but as we draw near to the Lord, we do have that promise in scripture that he draws near to us as well. But a mature faith is a faith that says, I'm going to be obedient to the Lord, continue to follow the Lord, even when I don't have those feelings. I think sometimes God takes those feelings away so that we might mature in our faith, so that we might be consistent in our walk with Jesus, not up and down based on how it is we're feeling when we wake up in the morning. But I do want you to know that your experiences is really a common experience, and sometimes it's hard to pray, to open up the scriptures, and that doesn't mean that you're less spiritual than you once were, per se. We're just called to continue to pursue the Lord, to seek him, and to rest in the fact that he's there with us and draws near to us as well as we draw near to him. So, glory, may the Lord bless you and be with you.

Thank you for that question. Thanks, glory. We appreciate you and appreciate the fact that you're one of our regular listeners here at CORE Christianity. Let's go to Elliot, who's calling in from Wisconsin. Elliot, what's your question for Pastor Adrian?

Hey, guys, thanks for checking my call. My question is, how does God view the marriage of unbelievers? Yeah, well, Elliot, I mean, I guess it depends on the particular marriage. I mean, if you're asking, are unbelievers who get married really and truly married, I would say, yeah, I think that the answer is yes. I think that marriage is something that was instituted way back in the beginning of the Bible, early chapters of Genesis, where God brought Adam and Eve together.

It's this sort of creation ordinance, a part of the common society of this world. And, yeah, at the same time, I think that there's so much that we learn about the mystery of marriage through the gospel. And so, while I believe that non-Christians are truly married and ought to be faithful to one another, I think that the essence of what marriage is cannot be fully understood apart from the work of Jesus Christ and what he's done. And, of course, Paul, in the book of Ephesians, he looks at those early chapters of Genesis and he says, you know, the mystery of marriage is really about the relationship that Jesus Christ has with his church. And that's when he gets into those exhortations, husbands love your wives as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her. And so, I think that insofar as marriage is this common institution, that the marriage between unbelievers is a real marriage, but that if we're really going to understand the depths of what God intends for us in marriage, we need to look to the gospel. And so, you can't have that fullness in marriage, if you will, apart from Christ, I would say. Thank you for your question, Elliot, for giving us a call here at the core. You know, you mentioned C.S.

Lewis earlier, and C.S. Lewis has a wonderful chapter on marriage in his book, Mere Christianity. It's just so beautiful and so powerful. We would encourage all of our listeners, if you haven't read that book before, it's a great book to read. First of all, it's an apologetics book, but also just to talk about marriage and love, as you mentioned earlier, Adriel. Yeah, and even getting back to the question that we received from Glory about feeling. I mean, he gets into just how, I mean, you think about when you get married, you know, you have that sort of honeymoon phase, and then as the love matures, you don't always feel those same fireworks, you know, 20 years down the line, 30 years down the line, but that doesn't mean that the love has gone away.

No, we're learning to love each other in deeper ways. And so, really good stuff there on marriage and also on just feeling and the life of faith. You're listening to Core Christianity with Pastor Adriel Sanchez. How often do you pray for your mother and father? Today, we are offering a great book that reminds us of the importance of praying for our parents. Yeah, it's this book written by Chelsea Stanley, and it's called Five Things to Pray for Your Parents. I think that, well, you know, a lot of times we talk about the ways in which we can be praying for our kids.

And, of course, that's so important. We need to be praying for our children. But you don't hear a lot about, you know, how is it that you can pray for your parents, that you can continue to honor your parents, as the scripture says, honor your father and your mother, even into adulthood. And that's one of the things that this book is going to help you do, is to pray for your parents consistently. Again, it's called Five Things to Pray for Your Parents, written by Chelsea Stanley. We want to get this resource into your hands. You can find it by going to corechristianity.com. We'll send it to you for a donation of any amount.

Just go to corechristianity.com forward slash offers and look for Chelsea Stanley's book, Five Things to Pray for Your Parents. You can also call us for that offer or any one of our offers at this number. It's 833-THE-CORE, which is 833-843-2673. Let's go to John, who's calling in from Munich, Germany. John, welcome to the program.

Oh, hi, Adriel. Thank you for all the work that you're doing at CoreChristianity. My wife and I have been listening to your show for quite some time. And we have a question.

We have three children, ages three, eight and ten. And we're wondering how we can approach the topic of sex with them. If you have some suggestion of how we can start a conversation, maybe some resources.

We know that there's a lot of resources maybe out there that are named Christian, but they may not be necessarily biblical. So what we are looking for is some advice how to talk about sex, marriage and the changes that especially the older two boys are going to be experiencing. And we want to give them a biblical teaching before they hear all the bad stuff from the world out there. Thank you.

John, thank you so much for that call. I have children kind of around those same ages. My oldest is nine, going to be ten, seven, four, two year old.

And we actually have one more on the way. So this is something my wife and I have talked about quite a bit. And it's so important that we help our children. This is one of the areas where we have to disciple them in the midst of a culture and a society where oftentimes the way in which sex and relationships are talked about is very unhelpful. And first I think it's important for us to be able to teach our kids about just their body and even safety related to body.

I have a friend named Justin Holcomb. He and his wife, Justin and Lindsay, wrote a book called God Made All of Me, a read aloud story to help children protect their bodies. And so I think kids really young ages, that's a great resource to begin just talking about the body. And just a sort of positive view of the body. One of the big issues I think today even in the church is we have this very, we can have this very negative view of sex because of the culture. And so I think we're trying to balance the biblical view, which is God created this as a good thing to be enjoyed in a certain context. And so we don't need to treat it as a taboo subject. We want to be very honest with our children, open with them to talk about the goodness of God, of relationships, of reproduction, of how God intended the world to be. But also some of the dangers obviously that we see out in the world today.

And so I would say there's got to be that balance thereof. We're talking about this in a positive way. I mean you just think of books like the book of the Song of Songs, right, which celebrates marital intimacy as this gift from God. And so we don't want to treat it as, and I think one of the dangers a lot of times in the church is we talk about sex so negatively.

And our kids hear that and they hear about these corruptions in the world and in culture and then they begin to have this sort of darkened view of what really in the Bible is a good thing that is so often abused. And so having that proper balance, that one book is just sort of getting things started for talking about body and body image, those kinds of things. And I'm guessing, Bill, you probably have some good resources on this as well as a counselor with families. You know, one of my favorites is God's Design for Sex by Stan and Brenna Jones. Stan is one of the top Christian psychologists in the country. He's the former provost at Wheaton College. And they wrote a series, God's Design for Sex, which is actually, there are several books and they're all age appropriate based on the child's developmental stage.

So you can start off like with a three or four year old all the way through the teen years, which with each of these books, they're paperback. And I think they're one of the best things as far as a biblical and accurate medical, psychological perspective on sexuality. Awesome. Hey, John, thank you for giving us a call. And may the Lord bless you out there in Germany. So, John, so great to hear from you internationally. What a blessing to hear from one of our international callers. Let's go to Marty in Corpus Christi, Texas. Marty, what's your question for Pastor Adriel?

Yes. I was wondering why churches, pastors and stuff don't really talk about the rapture and the end of times. What we're getting into, Marty, there is the doctrine of eschatology. Eschatology is just a fancy theological term for the study of the last things.

And in particular, you know, because that study of the last things actually encompasses all sorts of stuff. We're talking about the resurrection of the dead, the life of the world to come, but in particular, the second coming. And there is a lot of difference within the church and there has been historically on that question. There are some groups, some Christians that teach that Jesus is going to come kind of in the secret way to deliver his people on earth prior to a time of great tribulation. And then after that time of great tribulation, you're going to have the second coming of Jesus Christ and the establishment of God's kingdom on earth. There are others who believe that Christ is presently reigning right now and that Jesus is going to come back. And there's not going to be any rapture in the way that the other group might describe it, but that he's going to come and that when he comes, he's ushering in the final judgment, the resurrection.

All of those things are happening at the same time. And so I think maybe one of the reasons why some people don't talk about the rapture specifically is just because there are differences of opinion on the end times. And let me just say this, the key that you need to understand, and this is what is focused on throughout the scriptures related to the second coming of Jesus, is that it's a bodily return of Christ. That he's coming back the same way he left, if you will.

He ascended into heaven bodily. He's coming back to judge the living and the dead. And so anyone who denies that Jesus is coming back, well, that would be a problem. That would be a false teaching related to the end times.

But there is a diversity of opinion in the church on this question in particular. And I would say for us as believers, the call that you have throughout the New Testament is to be ready. The coming of our Lord Jesus Christ is referred to as the blessed hope of God's people. It's something we look forward to because we know that Jesus is coming to redeem his bride, to rescue her fully and finally. And in one sense, we pray for that every time we say, Lord, your kingdom come, your will be done. And so it is our great hope as as believers.

And it's something that we should talk about. Thank you for your question, Marty. May the Lord bless you.

Marty, if you'll hang on the line for a second, we'd love to steer you towards our Web site. We actually have a great resource on this topic. It's called What are the main views of the end times? It's one of our core questions. You can find it by going to coreChristianity.com forward slash questions.

Just look for what are the main views of the end times. Let's go to Cela in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma. Cela, what's your question for Pastor Adriel? Hi, thank you for taking my call.

I really appreciate what you guys do. I've been convicted. I feel that I've been called to read the Bible a little bit more. And the more I hear about it, that you're not a Christian, you're not reading the Bible. So I'm doing that. So I've been reading more on John.

And we're trying to read that for 30 days just over and over to kind of let it sink in. And then I got to a part where it says that if you love Jesus, you hate your brother. And you don't love Jesus. You're a liar.

And it goes to this whole, you know, if you say this, you say this, and you're a liar. All of it seems so true to me, but I'm wondering if I love Jesus or not truly deep down inside because I do have someone that I dislike severely. I guess you could call hate if I turn around hate my brother. And have I truly forgiven him? I've been praying for a pure heart to God just please. And I know we're all evil. We know we're not evil.

I know we're not good like God. But now I'm questioning is that do I love Jesus? And I feel like I do. I mean, I've been to the cross and just wept at the cross. So my question is that possible that I could hate somebody and not?

Yeah. Well, Selah, I'm grateful that you gave us a call. And, you know, this is a struggle that many believers have. You read a passage like this where we're called to love God, we're called to love our neighbor, and we look inside and we realize we still have sin. And so then we begin to wonder, well, can I really say that I love Jesus? Do I really love Jesus? Do I really have faith?

Am I really a child of God? We have to understand a couple of things. First, 1 John was written to a group of Christians who had just experienced really a great schism in the church. There were a group of people who were once a part of the church that John is writing to who had left, who had abandoned the faith, and they had embraced false teachings about Jesus. They were essentially denying the truth. They had fallen into the spirit of the antichrist, if you will. And John is going to talk about that in this letter.

He's even going to talk about those who had left. He says, you know, they went out from us, but they were not of us. If they were really of us, they would have continued with us.

It sounds to me like you're aware of the fact that you don't love your brother, if you will, your neighbor perfectly. And that's all of us. We recognize we have sin. And the false teachers in John's day were actually denying that they had sin.

So in one sense, I would say you're actually, in even recognizing your shortcomings on the right track. Earlier in 1 John chapter 1, John says, if we say we have no sin, verse 8, we deceive ourselves and the truth is not in us. If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness. If we say that we have not sinned, we make him a liar and his word is not in us. Now, my little children, beginning of chapter 2, I'm writing these things to you so that you may not sin, but if anyone does sin, we have an advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ the righteous. He is the propitiation for our sins and not for ours only, but also for the sins of the whole world.

I just want to speak to you and to everyone listening right now, to you listening right now. You just feel weighed down by sin. Your failure, you're aware, you're painfully aware of the fact that you don't love God perfectly, and you don't love your neighbor as you should, and you go to God, weighed down with that, and you say, God, have mercy on me. Let me just tell you, you have an advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ the righteous. If you say you have no sin, you're deceived, but if you realize you're a sinner, that you need God's grace, it's because the Spirit of God is at work in you, Selah, and if you believe in Jesus Christ, and again, you've read this because you're reading through 1 John, it sounds like. If you believe in Jesus Christ, you know that you have eternal life. I write these things to you who believe in the name of the Son of God. John says in 1 John 5 verse 13 that you may know that you have eternal life. John's goal here is not to get you questioning your salvation. On the contrary, he's calling out the false teachers who denied Jesus, who said they didn't have any sin, who hated their brother, but for those in the church, those committed to seeking him, those painfully aware of their sins, he's saying, look, you believe in Jesus, I'm writing to you so that you would know that you have eternal life. We go to the Lord, we go to the cross, as you said, Selah, we go to the cross, and there we fall at the feet of Jesus. Are there people who are deceived who say, oh, I love God, but then they just hate their neighbors all around them?

Yes, there are. In particular, there in 1 John, it was the false teachers that John was calling out. Are there professing Christians who can be self-deceived as well, people who say, oh, yeah, I love God, I said a prayer many years ago, don't really go to church, don't care about the people there, so on and so forth, but I think I got my fire insurance, you know, I asked Jesus into my heart when I was 14, that kind of a thing. Well, yeah, there are people who can be deceived, but it sounds to me, Selah, like you are convicted of your sin, like you long to know the grace of God in your life, and I just want to assure you of the hope of the gospel, of the objective work of Jesus Christ for you, that believing in him, you are forgiven, and John gives you that same assurance in 1 John 5, verse 13. So thank you so much for giving us a call, and we'll make sure to keep you in our prayers. As you continue to study God's word, love hearing that you're reading 1 John every day this month, so may the Lord bless you as you continue to do that.

Thanks so much, Selah, we appreciate your call. This is Core Christianity with Pastor Adriel Sanchez. Just a reminder about today's resource, it's a wonderful book on praying for your parents. Five things to pray for your parents, we'll make that available to you for a donation of any amount at corechristianity.com.

We would love to have you sign up for that and for our daily newsletter. Again, just go to corechristianity.com. Also, feel free to send us an email if you have a question for Pastor Adriel, questions at corechristianity.com. Thanks for listening to Core Christianity. To request your copy of today's special offer, visit us at corechristianity.com and click on offers in the menu bar or call us at 1-833-843-2673. That's 833, the core. When you contact us, please let us know how you've been encouraged by this program and be sure to join us next time as we explore the truth of God's word together.