Status Updates From Feeling Like God: The Emoti...

The author drops the insight that when we review our experiences and time in the Word with an eye toward the emotion of God, He delights in the increased intimacy such that the impact is compounded. Storing that nugget in OneNote, I find it already has company. 34 times, I've squirreled away overlapping insights from disparate sources. Time to write my own book?

Most Christians have a deferred hope, not a daily celebration. When we miss out on his joy, we miss out on his fruitfulness.

Excerpt from: "Feeling like God: The Emotional Side of Discipleship - and Why You Can’t Fully Follow Jesus without It" by Chris Tiegreen. Scribd.
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C. S. Lewis was able to call joy “the serious business of heaven.” Joy is room temperature whenever God is in the room.

Excerpt from: "Feeling like God: The Emotional Side of Discipleship - and Why You Can’t Fully Follow Jesus without It" by Chris Tiegreen. Scribd.
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Trust is a heart issue with God. Communion with him requires an emotional investment that plows the ground of your heart to receive his affections. In that place of deep intimacy, he shares his heart and speaks.

Whenever we linger long in a joyless or apathetic season, our immediate reaction should be to run to God and ask for a deeper connection with him.

Excerpt from: "Feeling like God: The Emotional Side of Discipleship - and Why You Can’t Fully Follow Jesus without It" by Chris Tiegreen. Scribd.
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God’s Spirit may inspire you and move you through your emotions, but rarely, if ever, does he insist on an immediate, unquestioning reaction. His inspiration is consistent, deep, and lasting—and he supports those who will test it to make sure it’s his.

Every “fear not” in the Bible is a call to conform to the emotions of heaven. God turns our mourning into dancing and gives us beauty for ashes. He invites us to enter into the joy of our Master and to look forward to the day when every tear is wiped away. We’re called to leap for joy when we are persecuted and to rejoice that our names are written in heaven.

We’re not only allowed to experience those feelings, we’re instructed to. It’s part of our discipleship; this is how we get to know God. God is intensely interested in our ability to conform to his heart.

Theological statements come directly from the deep, inspired emotions of prophets, priests, kings, and common people like you and me. The irony is that the people who are most vocal about biblical authority are the ones who most loudly reject the means by which biblical authority came to us: through subjective experiences, emotions, and impressions.

When God inspired the writers of the Bible, they became a part of the story. He used their personalities, experiences, and emotions to tell his story. They were not passive observers of divine truth.

C. S. Lewis said, “Joy is the serious business of heaven.”

Excerpt from: "Feeling like God: The Emotional Side of Discipleship - and Why You Can’t Fully Follow Jesus without It" by Chris Tiegreen. Scribd.
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It’s safer to calm our longings and settle for a sober-minded existence than to ride the waves of desire and end up caught in the undertow. Nobody wants to be crushed, and tempering our feelings is the best way to avoid it.

Historical transitions can be messy, even within Christian circles. Actually, especially within Christian circles. In matters of faith, tradition easily becomes sacred.

“In control” also looks entirely different to the Spirit of God than it does to dignified people.

Excerpt from: "Feeling like God: The Emotional Side of Discipleship - and Why You Can’t Fully Follow Jesus without It" by Chris Tiegreen. Scribd.
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Evangelical culture is afraid of its members getting out of control.

The false assumption, of course, is that being “in control” is aviable option.

Excerpt from: "Feeling like God: The Emotional Side of Discipleship - and Why You Can’t Fully Follow Jesus without It" by Chris Tiegreen. Scribd.
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Our feelings are the most accurate measurement of who we really are.

Excerpt from: "Feeling like God: The Emotional Side of Discipleship - and Why You Can’t Fully Follow Jesus without It" by Chris Tiegreen. Scribd.
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When feelings are channeled away from the Kingdom of God and into poor imitations long enough, they become synonymous with the poor imitations.

Excerpt from: "Feeling like God: The Emotional Side of Discipleship - and Why You Can’t Fully Follow Jesus without It" by Chris Tiegreen. Scribd.
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When emotions are marginalized in our faith, they come out somewhere else.

Excerpt from: "Feeling like God: The Emotional Side of Discipleship - and Why You Can’t Fully Follow Jesus without It" by Chris Tiegreen. Scribd.
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I’ve found that some books of the Bible are better “absorbed” than deciphered. Leviticus is one of those.

Excerpt from: "Feeling like God: The Emotional Side of Discipleship - and Why You Can’t Fully Follow Jesus without It" by Chris Tiegreen. Scribd.
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melding of hearts is a better definition of discipleship than learning and doing, because neither of those aspects prompts a change in the rest of the soul. Emotional bonds, however, prompt a change in our whole beings. It’s the one attribute of our personalities that can synchronize the others.

Much of it (the Bible)—especially the psalms—is a field manual in how to move emotionally from point A to point B and, ultimately, to feel like God feels.

Excerpt from: "Feeling like God: The Emotional Side of Discipleship - and Why You Can’t Fully Follow Jesus without It" by Chris Tiegreen. Scribd.
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You won’t develop a generous heart while focusing on the need to get rid of a critical spirit. The Bible never tells us to get rid of the flesh so we can start living by the Spirit. It’s the other way around: “Live by the Spirit, and you will not gratify the desires of the sinful nature”

"We were designed to throb with the heartbeat of God, but we keep worrying about whether a pulse is even appropriate. Discerning the difference between his heart and ours is too difficult, so we suppress whatever heartbeat is in us. And that's anything but an abundant life." Page 74

Just because we experience good feelings doesn’t mean those feelings are self-centered. Maybe they can actually point to God and bring him glory.

Excerpt from: "Feeling like God: The Emotional Side of Discipleship - and Why You Can’t Fully Follow Jesus without It" by Chris Tiegreen. Scribd.
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One of the greatest prayers you'll ever pray in your life is to ask God for his heart, and when you find true emotions burning within you to the degree that you think you just might die, you'll know he has answered. Finite bodies have a hard time coping with the stress of the heart rooted in eternity, but the power that results is life-changing. Page 65

Whenever an emotion of God – or any aspect of his character – comes to our attention, would be on the right track to go ahead and multiply it by a thousand and try to let our minds catch up with the thought.

We need to let his emotions saturate us by thinking about them, asking him to a part of them to us, cultivating the moments when we experience them, and find ways to apply them to other people in our lives.

Few people can relate to an emotionless person, much less fall in love with one. We generally connect with people when we see them in life situations that bring out their true feelings. But because Christian theology has a hard time explaining the passions of God, many of us never quite connect with him. Page 48

Deuteronomy 28 sounds pretty simple, doesn't it? Do good, be blessed. Do bad, be cursed. Except for one thing: If you read the passage carefully, it shows even obedience is not enough: You shall serve your enemies in hunger and thirst "because you did not serve the Lord your God WITH JOYFULNESS AND GLADNESS OF HEART because of the abundance of all things (vv. 47-48) " page 44

I told my heart to shut up and refused to let my God-ordained discontentment speak to me. For years I kept asking the Spirit to fill and empower me but allowed no room for him to work. Anytime some semblance of emotion came into the picture, I'd resolve not to let it motivate me, or, even worse, become the basis of the decision. Page 36

So the men of Israel said, “Have you seen this man who has come up? 1 Samuel 17:25a

Tiegreen points out scuttlebutt among the troops focuses on the EVENTS to "quell the emotions" that should respond if God is insulted. (Page 28)

Think like that for very long, and I'll have a different response than pride when below-average people talk about things and average people talk about other people. What are they quelling?