Without God’s involvement in the raw facts and events of reality, they carry no positive or negative value in themselves. They are simply events. Natural disasters like a tornado or wildfire happen on their own accord, doing what they do. Far less destructive events like a cool summer breeze or a rainbow after a rainstorm take place without any predetermined intention in themselves. Events with a human origin are also, on the face of it, mere moments in time. Weddings, funerals, a day at the beach, a scraped knee all occur as they do, as facts. Whatever happens factually becomes captured as a record in the annals of history as events.

Yet each of these events that take place as objective facts, without any inherent value, have the power to affect us emotionally. A situation may produce sadness, joy, anger, compassion, or myriad other emotions according to how we process it. Interestingly, the same event can produce opposite emotional responses even within the same person, depending on a shift in perspective. Our emotional responses can vary widely in both range and intensity.

Our emotions also affect us greatly, ultimately having the power to direct our chosen responses. In Thilo Hanstein’s powerful and insightful editorial, “Feelings That Can Deceive Us!,” published on February 27, 2026, he wrote about how we are to anchor ourselves by trusting in God so our feelings and emotions don’t lead us astray. He writes, “God’s Word does not say that we should suppress our feelings, but that we should not make them our ultimate standard. God is described as unchanging, while the human heart can falter. That is why trusting in God is not a feeling, but a decision.” He acknowledges that feelings are real and meaningful to us. But he continues to emphasize the importance of using those feelings to bring us closer to God, so that He can help us manage them. We need God to guide us in all things, and our feelings and emotions help Him to understand our situation.

The passage in Jeremiah 17:9 is one which, humanly speaking, is very troubling. Jeremiah writes, “‘The heart is deceitful above all things, And desperately wicked; Who can know it?’” If we cannot trust our own hearts, even when we feel that our intentions are good, it can leave us untethered. If even our inner-most hearts cannot be trusted, what are we to do? The answer is that we go to God. The Holy Spirit is pure and with it, God will help us to understand our situation from a godly perspective. It is with that godly perspective that we are to guide our emotional response. As Mr. Hanstein astutely emphasized in his editorial, we must trust in God to help us process our feelings and emotions. This is the only way to avoid being led astray by the deceits of our human heart.

So then, if emotions are a synthetic response to factual events and if those emotions produced by our heart can lead us astray, is it wrong for us to have emotions? Should we deny the way we feel? Do our emotions have no value in the eyes of God? To answer any of these questions affirmatively is not what the Bible instructs. In fact, we see many counter examples demonstrating how emotions serve an important and powerful purpose in our lives and the lives of God the Father and Jesus Christ.

Shortly after the creation of man, God felt sorrow and grief after seeing the severe wickedness that had developed in mankind and moved Him to initiate the flood (compare Genesis 6:5-6). Even though there was such evil, God the Father also felt such strong love for humanity that He was willing to give His Son Jesus as a Sacrifice to cover their sins (compare John 3:16). Jesus Christ, being fully man when He was on the earth, felt strong emotion as well, which motivated His ministry. “But when He saw the multitudes, He was moved with compassion for them, because they were weary and scattered, like sheep having no shepherd. Then He said to His disciples, ‘The harvest truly is plentiful, but the laborers are few. Therefore pray the Lord of the harvest to send out laborers into His harvest’” (Matthew 9:36-38). Emotion is not an ungodly trait. Far from it. Emotion is a powerful force that we see through God’s example. In these examples, we can see how action became motivated through emotion.

Emotion is a motivating force. Without emotion, the events of our lives are neutral facts of history that fail to move us in any meaningful way. As Christians, we must be moved in the right direction by our emotions. What we do in the eyes of God matters. Therefore, our motivation needs to be aligned with God. The call to action is to bring emotions to Him so we choose the right direction.

Emotion, guided by God, will motivate us to understand how we should respond. Our hearts will be bound to lead us astray if we don’t include Him. However, when we invite God into our lives to help us understand the events that affect us, He has the power to fortify our emotions with righteous intent. This is what gives us strength to tackle the difficult events we face and to rejoice in the situations we are meant to appreciate.

God has a strong desire to work with us. He expects that we will have a heart with a capacity to feel joy, anguish, love, and more. He knows that we need that in our lives to be a motivating force. And He knows we need His strength.

When we have need, God invites us to pour out our innermost heartfelt emotions to Him. And we always have need. “…Pour out your heart like water before the face of the Lord. Lift your hands toward Him…” (Lamentations 2:19). What we go through will certainly trigger emotional responses. When we lay down those emotions before God, He will help us to understand our circumstances from His perspective, motivating us to respond righteously.

Everything in our life occurs in the present moment. Because of this, it can be a challenge to keep the events of life in context of the bigger picture.

In my family, our young boys’ lives are centered around play and snacks. Just about every decision, complaint, and desire of theirs focuses on satiating their hunger for fun and food in the moment. Our older sons, now grown young men, have matured beyond the self-indulgent appetites to have concerns focused on starting their journey into adulthood. As such, being interested in their well-being, my wife and I bring those concerns into our own lives. Their concerns become ours too. In addition to our investment in their upbringing, we have myriad other concerns that we have accumulated from our own grown-up responsibilities we’ve picked up along the way. Things like the Work of the Church, employment, physical health, home ownership and much more put demands on our time. I bring this up to illustrate the up-close micro details that consume our attention, bring us delight, stress us out, and consume the resources of our days. This is what our lives consist of in the moment: Getting to work on time, getting food on the table, coaching our children to shape their lives.

In an up-close view, the substance of concern in our lives becomes magnified by the demands of our daily activities. The molehills of concern are mountains in the moment. Even the most trivial kind of problem, such as a wrong turn on the way to an appointment is the most important thing in the moment. In the close-up view, our activities appear to be an accumulation of little things right in front of us.

To say this is not to diminish the importance of our immediate attention, physically, mentally, nor emotionally. The little things really are important! People must necessarily operate on the little things that are right in front of them. Our interface with the world is limited to that which we can directly affect. All we can do is work with the moment, material, and people which are immediately before us. A journey of a thousand miles requires taking one step after the other.

The Bible makes it clear that the little things matter in our lives and also explains why they matter. “He who is faithful in what is least is faithful also in much; and he who is unjust in what is least is unjust also in much” (Luke 16:10). The way that we live in the moment reflects how we live in the larger context! In this passage in the Bible, Jesus Christ explains that the principles that govern our behavior apply both at small and large scales. We use the same source of faith for the small things as the large. Likewise, if we make justifications for sins because we consider them to be small and insignificant, we may be prone to make justifications for all other sins too. The little things matter because they are part of a mosaic in a much larger picture. 

The least of our actions takes place in the context of God’s plan for us. “For we are His workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand that we should walk in them” (Ephesians 2:10). Our kindness to another in a passing moment is an expression of brotherly love that has the power to lift their heart, improve their day, and even change their life. The negative examples hold true as well. A hurtful word to another can damage trust in the span of a second and take years to repair. Therefore, our actions in the moment need to be considered in a much broader spectrum than our close-up view allows. God is working with us in our lives to help us learn and grow.

When considering the details of our lives in the moment, what should the scope of our perspective be? How far should we zoom out to properly see the setting of our momentary actions? It is no exaggeration to say that we need to view our moments in the context of the plan of God that He has for the entirety of creation. “For I consider that the sufferings of this present time are not worthy to be compared with the glory which shall be revealed in us. For the earnest expectation of the creation eagerly waits for the revealing of the sons of God” (Romans 8:18-19).

Knowing that everything we experience in the moment is part of God’s master plan ought to give us great comfort. Our struggle, joy, boredom, and excitement take place in the context of something big. We may get wrapped up in the magnified concern of the moment, but those things only matter in their purpose to help us to grow into the children that God is helping us to become.