Broadcasts

Just like you can follow a trail of smoke to figure out what’s on fire in your house, you can follow the trail of your emotions to figure out what is on fire in your heart.

Each of these emotions—depression, anxiety, anger, envy, and now “shame”—functions like warning lights on the dashboard of our hearts, indicating what is going on in the engine of our souls.

Sociologists say that envy seems to be a bigger problem for our generation that any before us, because social media seems designed to play on it! But when we look at other people’s lives on social media, we are seeing a filtered image.

Envy surrounds us—and most of us don’t realize the deadly poison that envy is. We think of envy as a kind of petty jealousy that just comes from wanting a little more. But the Bible treats it as far more serious.

We seem to live in an angry society. The issues change by the day, but the anger doesn’t. People seem queued up and ready to be angry—in the classroom, at work, on Twitter, and on the freeway. 

Remember that one time in the Bible when Jesus got angry? And he didn’t hide it? And he didn’t sin? Pastor J.D. is helping us see how we can be angry like Jesus, too.

When it comes to money, parenting, career, and any of the other litany of things we worry about, God is not telling us to sit back and do nothing. He is saying that we need to do what we can, and trust him with the results.

We worry most about what we are devoted to most. Jesus talks about the difficult emotion of anxiety by first challenging what we are most devoted to.

Whenever we struggle with depression, despair, or doubts about God, we think there’s something wrong with us or maybe we just don’t have enough faith. And it can be difficult to ask for help because we don’t want anyone to see us as broken.