For years, I thought being a good Christian meant not feeling too much.
I learned early how to smile through discomfort, how to say “I’m fine” even when my throat felt tight and my thoughts were racing. I believed faith looked like composure. Control. I remember the little old ladies at church with a quiet strength that never cracked, so I suppressed the emotions that felt inconvenient or messy. I was convinced that fear, anger, or sadness were signs of spiritual immaturity.
Somewhere along the way, I picked up the lie that good Christians don’t struggle internally. They pray more. They trust harder. They move on faster. And yet, Scripture tells a different story. God designed emotions. Jesus, Himself, experienced them fully. The truth I had to face was simple (and uncomfortable). I could not run the race God set before me while carrying unprocessed emotions. They slowed me down and quietly shaped my life from the shadows.
Emotions are not a design flaw. They are part of God’s good creation. They are not sinful in and of themselves, even when they feel intense or inconvenient. Jesus, fully God and fully man, felt the full range. Luke tells us He rejoiced in the Holy Spirit with joy that overflowed. John records the shortest verse in Scripture, “Jesus wept” , reminding us that sorrow has a place in the human experience. Mark shows us His righteous anger as He looked around at hardened hearts with grief mixed in (Mark 3:5). Matthew lets us overhear His deep distress in Gethsemane when He said, “My soul is very sorrowful, even to death.” Over and over again, we see compassion move Him toward people, not away from them.
If Jesus felt emotions without sinning, we need to stop labeling emotions themselves as the problem.
Proverbs 4:23 says, “Keep your heart with all vigilance, for from it flow the springs of life”. Guarding the heart does not mean locking it down or pretending nothing touches it. It means stewarding what flows through it with wisdom and care. That distinction matters. Why? Because we need to have a theology of emotions. Authors Groves and Smith in Untangling Emotions describe emotions as indicators, not dictators, and that framing changed everything for me. Because if you’ve been listening to the podcast for awhile you’ll notice I use that language when I bring up emotions. According to their book, our emotions are an expression of our loves and values.
Now our anchor verse of the year, Hebrews 12:1, tells us to “lay aside every weight” so we can run with endurance the race set before us. Unprocessed emotions are weight. They may be invisible to others, yet they are heavy all the same. They cloud judgment during decisions. They steal peace. They’ll keep us anchored to anxiety or bitterness about the past. They distance us from God because shame, anger, or hurt convinces us to hide instead of draw near. They drain energy because suppressing emotions requires constant effort. They distort identity and will cause you to put on labels, shifting from “I feel anxious” to “I am anxious.”
For me, the emotion I avoided most was fear. I called it wisdom. I called it discernment. In reality, fear shaped my choices, slowed my obedience, and kept me bracing for what might go wrong instead of trusting who God is. When I finally slowed down enough to name it and bring it into the light, things changed. Fear lost its authority when it was engaged instead of avoided.
Scripture gives us a better way, and the Psalms model it beautifully. David never sanitized his prayers. He was angry, confused, desperate, and heartbroken, often within the same song. He asked hard questions and made bold declarations in the same breath. And still, God called him a man after His own heart.
Stewarding emotions begins with naming what you are actually feeling. Vague language keeps things foggy. Specific language brings clarity. I believe Awareness is the first step toward freedom. From there, we ask what the emotion is revealing. Emotions are signals. Fear reveals what you care about, meaning it exposes the potential for loss. Anger reveals what you value. The authors call it the moral emotion. Something you’re observing is being treated unjustly and you want restoration. Sadness reveals what you lost. Guilt and shame indicate a disrupted relationship. None of that is accidental.
Then, we have to bring it to God honestly, without spiritual bypassing. Jesus did this in Gethsemane. David did this throughout the Psalms. Prayer that skips honesty is not walking by faith; it is avoidance dressed up in spiritual language. Finally, we submit what we feel to God’s truth. Emotions are real, yet God’s Word is the ultimate truth. Listen, sometimes you have to pray… “Lord, I feel forgotten, but You promise never to leave me nor forsake me.” “I feel afraid, but You are with me.” Let truth anchor what your emotions reveal.
This month has reminded me that freedom comes through processing, not pretending. You cannot run unhindered while carrying unprocessed emotions. God can handle your honest heart. He already knows what you feel, even when you struggle to admit it to yourself. So I want to ask you this. What emotion have you been avoiding? Fear. Anger. Grief. Disappointment. Practice the four-step process this week. Name it. Explore what it reveals. Bring it honestly before God. Submit it to His truth. Let Him meet you there.
God designed emotions, and He invites us to steward them well. Hebrews 12:1–2 calls us to run with endurance, fixing our eyes on Jesus, the founder and perfecter of our faith. As we learn to steward what we feel, the race becomes lighter, freer, and more focused.
Next month, we will turn our attention to the mind and how our thoughts shape our walk. For now, I would love to hear from you. What emotion are you learning to steward in this season?
Scripture is clear that spiritual warfare is real, and it does not primarily play out in dramatic moments. It happens quietly, internally, thought by thought. Paul reminds us in Ephesians that our struggle is not against flesh and blood, but against spiritual forces. The enemy rarely begins with overt rebellion. He begins with little lies. A thought here. An assumption there. A narrative repeated often enough that it starts to feel true. Over time, footholds become strongholds when those thoughts go unchallenged. A foothold might sound like, “This is just how I am.” A stronghold sounds like, “This will never change.” Both shape how we live.
Hebrews 12:1 calls us to lay aside every weight and the sin that clings so closely, and then it tells us how. We run with endurance by fixing our eyes on Jesus. The race is not just about outward obedience. It is about where our focus rests. What we fix our minds on determines how we run. When our thinking is cluttered, we run distracted and weary. When our thinking is anchored in truth, we run lighter, freer, and with purpose.
Emotions are not a design flaw. They are part of God’s good creation. They are not sinful in themselves, even when they feel intense or inconvenient. Jesus, fully God and fully man, felt the full range. Luke tells us He rejoiced in the Holy Spirit with joy that overflowed. John records the shortest verse in Scripture, “Jesus wept” (John 11:35), reminding us that sorrow has a place in holy ground. Mark shows us His righteous anger as He looked around at hardened hearts with grief mixed in (Mark 3:5). Matthew lets us overhear His deep distress in Gethsemane when He said, “My soul is very sorrowful, even to death” (Matthew 26:38). Over and over again, we see compassion move Him toward people, not away from them. If Jesus felt emotions without sinning, we need to stop labeling emotions themselves as the problem.
To be unhindered is not to have a flawless plan or a perfectly curated life. It is to clear away the distractions that keep us from being faithful right where we are. It is to remember that our identity is in Christ, not in comparison, not in productivity, not in striving. And because God is our source, we are not dependent on systems that exhaust us. We lean into the Holy Spirit who sustains us. Steward It Well
And as we sit here in 2026, I think many of us aren’t tangled up in obvious sin and rebellion. We’re actually exhausted by accumulation. Expectations. Distractions. Comparisons. The pressure to do more and be more, even when God hasn’t asked us to.
That’s why the Word of the Year, Unhindered, is so timely and fitting.
We’ve got to get more honest about what we’re carrying. We often assume that spiritual growth and maturity are tied to adding more and increase, but here in Hebrews, we see the opposite. We see release. Casting things off. Laying things aside. Surrender.
It’s an invitation to reflection. What has slowly attached itself to us? What fills our days and dulls our discernment? What keeps us busy, but lacking real fruit?
