hey this is pastor John Ryan Cantu from PNEUMA church in Houston texas thank you for listening to the message today i hope that it blesses you and all those that you share it with god bless you you can take your seat for just a moment just a moment amen praise god it's good to be in the house of god this morning um this week late in the week i i got i got hit with i got hit with the flu i'm okay now they say 24 hours fever free you're good to go so i'm good to go some of y'all are like why are you here lord pray over this mic um but um i i asked michael to to bring bring the word today he's gonna he's gonna bring it in just a second um but i i want to make uh just one announcement um you know this past two wednesdays we've been closed because we've been renovating our fellowship hall we're gonna we're gonna reopen this this coming wednesday so we will have bible study at seven o'clock um be here amen yeah amen seven o'clock this wednesday um but i just want to share some of the progress um that we've been making over there um you know we this first phase it um it included a brand new ceiling uh some new lights uh some a little bit of storage and and so man god has been so good we thank y'all i want to thank give give it up for you guys because we we shared the need of project vision which is to raise 200 200 000 by the end of this year uh for some much needed renovation and um and we've been able to do that this next phase will include some new floors because we want to put some new floors in there uh new doors new windows all that stuff so um once it's done this phase one you're going to go in there it's going to look great but it's not going to look as great as it could be amen um so i want to remind you and if you haven't yet given or pledged um we're asking if you could pledge anything a thousand dollars for the whole year that would that would get us to our goal so if the lord puts that on your heart um just just let it let it sit there and pray about it and talk to your talk to your family about it uh but thank you god is god is moving god is working and to god be all the glory amen without any more ado uh further ado i want to ask mike to come and bring the word good morning as always is an honor and a privilege to be uh given this opportunity to bring the word of the lord today um thank you uh pastor Ryan for giving me this opportunity thank you all for being here um thank you for choosing to get up and come to church today uh we love that you're here we hope to see you again if you don't have a home church this is a good one you should probably stick around but uh but yeah today um i'm going to be bringing um a message that um god has put on my heart quite a lot quite a while ago um and um i finally felt like um i understood it myself enough uh to bring it to you guys um and uh i hope it preaches to you um at least half as much as it did to me god always preaches his sermons to the speaker first uh and then gives it over to the congregation so uh if you will stand with me we're going to go ahead and turn uh to the gospel of John chapter 11 gospel of John chapter 11 i'll give you a second to get there and we are going to be looking at a pretty familiar story um if you have been in church a while you've probably heard this story before um and i apologize it is going to be a little bit of reading um but i want to make sure that we have plenty of context um around my main text so all right this is god's word now a certain man was ill lazarus of bethany the village of mary and her sister martha oh we're starting at verse one by the way sorry forgot to say that right at the beginning uh it was mary who anointed the lord with ointment and wiped his feet with her hair whose brother lazarus was ill so the sister sent to him saying lord he whom you love is ill but when jesus heard it he said this illness does not lead to death it is for the glory of god so that the son of god may be glorified through it now jesus loved martha and her sister and lazarus so when he heard that lazarus was ill he stayed two days longer in the place where he was then after this he said to the disciples let us go to judea again the disciples said to him rabbi the jews were just uh were just now seeking to stone you and you were going there again jesus answered are there not 12 hours in the day if anyone walks in the day he does not stumble because he's the light because he sees the light of this world but if anyone walks in the night he stumbles because the light is not in him after saying these things he said to them our friend lazarus has fallen asleep but i go to awaken him the disciples said to him lord if he has fallen asleep he will recover now jesus had spoken of his death but they thought he meant taking a rest and sleep then jesus told them plainly lazarus has died and for your sake i am glad i was not there so that you may believe but let us go to him so thomas called the twins said to his fellow disciples let us also go so we may die with him now when jesus came he found that lazarus had already been in the tomb for four days bethany was near jerusalem about two miles off and many of the jews had come to martha and mary to console them concerning their brother so when martha heard that jesus was coming she went and met him but mary remained seated in the house martha said to jesus lord if you had been here my brother would not be dead but even now i know that whatever you ask from god god will give you jesus said to her your brother will rise again martha said to him i know that he will rise again in the resurrection on the last day jesus said to her i am the resurrection and the life whoever believes in me though he die yet shall he live and everyone who lives and believes in me shall never die do you believe this she said to him yes lord i believe that you are the christ the son of god who is coming into the world when she said this she went and called her sister mary saying in private the teacher is here and is calling for you and when she heard it she quickly rose and went to him now jesus had not yet come into the village but was still in the place where martha had met him when the jews who were with her in the house consoling her saw mary rise quickly and go out they followed her supposing that she was going to the tomb to weep there now when mary came to where jesus was and saw him she fell at his feet saying to him lord if you had been there my brother would not have died when jesus saw her weeping and the jews who had come with her also weeping he was deeply moved in his spirit and greatly troubled and he said where have you laid him they said to him lord come and see jesus wept amen i've titled my message today so emotional you guys can go ahead and take your seats um and to kind of start things off on a kind of silly note when you grow up uh like i did as a pastor's kid and you grow up in the church uh you sometimes get these really weird goals like church goals um and uh today i get to live out one of those goals because when i was little i learned in children's church that the shortest verse in the bible is John chapter 11 verse 35 two words jesus wept and ever since i learned that i as a kid i was like oh one day i'm gonna i'm gonna preach a message on that verse well ladies and gentlemen congratulations uh you are getting to be a part of that dream come true uh for a little michael so um so we're gonna be talking about uh that very very short verse that also happens to pack a lot to talk about um because today i would like to address something that um i've seen kind of beginning to happen in in the church the american church as a whole um and it's not necessarily an issue that i think is a problem yet but it's something that i think we should be cautious of and we should be mindful um of it um and that is uh something surrounding the way we as christians look at emotions now me personally i'm not a big fan of um throwing labels onto people i don't like um oversimplifying people and saying oh that's a so-and-so type of christian that's a this type of christian things like that i think people are much more complex than that i think it causes um issues whenever we're like that but if you were to ask me if you were to say michael you have to choose what kind of label would you put on yourself as as a christian like what kind of christian are you um and uh if i had to pick one uh it would probably be i would say that i'm much in line with what would be called the intellectual christian movement like you're intellectual christian um which sounds like a flex um but you realize that that just means i get really nerdy about stuff that most people don't think twice about um i i love a good bible study i you know i want to know everything there is to know about jesus about god about christianity all of that kind of stuff um you know i love music i love a good night of worship but you put me in a bible a good bible study i'm locked in i'm ready to go if we were all to walk into a bible study together and the teacher goes oh today we're going to look about look at the theme of trees throughout the bible you would probably check out immediately but me i'd be like oh man this is my time to shine i'm ready i love it and and i know there's others like me um and actually there's becoming more like me uh there's the there's kind of this uh resurgence of the intellectual christian somebody that really thinks about and dives into scripture um and that's a good thing um and the reason that's happening is because we as the church identified a problem which is that a lot of christians were biblically illiterate and so we made in an effort to build up people's biblical literacy and with that comes intellectual christians and that's great wonderful but like anything especially within the church sometimes when we notice that the pendulum has swung one direction we can then sometimes swing it to the opposite side and that's what i want to talk about today i want to caution us in the way that we talk um about specifically about emotions uh because i've heard a lot recently from various different christian leaders or people you know christians on social media or just everyday christians saying things like emotions are just something to overcome emotions are out to get you your emotions you can't trust them they're out to get you um and i want us to be cautious about the way that we talk about emotions and i want to use this example that we find in um in the gospel of John uh the story of lazarus um and i want us to take a look a little bit closer of a look at the text so at the beginning uh jesus gets word that lazarus is um going he's really sick and immediately jesus tells his disciples oh this is not a sickness that ends in death uh he tells his disciples ahead of time that he is going to raise lazarus from the dead in fact this is one of the few times where jesus actually clarifies to the disciples what he really means a lot of the time jesus uses some cryptic language and the disciples don't get it and jesus is like whatever they don't get it but this time jesus really makes an effort to tell them no no no he's not asleep he's dead but that's okay i'm glad he's dead because you're going to get to see something um and so he tells his disciples that he's going to raise lazarus from the dead when he meets with martha he tells her that lazarus is going to be resurrected and she goes i know jesus he's going to be resurrected at the end of time when everybody gets resurrected and jesus says no no no i am the resurrection and the life he is going i'm going to raise him from the dead and what this tells us in the text very blatantly multiple times jesus knows at the very beginning that lazarus is going to raise from the dead he is going to be raised back to life he knows what's going to happen and if you're like me the intellectual christian you get to verses 33 and through 35 and you go what are you doing jesus what's wrong with you why are you why are you weeping you know that in less than 10 minutes lazarus is going to come walking out of that tomb why are you sad where is the joy in your heart jesus where's the hope that you have why are you being so emotional maybe these are similar questions to things you've been asked before jesus knows what's going to happen and yet he still weeps not cries he weeps and so as good biblically literate people we should ask a question here why why does jesus weep in this moment when he knows how the story is going to end why does he weep why does jesus the king of the universe weep over something that he knows will not be an issue in less than 10 minutes let's take a brief journey through the story scripture is telling us about god and his people way back in genesis chapter 2 we're introduced to an ideal world we're introduced to god's perfect creation he creates humanity in his own image and everything is in his own words good the only thing that was not good was that man was alone so he makes eve and he gives man a helper and then everything is once again good we're in this perfect ideal creation but then chapter 3 adam and eve we choose that they're going to define what good and evil is on their own terms they introduce sin into this good perfect creation and because of that we are told that for the wages of sin is death death wiggles its way into the equation but death was never a part of god's design never a part of god's plan in fact kind of one of my pet peeves when i go to like a funeral um and i know they mean well and i know it's not the sentiment that they mean but sometimes you'll hear people say something like this person's death was a part all a part of god's plan and i understand that sentiment and i understand what they're trying to say but death was never a part of god's plan can god use something as terrible as a person's death for good yes of course he can take anything and make it good but that does not make it part of his plan death was never a part of what god had planned for us death is simply a result of a world overtaken by sin and in this moment where we see jesus uh standing before all of the people mourning he is seeing not just seeing he's experiencing firsthand the effects that death and suffering has on the people around him the people he loves the people he has relationships with he's experiencing this in a human form making it extremely personal and jesus is 100 god and 100 man so he is seeing this kind of from two different perspectives but they're linked together as god he is seeing the results of mankind's disobedience mankind's sin present in the world he is seeing um the the result of that sin and that and how things are not meant to be and as jesus he is seeing firsthand the people he loves the people he has personal relationships with suffering and and in pain because of the loss of lazarus jesus knows that this isn't how the story will end but yet he still feels the pain of the present moment and it's important that we as christians know or i'm sorry it's important that we as christians are aware that because we as christians know how the story is ultimately going to end that does not mean we cannot be sad or upset about the shortcomings of the world that we are presently in jesus proves that our emotions even the negative ones are not just something to overcome or reject jesus could have immediately rejected that emotion and said i'm not going to cry in front of these people that might make me look weak that might make me look like i don't know what i'm doing may give them may cause them to lose their hope no jesus says no it's important for me to be emotionally invested in these people and even though i know how the story is going to end i can see the pain that they're going through and i feel that pain with them there's a there's a phrase that gets translated into english as deeply moved it happens twice in that passage that we read it says that jesus was deeply moved that word in greek is imbri maumai imbri maumai and that word uh really carries a connotation of to be so upset um to the point of anger it is like whenever you angry cry it's kind of like that but it's usually reserved for things that are like a great injustice um something that's really really um just hard to even believe is happening and it says that jesus felt that twice that he was he was so upset with what he was seeing that it was almost an angry upset uh he it felt like an injustice was happening and i think that's important to know that jesus felt these same emotions that we feel because it proves that our emotions are a part of our reflection of god to completely reject the emotional side of ourselves is to reject a crucial part of the very image we are supposed to reflect to be a proper reflection of the image of god we cannot risk cutting ourselves off from him emotionally jesus jesus experienced very human emotions we read through the gospel of various different emotions he feels he cries he's angry at times he's lonely at times he's tired he feels these very human emotions he's happy at times he's laughing with the disciples at times we sometimes forget that jesus that that very human side of jesus the emotional side of jesus and we forget that our emotions are a reflection of that and what i fear is that as we become more biblically literate which is a good thing we might sacrifice our emotional connection to god we become a church who knows a lot about god but is unable to emotionally connect with god so we have to be careful we have to look at the example of jesus and and how emotions are used all right so we presented this problem of okay how do we make sure that that balance is met that we that we you know know the important things about god the fundamentals we know why we believe what we believe but at the same time balance that emotional side because emotions at times can get the better of us emotions can cause problems at times so let's kind of look at this as two sides of the same coin because i think there's kind of two types of people in here and there's probably a lot of overlap between that there's probably a little bit of both in everyone so on side one you have the what's just called the intellectual christian the person that knows a lot about jesus and a lot about the bible the kind of the veterans the people that have really studied scripture for those people it could feel as though to experience especially negative emotions is to reject what they know to be true if i if i am sad because of this thing that has happened in my life then if i'm if i show that i'm really upset about that i'm compromising the the fact that jesus is one day going to make everything okay we think that we need to reject those emotions because if i show that then i'm that i'm not as faithful i'm not i'm not showing my faith as well i'm i'm compromising the gospel and i think we can look at this story and see that jesus proves this to be absolutely false jesus knows that lazarus is going to rise from the dead he knows that what he is about to do he is certain of it more certain than we could ever be about anything and yet jesus still takes the time to embrace the emotion that he feels in that moment and and have empathy with the people that he's around to experience negative emotions is not to reject what you know to be true yes there will be a day where jesus wipes away every tear and where everything is made new but again that does not mean that we cannot be sad that we're not there yet that we are still having to endure the things that we were never meant to endure in the first place and i think what we can also do with this uh is when we reject those emotions when we say no i'm not going to be sad about this i'm not going to uh let you know i'm not going to embrace that emotion i'm just going to reject it what we do is we we don't allow jesus the opportunity to weep with us jesus wept but he can't weep if you never let him if you don't ever show that side of yourself to him he can't grieve with you he can't sit with you in what you're feeling and that's going to that's going to be a sacrifice of a part of yourself that's going to be not surrendering a certain part of yourself to him and i think what we often do those of us with this mindset is we we feel as though we can supplement the emotional connection to god with just knowing things about god for instance i can know a lot about my wife i can know her favorite places to eat i can know what she does when she first wakes up i can know what she does when she goes to sleep i can know how you know what her favorite places to go are i can know all the things she absolutely does not like i can know everything about her but if i cannot sit with my wife and weep when she weeps or celebrate when she's happy or be angry with her when some sort of injustice has happened then all i am is just a fairly creepy person that knows a lot about one particular woman i it's one thing to know a lot about a person it's another thing to be able to sit with them in the emotion and have an emotional connection to them james kind of puts it this way uh... in his in his letter you believe there's a god good so do the demons knowing that there's a god is not a flex it's not something to be proud of like the demons know that and they shudder about it it's not about necessarily it's not just about what you know it's about having an emotional connection to the savior of the universe then you have the other side and this is for the people that's brains do not work like mine um and uh...

maybe you're not you're like man i don't even know a lot about the bible or jesus or anything that's okay there's still a part of us that just you know in society as a whole um...

we've there are people that have just been taught their whole lives that emotions are something to suppress and to overcome that you know why are you being so emotional why are you always so sensitive about everything you've and so you hide from it because you don't want to seem like that overly sensitive person you don't want to come across that way you've learned very well how to put on a good face and unfortunately this even happens in the church i've grown up in the church my whole life i've seen it i've seen um...

um...

people come in and pretend on a sunday morning i grew up a pastor's kid so i would hear through conversation about the things that people in the church were going through sometimes very difficult hard things and then i would see that family come in on a sunday morning and act like everything was okay i was like how are you doing that why are you doing that but it's because we've been taught that certain emotions make you feel seem weak they make you seem like you don't know how have any control which how many of us have any control anyway a really big example that we see in society that i think is a really big problem is this kind of mindset of like real men don't cry real men don't cry and what happened and this happens in the church outside of the church stop crying man up and what happens is we teach young men that the only way they're allowed to socially express their emotion is through anger and then we wonder why we have a world filled with a bunch of angry men who are ticked off all the time and it's because we've told them a lie their whole life is that real men don't cry it's a lie and men all i have to do to prove that is just ask your wives and they'll let me know real men cry all the time but also it's a lie because we can look at jesus who was the perfect man therefore he's the manliest man and he cried all the time but that's another example of how we can look at emotions in an incorrect way and we don't even think about it and it creates problems our emotions are like anything they were designed by god with a purpose in mind and just like anything else us humans can get our hands on them and we can use them for all the wrong reasons that does not make them bad it just means we're using them wrong to say emotions are inherently bad would be like handing someone a hammer and when they try to use it to saw a board in half saying these hammers are useless you can just get rid of them we don't need them and i think too many of us have been taught that our emotions are not to be trusted that our emotions are deceitful that they're just something that we need to get rid of we need to overcome them stick with what you know and that's true we should always use them in tandem with what we know to be true because our emotions can they get the better of us?

yes can they lead us to do foolish things?

yeah but this is why we as Christians must do with them what we do with everything else we filter them through the person of Jesus Christ we ask ourselves how would Jesus respond to what I'm feeling?

when we begin experiencing especially a strong emotion we need to filter that emotion through the character of God that's evident in Jesus Christ and allow the Holy Spirit to guide our response utilize the Trinity to express how we feel that's the process that creates an emotionally healthy Christian everybody wants to be emotionally healthy well we as Christians we have Jesus to show us what it looks like to be emotionally healthy it does not mean that we just get rid of emotions all together and become a bunch of robots that don't have any emotions no it means that we when we have those big feelings we ask ourselves how would Jesus respond to the emotion I'm feeling like anger for instance Jesus gets angry but in a very specific way in scripture he gets angry and a lot of times we get angry but for all the wrong reasons and we get angry and it gets the better of us and we do something dumb and it causes problems but if we just took a moment to say okay I'm feeling angry how would Jesus respond to this to what I'm being angry about we probably we probably have to tell ourselves to chill out a little bit but that's the process to create an emotionally healthy Christian is to look at the person of Jesus and say Jesus cried he was tired he felt all these things that I feel but I want to make sure that the way I respond to that is like Jesus and it was crazy as I was as I was coming up with this I realized that the only religion the only the only faith system in the entire world is Christianity where where where God literally knows what it's like to experience the emotions that you've felt Christianity is the only belief where God knows exactly how you feel take comfort in the fact that we serve a God who knows how it feels we need to be we need to become comfortable with just allowing Jesus to sit with us in how we're feeling in our emotions we don't have to fight them we don't have to immediately overcome them we can just sit with Jesus in those moments be still and know and we can allow Jesus to sit with us and say I know exactly how you're feeling and I'm not talking about being emotional in a theatrical way I'm not saying that you just start weeping in the grocery store or something I'm just I'm saying that in an authentic way we need to be able to surrender not only our minds but our hearts to God the emotions that we feel surrender them over to him some of you have never been given permission to share how you really feel Jesus will sit there and listen to you and he will sit with you and weep with you and be angry with you Jesus knows how it feels whatever you're feeling Jesus knows Jesus knows how it feels to be sad Jesus knows how it feels to be happy he knows how it feels to be angry he knows how it feels to laugh to be lonely to be tired to be hurt to suffer to be betrayed whatever whatever it is you're going through take comfort in the fact that your savior knows exactly how it feels not from a top down view but from actually experiencing it and walking through life he knows and I take great comfort in that that I have a savior that actually knows deeply how I'm feeling go ahead and stand with me yeah and if the prayer team would like to come up first maybe you're in here today and you say Michael that was a really cute message but you're wrong Jesus doesn't know how I'm feeling because I've come in with so much guilt and shame about the things that I've done and the person I've become it's just a weight of guilt and shame Jesus doesn't know how that feels and I would argue with you and I would say Jesus does know how that feels and you would say no no Jesus was perfect he never sinned he couldn't possibly have felt that excruciating weight of his own guilt and shame my response to you would be that I never said it was his I never said it was his guilt and shame that he felt it was yours and it was mine and it was the person next to you and he felt it when he was on the cross and he felt it so that you don't have to Jesus today wants to sit with you and take that guilt and shame away he wants to weep with you and then pick you up and dust you off and let you know that great things are coming spoiler alert Lazarus comes out of the tomb just like Jesus said he would and the tears of joy or sorry the tears of sadness turn to tears of joy and maybe you're in here and you you just feel that overbearing weight Jesus already took it that guilt and that shame you don't have to carry it anymore let's bow our heads real quick because I want to give those people in the room an opportunity today to once and for all hand over that guilt and that shame to Jesus he's already taken it you might as well give it to him let him be the leader of your life and let his holy spirit be what guides your emotions from this day forward let's have an emotional connection to our savior savior so if that's that's you that's you that's you and you want to officially give your life over to Jesus us can you raise your hand for us because we want to celebrate you if there's anybody in the room that wants to give their life to Jesus today hand over that guilt and shame amen good we're all good in here which is good I want to follow it up with this maybe you're one or both of those sides of that coin that metaphorical coin that I was talking about earlier maybe you know a lot about God you know a lot about Jesus you've made it your goal to just know everything there is to know but in that you've lost that connection you're not you don't feel that emotional connection to God you you've surrendered everything you've surrendered every part of your mind to knowing about God and knowing who he is but you still keep clutching your heart and not surrendering the emotional side because you don't want to seem weak maybe you're a leader and you don't want people to think that you are less of a Christian or you're less spiritual or that you don't you in some twisted way you don't want your ministry to suffer because of how you're feeling emotionally don't worry about that that song reminds us the highest place we could ever reach is the feet of Jesus to put a blend I don't think you should really care what other people think no matter who you are there's one person that matters and I would hate for you to sacrifice your emotional connection to that person because you're worried about all the other people maybe that's you maybe you just need to reignite that emotional connection to God you need to finally surrender how you feel over to Jesus so that you can actually process it correctly you've just suppressed it and kept it hidden and that's not okay today's one of those days where if we have leaders praying with leaders that's fine or maybe you're the person who's just been taught your whole life I don't let people see me be emotional I don't let people I don't give my emotions over to other people maybe you've been burned maybe you've been I don't know maybe it just scares you a little bit at least give it over to Jesus Jesus gave us the church for a reason and one of those reasons is to have people that can help build you up but we can't do that if nobody knows what's going on if nobody knows that you're hurting how can they help the church is meant to be a hospital for the sick not a museum for the perfect it's been said before but some of you need to that emotional health and you're only going to get that through Jesus some of you need to today let it out a little bit you've been keeping it hidden you refuse to let Jesus sit with you and how you feel I want to give you that opportunity to weep with those who weep and rejoice with those who rejoice that's how Paul puts it that's what Paul says we as the church are supposed to do but how can we weep with those who weep they won't show that they're weeping Jesus the king of the universe stood in front of all those people and wept if Jesus can weep so can you you have permission so we're gonna go back into that song what a God because we have a God who knows how it feels so when you're praying and you're asking Jesus to help you through what you're feeling know that Jesus has been there he's felt it and he's the only one who can walk you through it so let's take a time to reflect and pray we have the prayer team here let them know if you need anything that's what the church is here for let them pray with you let them know what's going on or maybe if you're somebody that just needs to reignite that emotional connection take this opportunity to do that reconnect with the God of the universe your savior it's one thing to know about him it's another thing to know him amen let's pray real quick God I pray that as we go into this time that you would speak to your people that you would open hearts and those that need that a little bit of emotional connection to you I pray that you would meet them here that you would let them know that you are with them whatever trials they're going through whether they're tired or they're angry or they're sad depressed lonely whatever it might be God you've been there you know how it feels and you can walk with them through it you can allow your Holy Spirit to guide them and direct them on the path to take I pray that we would be open to what you want to speak to us allow us this morning God to be a little bit of emotion a little bit emotional with you and I pray that because of it we would have a stronger relationship with you and that our relationship would not be just founded on what we know about you but our love for you and our connection to you and I pray that for the generations to come that they would not be a generation that just knows all the verses that just knows all the theology but that they would be a generation that knows who their God is and knows how to be emotionally invested in the King of Kings and the Lord of Lords thank you thanks for listening if you'd like some more information on PNEUMA Church visit us on our website at mypneumachurch.org if you enjoyed the podcast you can subscribe or share it with your friends on social media and tag us at mypneumachurch thanks again and God bless you I'll see you next time.