Picked up The Emotionally Healthy Church by Peter Scazzero at the Glad Sounds sales yesterday.
I was caught red handed by May Chin once again for another book purchase. She was graceful and gracious this time. Probably because she sees that this aspect of “Emotional health” is crucial for us personally as well as corporately in BLC.
I’m at p. 73 now of the 223page book.
I feel Scazzero is highlighting a very important point about the link between spiritual maturity and emotional health. Leighton Ford’s foreword mentioned about the “Fact – Faith – Feeling” model we use to keep feelings in check. I agree fully with Ford that ” … we should not rely on feelings because they are unreliable, secondart, and trust worthy. … but while our emotions may be changable, they are not unimportant.”
Just 73 pages of the book has honestly brought myself to an awareness of the need to monitor and watch my emotional health. The change starts with me and then now I also look at some of the present issues around me with a fresh lens. Though I’m sure many of our struggles and problems involve a variety of factors. But, this one definately is one of the key factors we need to address.
And there are too many of us, ignoring or not taking sufficient time to grow emotionally and keep growing healthily.. Some of our internal as well as external conflicts to spring from this broken part of our interior life. I think there’s a great need now for us to learn how to handle our emotions, moods, anger, depression and feelings. We have been ignoring this and sweeping things under the carpet for too long.
Scazzero says … “it takes work, energy, inconvenience, time, courage, solitude, and a solid understanding of the grace of God in the Gospel to grow into Christlikeness. This further contributes, I believe, to why the frontier of emotional health has largely been ignored in most discipleship, spiritual formation, and mentoring models in our churches and seminaries. For this we are paying the heavy price of stunted growth and shallow disciples in our churches.” (p. 55-56, emphasis mine)