Emotion [Todd]

Everyone who hangs out with the NLC staff for a while knows that we (at least most of us) are geeks when it comes to personality and temperament analysis. Sure, typing can be cliched and a lazy way to put people in a box, but the best instruments offer an incredible amount of insight into why you do what you do.

Our Executive Pastor, Rob, and I share the same temperament and we are alone on our staff team. As a matter of fact, we are unusual for ministry cats.

And we are made fun of for it...more than a little. In a loving way. Of course.

We are both hard-charging, big picture-thinking, ambitious, performance and results-oriented.

In other words, the kind of guys most people think of as jerks. And the kind of guys who can in fact BE jerks if not pretty closely aligned with God's Spirit.

Probably one descriptor comes to mind when people think of that particular temperament - emotionless.

And, generally speaking, I own that. I am not the typical empathetic, warm pastoral type.

But every now and then I am reminded that, while the way God made me is cool, I need to be stretched in the emotional arena the same way I stretch myself physically and intellectually and relationally. It is easy for me to miss out on whole chunks of life because I have my head down focused on taking the next hill or knocking off the next giant or crossing the next item off the list.

And then I run headlong into Psalm 139. You can read it here.

The psalm explores an incredible range of emotions - pensiveness, joy, gratitude, awe, anger, hope - all in twenty-four verses.

If you are wired up to be an emotional person, you can be glad that that is one way you reflect God's image!

Given my wiring, I need to be reminded to embrace the emotional aspect of the heart and soul God has given me.

If you are wired up like me, where is God stretching you emotionally?