What If You Can Trust Your Heart?
Reclaiming intuition and emotions as a Christian source of wisdom.
Evangelicals have a complicated relationship with emotions. Attend a standard nondenominational church service, and you’ll likely find an outpouring of heartfelt worship. There, emotional expression is a sign of being alive with the presence of God. Small groups and Bible studies are confessional; participants are encouraged to share personal joys and struggles. Emotionally intense preachers and speakers are seen as “on fire” and uniquely gifted.
Testimonies often hinge on a heightened emotional moment; I’ve written about coming to Jesus at age 13 after a Geoff Moore and the Distance concert. (It is important to my worldview that we honor the spelling of “Geoff.”) After responding to an altar call, I knew I was a Christian because my heart felt “strangely warmed,” a phrase from John Wesley that, years later, I would recognize in my own experience, and in the stories of countless inheritors of Wesley’s pietist, revival…
