The gospel of the Lord Jesus is unemotional… it is simply a truth. Jesus; the God-Man died and rose to life for sinners; to absorb their guilt, punishment and death, and to make them righteous, holy and alive as His adopted brothers in eternity to display the glory of His Father.
But the gospel does cause emotions. The gospel causes many many different types of emotions! Christians can rightly feel things all the way from shame to joy, from insignificance to glorious-pride (in a good way).
But what happens when you feel one aspect of the gospel more than another? What about those times when you feel the guilt and shame of your sin; when you feel the weight of your personal rebellion against God… when you feel how small and insignificant you are and how you have nothing… absolutely nothing to offer… just sin; wrath-worthy sin.
What about those times when your feelings of guilt are so strong you just can’t believe that God would want you, let along love you and want good things for you?
See, it’s not that you don’t understand the gospel… you “know” that Jesus’ blood can atone. You “know” that God can forgive through the cross. You “know” what God says, but you just don’t feel it – you feel like it can’t be true… “God could never love me, not now, not after what I’ve done.”
That’s when you need to ignore your feelings. They’re lying to you. In fact, it’s Satan lying to you. So please, don’t act out of your feelings! Don’t act in line with your emotions! Choose, nay, DARE to ignore your feelings and act according to the gospel.
Imagine for a moment… if God really loved you and wanted good things for you, what could you pray for? What would you feel comfortable praying for if you truly felt God was your great and powerful daddy? Anything, right!?! Trivial things, right?! Little nothing things, right?!
So dare to do that! Boldly approach the throne of grace and ask for the type of things that you shouldn’t be able to ask for! Take the plunge! Do it!
Trust God’s unemotional gospel in the midst of your emotional turmoil.
MINISTRY PRINCIPLES & PRAGMATICS 
Hi, Luke here. We don’t know each other but I read your article. I’m worried this is response is going to come across cold and angry but its not meant to. I’m trying to keep it short and to the point.
I think your title is overly controversial and only muddies your argument. Your title suggests that you are going to show how the gospel “dares us” to ignore all emotions all the time. It doesn’t do this though. I felt let down. Rather you explain that we should ignore our emotions when they cloud a right view of God.
I was also confused by your last two paragraphs. One minute you are talking about ignoring our feelings, next minute you are talking about how we should pray to God to ask for things. I didn’t follow your logic. How are these two things related? Maybe you are implying that to act according to the gospel means that we should pray to God to ask for things but I’m not sure.
OK… I’ve also decided to counter your opening paragraph. The gospel maybe unemotional if you view it as a words on a page, black lines on white paper, removed from the world and void of context. The wall of the room I’m sitting in is painted white. This is a simple unemotional truth. I don’t think the gospel is like this. It is a story about a real God, sending his real son in love to die for real people who treated him as an enemy. There is love, sorrow, anger, betrayal, forgivness, joy, happiness and hope in this gospel. I can feel and empathise with the emotions in the story as well as have an emotional response to it.
Luke
Yeah, I did feel a bit awkward with that openeing paragraph. God has acted and certtain things have happened and those things are true. God’s love is true.
But it might be too far to suggest that the gospel is “unemotional”. In the sense that it is a message, it is true (not false). But in the sense that it is God’s message, it is not void of emotions. It’s a message of “love” none the less. So yeah, I feel the tension and agree.
The movement from ignoring feelings to praying for little things is one that assumes that it’s very difficult to pray for little things when you don’t feel like God loves you.
Thanks for your feedback!
Thanks for the clarification
Hi Dave,
I like the emphasis on the gospel being consistent regardless of our circumstances.
However the ancient Greeks divided rhetoric up into three aspects: pathos (feelings), ethos (person) and logos (information) and you’ve restricted the gospel unnecessarily to merely information. Surely the gospel contains all the pathos of the tragedy of sin and the joy of salvation, while also being about a person (we have four biographies about Him) while also being an essential ‘kerygma’ of information?