In this podcast, the hosts discuss the importance of acknowledging and integrating emotions into one's faith journey. They share personal experiences of suppressing emotions and how it affected their leadership and relationships. The podcast also explores the skill of exploring emotions in biblical scriptures and emphasizes the significance of admitting and experiencing a range of emotions for personal and spiritual growth.
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question_answer ANECDOTE
Seventeen Years Without Feeling
Pete and Jerry spent 17 years in faith without integrating emotions into their spiritual life.
Discovering feeling in their 30s suddenly made life vivid and transformed their marriage and leadership.
question_answer ANECDOTE
Allergic To Emotional Neediness
Pete and Jerry both avoided emotionally needy people because they didn't know how to handle emotions.
Their inability to accept their own anger made them allergic to others' anger and limited leadership.
volunteer_activism ADVICE
Journal The Four Feeling Questions
Journal daily asking: What are you mad, sad, anxious, and glad about to build feeling muscles.
Use Scripture (Psalms, Jeremiah, Job) to normalize a wide range of emotions before God.
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For the first 17 years of my Christian life, my emotional life was completely divorced from my spiritual life. Or so I thought.
When sadness, anger, or disappointment surfaced from my soul, I did not see them as gifts. As a leader, I saw my emotions as interruptions to "my real work" – moving the church forward and reaching the lost!
As a result, I was not present with myself, with God, or with others. I saw my sadness as something to be overcome through prayer and Scripture. I would declare, "the joy of the Lord is my strength!" while ignoring the deep cries of my heart.
The truth is that emotions never die. They are only buried alive. They always resurface, leaking into other parts of our lives and relationships.
It took a work of God for this to change in my life and marriage. When my wife Geri and I discovered the permission to explore our emotional life, it was like opening up a dam. The world went from black and white to color almost overnight.
Emotionally healthy leaders see their emotions as invitations, not obstacles to the mission of God.
The fruit of this journey leads to less anxiety and more freedom in our lives, leadership, and relationships.
In today's podcast episode, my wife Geri and I share more about the skill of emotional discovery we call "Explore the Iceberg" in Emotionally Healthy Relationships.
Bottom line, your emotional life is a matter of life and death!
2- day conference for pastors and leaders seeking to build emotionally healthy church cultures.
September 30 – October 1, 2026 14th St. Salvation Army, NYC
The Emotionally Healthy Leader Podcast