EMOTIONS;
EMOTIONALISM; PREACHING: MANIPULATION

I have to disagree with religious appeal that supposes if someone in the audience can be moved to shed a tear, a saint has been made. Or that if a husky listener can be touched emotionally to the point that he must blow his nose as though it was Gabriel’s trumpet, all will be well with his soul.

I warn you that there is no connection whatsoever between the human manipulation of our emotions, on the one hand, and, on the other, the confirmation of God’s revealed truth in our beings through the ministry of His Holy Spirit. When in our Christian experience our emotions are raised, it must be the result of what God’s truth is doing for us. If that is not so, it is not properly religious stirring at all.

John 8:31–32

Jesus, Our Man in Glory, 85.