God has much to say to the anxious, the depressed, the angry, the grieving, the confused, the despondent, to all the discontent who will trust him. But God’s revelation isn’t primarily about meeting these ailments. Jesus did not come into the world to first save us from our sadness — but our sin. Yet that is not what the new prosperity gospel of emotional health, wealth, and happiness teaches. We may shake our heads at messages about Jesus bringing believers mansions and Mercedes, all the while subtly believing that Jesus’s primary mission entailed giving us our best (emotional) lives now.

It wasn’t the response I had hoped for.

On our first long-distance call, the future Mrs. Morse asked me how my day had gone. Excited, I detailed how, just that afternoon, I finally had an opportunity to share the gospel with a friend when he opened up to me about a recent breakup. I enthusiastically recounted the conversation with her, assuming she would be impressed.

After listening, she paused, then asked, “Well, did you share the gospel with him?”

She must not have heard me, I thought. I began retelling my story.

“Yes, you told me that. I was just wondering if you shared the good news that Jesus can save him from his sin, death, and God’s wrath through his substitutionary death and subsequent resurrection — not just that God could make him happier after a tough breakup.”

Stunned, I retraced the interaction in my mind. Surely, I had, right?

Turns out the gospel I shared was not the one which Paul called “the power of God for salvation” (Romans 1:16) — however much it may have felt like it. Rather, I had shared a kind of feel-good gospel with him. To this brokenhearted romantic, I had offered only a cookies-and-cream Christ ready to cater in the moment to his messy breakup. And while Jesus certainly doesinvite the dissatisfied, the thirsty, the unhappy near to find joy in him, the gospel does not say that Jesus first died to spare him from the immediate heartache of an ended relationship. Jesus came to address more than our felt-needs of the moment.

The Gospel of Feel-Good

The qualification cannot be overstated: God is “a very present help in trouble” (Psalm 46:1), the emotional ballast for all saints going through valleys, our fortress to shelter his people from the storms of this life. He does indeed answer his children’s prayers: “Satisfy us in the morning with your steadfast love, that we may rejoice and be glad all our days” (Psalm 90:14). When you suffer, run to him. If you’re happy, go to him. When you’re anxious, turn to him. He is our Father and invites us near, both on sunny days when all is well, and in stormy nights when shadows creep along the bedroom wall.

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