Emotions can be messy.

We’re here to help you navigate them in a healthy way.

Here are some resources to help you.

How’s Your Heart?

This is a video of a Sunday morning message, part 1 in the series. Watch it here.

Pastor Phillip Santillan opens a series on the heart with a familiar experience: saying or doing something and wondering where it came from. Advice about self-worth and self-care helps some, he says, but the deeper battle is for our hearts. In Matthew 15, when rule-obsessed religious leaders fault Jesus’ disciples for eating with unwashed hands, Jesus says they honor God with their lips while their hearts are far from him. He tells his disciples that “what comes out of the mouth comes from the heart,” the source of evil thoughts, murder, adultery and slander. Our unguarded words work like a stethoscope, revealing what is inside. Phil points to Proverbs 4:23 and its call to guard the heart above all else, since God looks at hearts, not at our management strategies. He closes by comparing us to a patient who wants a healthy heart without the diet and exercise, and invites listeners to let God work in them his way.

Handling Our Guilt

This is a video of a Sunday morning message, part 2 in the series. Watch it here.

Continuing the series on the heart, Pastor Phillip Santillan turns to guilt. Not all guilt is bad, he says, but buried guilt splits us from who God created us to be; like Adam and Eve, we hide. Guilt leaves us in debt to the people we have wronged. In Matthew 5:21–24, Jesus teaches that murder begins in the heart and that we must be reconciled with others before bringing our gift to the altar. Relational debts are too intangible to repay, so unresolved guilt follows us into every relationship. Carrying guilt as punishment is not from God, whose kindness leads us to repentance (Romans 2:4). The way out is confession, modeled by Zacchaeus, who repaid the people he cheated (Luke 19). We confess to God for forgiveness and to others to heal. Phil closes with three steps: confess to someone, confess to the person you wronged, and make restitution where possible, because “confession breaks the power of guilt.”

Handling Our Anger

This is a video of a Sunday morning message, part 3 in the series. Watch it here.

Continuing the series on the heart, Pastor Phillip Santillan turns to anger, the flip side of guilt. Guilt says we owe someone; anger insists someone owes us, whether a reputation, a childhood, love or respect. Anger harms us physically, relationally and spiritually. In Ephesians 4:26–32, Paul, writing from a Roman prison with every reason to be angry, says, “Be angry and do not sin.” Feelings come naturally, Phil explains; what matters is how we respond. Not letting the sun go down on our anger means dealing with it as soon as possible, because unresolved anger gives the devil a foothold and becomes baggage in new seasons of life. Paul’s answer is forgiveness, not a feeling but a decision to close the account, and we forgive because God forgave us in Christ. Phil closes with practices: go directly and quickly, forgive quickly, own your part, speak well of and serve those who hurt you, and pray for them.

Handling Our Jealousy

This is a video of a Sunday morning message, part 4 in the series. Watch it here.

Continuing the series on the heart, Pastor Phillip Santillan turns to jealousy, a struggle many adults dismiss as childish. Wherever there is jealousy and selfish ambition, James warns, there is disorder and evil of every kind (James 3:16), and one sign is feeling pleased when someone we envy fails. In James 4:1–3, our fights come from desires at war within us, not from other people. We hide jealousy behind the fairness card, Phil says, but we don’t really want fair; we want more. If guilt says we owe others and anger says others owe us, jealousy says God owes us. Three volunteers who receive very different coffee gifts show that any complaint is really with the giver, and God gives his gifts as he sees fit. He offers three steps: be honest that your issue is really with God, celebrate the people you are tempted to envy, and memorize Proverbs 14:30, which says jealousy is “like cancer in the bones.”