Weekly Word Archives

Emotions

MANAGING YOUR EMOTIONS

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Introduction
We all have emotions. Emotions are part of the human experience. God expresses the emotions of grief, anger, joy, excitement, lovingkindness, and compassion along with a lot of other emotions. When Jesus took the form of a man (Philippians 2:5-8), He also expressed a wide range of emotions. Because we are created in the image of God, we have the ability to demonstrate the emotions that are part of His personality.

1. What is the role of my emotions?

Our emotions are messengers of our thoughts and beliefs. God directs His attention toward the thoughts and beliefs that produce the emotion rather than the emotion itself.

Emotions can make a mess of things in our lives when we allow them to be more true to us than God’s Word. They have the power to disrupt and control our lives when we make decisions based on our emotions.

We have the power through the Holy Spirit to deal with our emotions, and they are manageable.

2. Are you connected to your emotions?

Many of us are disconnected from our emotions. Denying strong emotions does not work. If they are not expressed, they can affect us physically or they result in unhealthy addictions. Emotions in themselves are neither good nor bad. They are morally neutral. It is the action that comes from the emotion that can be sinful. There are constructive ways and destructive ways that emotions are released. You can suppress emotions but you cannot control them.

3. How do we constructively handle our emotions?

The example of King David – Psalm 55. David strengthened himself in the Lord by expressing his emotions fully to Him instead of indulging his emotions. He changed his focus from himself and what he was feeling to focusing on God.

When you express your emotions to God, ask the Holy Spirit to reveal to you what you are thinking and believing. It is always safe to go to God with what you are feeling because nobody gets hurt. It gets the emotion out and allows the Holy Spirit to work in your life. He can speak to the rational side and help you decide what to do. As He reveals the truth of God’s Word to us, we can choose, as an act of our will and expression of our faith, to replace our wrong beliefs and wrong thinking with God’s truth. Then we can take appropriate action in response to the truth.

The personal example of the speaker shows how the end result of a conflict can be reconciliation. The conflict was put aside, forgiveness was extended and experienced, and everything worked out well. This example shows how we can take our emotions to God and allow Him to work through those emotions. Then we can ask Him what response we are to take as a result of listening to Him.

The secret to managing our emotions is to become a conduit or a channel for them and not a storehouse. We must acknowledge the emotion, listen to its message, express it to God and then ask the Holy Spirit to reveal to you what you are thinking and believing. In John 14:26, Jesus promises the help of the Holy Spirit (to teach us, to remind us of the truth of God’s Word, and who we are as God’s beloved children). As we listen to the Holy Spirit, we can decide to put off the lies and put on the truth. We ask God what steps of faith He wants us to take. Then we make a choice to walk by faith, accepting God’s Word as our final authority and not what we feel.

4. Emotions are not meant to be the object of our faith.

If you arrive at truth by trusting your emotions, you are making your emotions the object of your faith. Faith is a function of the mind. It means believing something. It must have something to place that belief in, an object. It is never a feeling, but a belief upon which you take action. It is a mistake to make your emotions the object of your faith.

It is sometimes difficult to make God the object of our faith instead of our emotions because of what we have learned from our parents and the world about how to deal with our emotions. We have the mind of Christ (I Corinthians 2:16), and the ability to renew our minds. We can view and respond to situations and perceive life in the same way that Christ does. In II Peter 1:3, God tells us He has given us everything we need for life and godliness. His promise is to help us deal with our emotions and respond to life’s events in a godly way.

Trust God with the way you feel. Trust in God’s love and the fact that He is always going to be dependable. We must put our faith in Jesus, the beautiful object of our faith. We do not need great faith. What we need is a deeper, moment-by-moment relationship with the object of our faith, Jesus Christ.

5. Emotions do have a purpose.

Fear and anger protect us. Sadness reminds us of our place in the universe as human beings at times. Joy can give us the motivation to keep going. The emotional aspect of love provides us with a satisfying connection to the person or thing that we love. Emotions enrich our lives.

After many of life’s experiences, we have often stuffed or put away a lot of our emotions. Perhaps we did not feel safe expressing our feelings. We may have been so overwhelmed with things going on in our life that we just shut down what we felt. Unfortunately, when we shut down our emotions, we cannot get specific. We cannot turn off and turn down sadness without affecting our capacity to feel joy. It is at that point we often need to thaw out our emotions. We may need to turn to a close friend or someone that will help give us feedback about the emotions that we are experiencing but are unable to identify.

God does not condemn us for our emotional struggles (Romans 8:1: Therefore there is no condemnation for those in Christ Jesus.)

Be willing to look at the emotion. The circumstance that caused the emotion may have changed. Look at the experience and ask God if it still deserves the emotion that it caused. Ask Him what He wants you to do with it. As you exercise faith in responding to God’s truth, you will begin to experience a change in your emotions. They will begin to line up with the truth of God’s Word because you have chosen to renew your mind and act upon the truth.

6. How do you make the victorious Christian life a reality?

God’s plan is for us to believe in Him and choose to submit ourselves to His loving care and authority, regardless of how we feel. The state of your emotions is never the measure of whether or not you are walking in victory. God has prescribed only one way to a consistent, moment-by-moment victory. That way is through our moment-by-moment relationship with Him. It is living by faith in obedience, and not being controlled by our emotions.

Ask God into your emotional life and share with Him how you feel. Our loving Father will take care of your feelings in His time after He has taught you to walk in the Spirit by faith. Know that the Father has everything under control, and that you are in Christ, seated in heaven. Rest in the truth that He is living in you now. Praise God for dreaming up such a fantastic, innovative plan - a plan where you and I can face anything in this world; anything it can throw at us, not due to our own ability, but to His ability through us.

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