Carefully guard your thoughts.’ Proverbs 4:23
When it comes to everyday living, you can walk according to the unchanging principles of God’s Word or by your constantly changing feelings. When you live by God’s Word, you have stability. When you live by feelings, it’s like riding a roller coaster: one day you’re up, the next you’re down. God wants to bring you into emotional maturity, but you have to cooperate with Him. This calls for a daily surrender of your will and choosing to do things His way rather than your own. Once it becomes a habit, you discover that life is more enjoyable.
Now, you don’t let everyone who knocks on your door come in and make themselves at home, so why would you let every emotion that surfaces
dictate the direction of your day or decide your responses? Carefully
guard your thoughts because they are the source of true life.’ Proverbs 4:23 It’s your thinking that produces your feelings, not vice versa! That’s why Paul writes, ‘Capture every thought and make it… obey Christ.’ 2 Corinthians 10:5 In other words, if a thought doesn’t line up with God’s Word, don’t give it a voice or a vote.
He expounded to them in all the Scriptures the things concerning
‘We walk by faith, not by sight. 2 Corinthians 5:7 This may come as a surprise, but you won’t always feel God’s presence. After His resurrection, Jesus appeared to two disciples on the Emmaus road, yet they didn’t recognise Him. Why? Because they were occupied with their feelings!
How did He lift them out of their negative emotions?
Himself. Luke 24:27
Bottom line: be led only by God’s Word. Job 5–7. Don’t Let Your Emotions Control Your Life. Navigating our emotions and giving them the proper respect and place in our lives is tricky. Emotions are not, in fact, a sign of weakness or inability. We don’t want our emotions to be led only by emotions. And we don’t want to ignore, deny or numb them, leaving us living in a world that lacks feeling or excitement. There is a reason that God made us creatures who feel things deeply.
Using emotions as guide is not new.
Fear has kept us alive for thousands of years—we don’t pick fights we can’t win or try to do things that will certainly end terribly. We feel angry at injustice and take action. We comfort those in our lives who are sad. We celebrate with those who celebrate and mourn with those mourn. We do not want to be overtaken or blinded by our emotions. Being blind with rage is not good for anyone. While getting angry isn’t necessarily a bad thing, debilitating sadness doesn’t serve anyone well. Getting passionate isn’t a bad thing, but becoming unstable can be dangerous.
Losing control, unfortunately, is all too common. It is not healthy and can be dangerous. The destruction that is caused during those episodes is often deep and long-lasting. The physical and emotional effects can leave scars that last a lifetime. When we can’t see out of the forest of our emotions, we lose our grasp on reality, we no longer can find truth in order to orient ourselves appropriately to move forward. Instead, we become stuck and feel like a prisoner to our own selves, unsure what is really true and what is not.
We need to put our emotions in their right place. If you are not at a healthy place, if you are feeling trapped, this is the opportunity to do something. Look into counseling and take it seriously. There is absolutely no shame in getting help; it’s not a sign of failure or weakness. Think of it like going to get help for a physical injury. Sure, you could keep going, but that will not allow you to thrive. Your emotional health is paramount and directly affects the quality of your life. There is always room to grow. Another side to this coin is being able to properly identify and respond to the emotions of others, not just dealing with our own emotions. People who are emotionally intelligent can read people’s emotions from their posture and facial expressions. They can properly assign the right emotion and figure out a way to cheer them up, if needed.
In many ways, emotional health is just as important as our physical health. Workplaces and families suffer when someone emotionally unhealthy is acting out. It is like having someone with the flu walking around the office or your home, breathing their own bacteria into the air, changing the dynamics of whatever they are a part of.
Emotional health is not just a general sense of niceness or being agreeable, which also gets mistaken for being Christ-like. Pleasantness doesn’t make anyone holier or healthier. Taking steps toward health and becoming emotionally intelligent benefits everyone. Suppressing your thoughts or biting your tongue may seem like an acceptable short-term solution, but ultimately it will not work. Loneliness and resentment will creep in over time. You are meant to belong to a community and to be an active member who shares and takes part, not a passive observer. Bring your whole, healthiest self when you show up.
WHOSOEVER WILL WORSHIP MINISTRIES
www.wwwmjesus.net
Assistant: Pastor Wesley Fulton
429 Bayou Rd, La Marque, Tx.77568
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