Part 3: Emotions
Sunday, January 18
Teaching Series: Making Wise Choices
Life is a series of choices. What we choose opens the door to reality. So what’s happening in your life today is a result of choices made. Reality isn’t based on wishful thinking or wanting or hoping. Reality is based on choices. Every decision we make is going to be based on the knowledge that we’ve obtained. Where are you getting your information? Where is your wisdom coming from? Has God’s Word, the Bible, become the final and ultimate authority in your life? Foolish decisions will cost you. Every decision has to be well informed.
It has been your choices that got you where you are today. But you can change your direction in life by changing your source of knowledge.
Trust God from the bottom of your heart; don’t try to figure out everything on your own. Listen for God’s voice in everything you do, everywhere you go; he’s the one who will keep you on track. Don’t assume that you know it all. Run to God! Run from evil! (Proverbs 3:5-7, Message Bible)
Emotions
Words will determine your thinking. Your thinking will determine your emotions. The third step in making wise choices is managing your emotions.
If you have thinking that lines up with God’s Word, then you will have feelings and emotions that line up with God’s Word. But there is truth to the statement: “Garbage in, Garbage out.” If you have negative words, those negative words will produce negative thinking. Negative thinking will produce negative feelings and emotions. You reap what you sow (Galatians 6:7).
What are emotions? Emotions are feelings on the inside caused by pain or pleasure designed to move you in a direction. Emotions can get you moving in either the right or wrong direction in life.
Please understand something. Satan only needs three steps to ruin your life. He will speak his words. Get you to think in line with his words. Then once he gets you into the emotion area, he can move you away from the will of God for your life. How we deal with our emotions will determine whether we experience the blessing or the curse in our lives.
God gave us emotions. He gave us emotions so that they can be gifts to us. But He never intended for your emotions to take charge over your life. You are supposed to take charge over your emotions, and not let your emotions take charge over you. If you allow those emotions to take charge over your life, then those emotions will move you up, out and away from the will of God for your life.
Being Emotionally Led
In Genesis 3, Satan shows up in the body of the serpent.
He said to the woman, “Is it really true that God said, ‘You must not eat from any tree of the orchard’?” The woman said to the serpent, “We may eat of the fruit from the trees of the orchard; but concerning the fruit of the tree that is in the middle of the orchard God said, ‘You must not eat from it, and you must not touch it, or else you will die.’” (Genesis 3:1-3)
Now notice what Satan starts doing. To move you out of God’s will for your life, Satan speaks his words and tries to get you to receive his words. So now he speaks his words that oppose God’s Words. “Surely you will not die” (Genesis 3:4). That’s not what God said (Genesis 2:16-17).
The serpent said to the woman, “Surely you will not die, for God knows that when you eat from it your eyes will open and you will be like divine beings who know good and evil.” (Genesis 3:4-5)
In other words, Satan is saying to them, “God is trying to hold out on you.” Once those words get into your heart, those words will frame your thinking. Now Adam and Eve, people who were ready to obey God, look at the tree as desirable (Genesis 3:6). They are now in their emotions. They heard the words. They got thinking about them. Now they are feeling like God is trying to hold out on them. Feeling like it’s okay to eat from that tree. Their feelings move them away from God’s will for their life. And they ate it.
Satan is laughing. All he has to do is say a few words. Once those words start affecting your thoughts and emotions, Satan’s words move you in the direction he wants you to go. “The thief comes only to steal and kill and destroy” (John 10:10). It starts by planting his words into your heart. Those words, cultivated and nourished by our thoughts and emotions, will produce a harvest in our life.
Taking Charge Over Your Emotions
We don’t have to be emotionally ruled. Jesus Christ has come to set us free. Jesus said,
“If you continue to follow my teaching [my words], you are really my disciples and you will know the truth, and the truth will set you free” (John 8:31-32).
With God’s Word, you can take charge over your emotions. You can take charge over depression. You can take charge over inferiority, over insecurity. Or any of those emotions that try to attack you.
Please understand, those emotions are being used by the kingdom of darkness to try to lure you away from the things God has for your life. Satan wants to weigh you down with the affairs of the world. He wants your heart heavy. He wants you to get depressed. If Satan can get you depressed then he can cause you to be paralyzed. Then before long, your feelings will be so paralyzed and heavy that you’ll start looking for the wrong relief.
Well, how did Jesus handle it? Did Jesus ever have His emotions come against Him? Did His emotions ever challenge Him? If Jesus can handle it right, then you and I can handle it right.
For we do not have a high priest incapable of sympathizing with our weaknesses, but one who has been tempted in every way just as we are, yet without sin (Hebrews 4:15).
Temptation is pressure that is applied to your thinking. Temptation puts pressure on your thinking to try to get you to change your mind and to get your feelings to line up with that changed mind so that you can be led in the wrong direction.
This verse says that Jesus was “tempted in every way just as we are, yet without sin.” Jesus had emotions, but emotions never had Jesus. In the Garden of Gethsemane Jesus resisted the pressure on his thinking.
Then they went to a place called Gethsemane, and Jesus said to his disciples, “Sit here while I pray.” He took Peter, James, and John with him, and became very troubled and distressed. He said to them, “My soul is deeply grieved, even to the point of death. Remain here and stay alert.” Going a little further, he threw himself to the ground and prayed that if it were possible the hour would pass from him. He said, “Abba, Father, all things are possible for you. Take this cup away from me. Yet not what I will, but what you will.” (Mark 14:32-36)
Jesus went through the same emotional attack that you and I go through; the same heaviness and depression that you and I have experienced.
Let’s notice what He did to get out of this. Notice, while He’s going through all this attack in His emotions, the Bible says He went forward. He did what He was called to do. Keep going in the direction you know God wants you to go, no matter how you feel. Keep going. That’s the first thing He did. The second thing He did, He kept on praying. You don’t have to be held captive by emotions, by depression. Just because the pressure shows up doesn’t mean that you have to be a victim of depression. Go to God at these times. Don’t run away from Him. Go to Him.
Believe
Do not let your hearts be distressed. You believe in God; believe also in me (John 14:1).
You have control over whether or not your heart will be troubled, based on what you believe. You are not always in control of your circumstances, but you are always in control of your heart. You have to choose to not allow the circumstances into your heart. What we choose to believe is what we’ll allow into our heart. What do you choose to believe in stressful, hard times? In the midst of sickness, death? In family problems?
If you allow the trouble around you to get inside of your heart, its seed will produce that very harvest. Therefore you must make the decision to not let your heart be troubled.
Believe God. In order to do that, you have to read and study the Bible. You will need to read the Bible out loud to yourself. You will need to surround your life with people who will ask you, “What does God have to say about this?” People who won’t allow you to have a pity party and speak God’s Word into your life. Believe God. Believe the report of the Lord. Don’t let your heart be troubled. Believe what God has to say about your situation. Believe what God says and that’s what’s going to be in your heart.
You will have to change the way you think in order to change the way you feel. You can’t hang around words that continue to have you thinking the same way, or you are going to feel the same way. You are going to have to hang around new words – God’s Words – to change your thinking so that it’s going to change the way you feel.
Making Wise Choices series