There are certain games, like Dutch Blitz, that my wife and I can’t play together anymore. Mostly because I’m WAY too competitive! Letting people win is just not an option. (See what I mean!!!) There are some couples I know who have simply moved on from playing games to doing puzzles. Hey, whatever needs to be done!
EVERYTHING you and I do has an emotional component to it. Our emotions are intricately involved in what, why and how we do things. The question is, How do we handle our emotions? How do our emotions handle us?
CONTROLLING TRUTH
As christians, how we handle our emotions is a direct result of how much control the Holy Spirit has in and over our lives. He desires and aims to bring ALL our faculties under His loving control under the guiding truth of God. See, the Holy Spirit IN me confirms God’s truth ABOUT me and my circumstance. There is a RIGHT way to respond to things.
APART from the Holy Spirit, our emotions are blind, deaf and crippled to the truth of God; without Him we can’t possibly know the truth about who God is, about what He expects from us or about who He is empowering us to be. BUT SINCE He does dwell within us, as christians we are without excuse if we’re living lives emotionally out of control.
Cannot THE SAME SPIRIT who raised Jesus Christ up from the dead (Romans 8:14), raise up good and right and even new emotions within us? He can!
WHAT we experience in our lives as christians is really no different than the things our non-christian friends and family experience. However, HOW we experience and respond to them SHOULD be different. Our witness is directly tied to the life of the Spirit shining through us in Spirit-controlled and Spirit-led emotional responses.
GOD’S BIGGER CONCERN
Psalm 42 describes a desperate circumstance, one that results in an emotional shipwreck of the soul. Yet, though he is cast down, RATHER than continuing to listen to himself and sink to the bottom, the Psalmist takes control of himself and begins talking to himself about God (Psalm 42:5, 11). He takes hold of what IS true, not what FEELS true.
Things begin to change in his heart. BUT WARNING! There’s no change in his circumstances.
Why?
ABOVE ALL God wants to dwell with you. This means that He is not MORE CONCERNED with changing your circumstances than He is WITH TRANSFORMING your heart. Your circumstances might not change! God may drive your circumstances away to reach you, but He may also drive you to Him through your circumstances.
The miracle of miracles is that God dwells WITH AND WITHIN you by His Spirit. The Spirit THROUGH your emotional tests and trials wants to bring you INTO a greater fullness and experience of the knowledge and truth of God. And for this reason, our emotions are some of the biggest, most valuable opportunities for God to empower us, transform us and shine through us.
MUTUAL ACTIVITY
But remember, our living by the Spirit is not something that happens automatically to us or for us. WE must deliberately walk and keep step with Him (Galatians 5:16-26).
Being controlled, influenced and empowered by the Holy Spirit is ACTIVITY – mutual activity, man and Spirit working together. The more control the Holy Spirit has OVER our lives, the wider, deeper and stronger the inflow/outflow of the Holy Spirit will be IN our lives. And the reverse is also true. This has no greater impact than on the area of our emotions.
Give Him control, be in control.
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