Day 23

Controlling Emotions

Before They Control You

Roger and Eileen Himes

www.ThePracticalGospel.com

Let’s bring the last two days into today. This is where we ALL live. My ministry is ‘the practical gospel,’ and I look for practical applications of the gospel in everything. If the gospel is the process of God in us and through us, then its good fruit should mean positive results in our lives. We ALL experience ALL the emotions. The degree to which we experience them, and react to them, is what makes us REIGN in life — or its what causes life to RAIN on us. Lets look at seven categories of emotions, and how they impact us negatively.

(1) Fear takes many forms and degrees: freight, anxiety, concern, worry, and apprehension. It can be a feeling of stress, being uncomfortable, or uncertain. It is a dread that something bad is coming.

(2) Anger can express itself in rage, hostility, or ‘litigating’ against someone by taking action against them. Or it can be a knot in your stomach that makes you tense, irritable, and selfish. Anger most often is founded in SELF: ’Don’t you know who I am? You offend me!’

(3) Hurt is when you experience loss of something or someone. It is an absence or a void in your life that you don’t know how to fill. It most often results in disappointment, and a sad countenance. You feel like you failed in some way, or were defeated.

(4) Frustration can take 100 different forms. It can take the form of someone else hindering you doing something, — or you hindering yourself, which can be called procrastination. The realization is that there is something that is not being fulfilled or accomplished.

(5) Guilt is a regret or sorrow over something you have either done, that you shouldn’t have done, — or over something you did not do, that you should have done.

(6) Inadequacy is a feeling that is a killer. We feel inept, and even unworthy. As in all of these emotions, Satan gets his fingers in us and accuses us (scripture says he is ‘the accuser of the brethren’). Often we just become overloaded, and too busy. We don’t know how to say ‘no’ to others. This causes disillusionment, and even depression.

(7) Loneliness is a sense of being isolated. It is a feeling there is no one you can trust and turn to. You feel no one wants to connect and fellowship with you — or you don’t want to connect or fellowship with them. Paul talks about fellowship in the gospel (Phil 1:5). Most people don’t fellowship in the gospel, but in the law. This causes accusation, judgment, criticism, and the like — which produces loneliness because we pull away and become hermits. We don’t want more feelings of inadequacy, guilt, frustration, hurt, anger or fear added to us.

Thoughts often gravitate to one or more of these emotions!

We’ve already mentioned the three things that hurt us the most in any situation. It’s good to review them here:
(1) Expectancies we have, usually based on past experiences.
(2) Perceptions we have, usually not based on present reality.
(3) Actions we take, or things we say, that are inappropriate.

How do we deal with all these negative things?
Consider the next gospel truth in depth. Consider it deeply.

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GOSPEL TRUTH #45

(1) REPENT: change your way of thinking. Allow conviction to come, and view it as a warning signal for you to take action and change something. Rethink things in light of God’s gospel truth.

(2) RESPOND: believe his gospel power in you converts you into a confident, competent child who can handle anything life throws at you. Let God come into the situation through prayer. Clarify what it is you need, want or desire as a result in any negative situation.

(3) RECEIVE: go to God to get everything that you need: ALL of his good gifts and blessings, making you a total overcomer.

(4) REFORM: be transformed by the renewing of your mind, to ALL things that are yours in Christ Jesus. Take action on what you know to be true. Rearrange the letters in the word action: ‘I act on.’ Let the truth of the gospel become reality in your life. Believing is a passive. Faith is a more active: “The just shall live — take action by faith.”

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We often react in the flesh: (1) body, (2) then soul, (3) then spirit. Again, we are told Moses knew the ways of God, but the people only saw the acts of God. If we see the WAYS of God in us, then we enter into the process of the gospel: (1) spirit, (2) then soul, (3) then body. Review the two charts on page 15, and choose the chart before the fall.

We see negative emotions as warning signals to us. (1) We assess the negative thing that is happening in us, and we probably need to repent over the way we think. (2) We respond by engaging and embracing the negative emotion or feeling or situation, give gratitude for it, and ask God to use it to his glory and our good. (3) We then go into a state of rest, and receive from God: all of his good gospel blessings, which will allow us to function in the best possible way. (4) Finally we act in faith and take positive action to correct anything we possibly can in the best way we can. We remember the ancient prayer: “God, help me to change the things I can, to accept the things I can’t change, and the wisdom to know the difference.”

Don’t miss this: if we don’t take resourceful, appropriate action like this, then the negative emotional situation only gets worse. If you live life in a body, soul and spirit manner, it doesn’t get better on its own. If you keep feeding the flesh, it only gets fat and obese. So now, let’s look at these same seven emotions in a positive light.

(1) Fear is good. It can help prepare us for something that is coming. It can make us watchful, to either avoid something or to engage it.

(2) Anger shows we have standards (often inappropriate) that have been violated. We must reassess and reconsider those standards.

(3) Hurt shows our expectations have not been met. Someone has let us down and hasn’t been faithful to us. We need to mend a fence.

(4) Frustration shows we need more flexibility, and we need to change our spiritual state of being to (a) spirit, (b) soul and (c) body.

(5) Guilt can be positive. If we have regrets, we do what we can to correct them — if nothing else, at least by means of prayer and blessing.

(6) Inadequacy is perhaps the granddaddy of everything because it shows our purpose in life, our priorities, and our practices don’t line up.

(7) Loneliness makes us reach out to God, and to others, in positive ways of fellowship in the gospel, creating friendship with God and man.

Paul says, ‘Awake to righteousness, and not to sin.’ He is in effect saying to recognize the Spirit — the power of God in us — and not our flesh. Our flesh traffics in (1) unwarranted expectancy, (2) wrong perceptions, and (3) inappropriate actions. This is not where we should be living if we are living in the process of the gospel. Starting in the Spirit infuses us with the power of God himself. Starting in the Spirit sows God’s good gospel seed into us — that then takes root and grows good fruit. Living in the flesh only grows weeds.

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GOSPEL TRUTH #46

In Galatians 5:19-23, Paul contrasts ’the works of the flesh’ with ’the fruit of the Spirit.’ The works of the flesh are endless, and he closes his brief dissertation saying, ‘and such like.’ If we live in our flesh, we live life in a (1) body, (2) soul and (3) spirit manner. We try to create, adopt, or even invent anything that will make our life work better.

But the fruit of the Spirit is what is produced in us because of good gospel seed that is sown into us. See that it is the fruit of the SPIRIT. It is not human, fleshly fruit. The process is one of (1) spirit, (2) soul, and (3) body. Let’s look at how the fruit of the Spirit works in us.

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Paul lists nine fruits of the Spirit. Too often, instructors present these nine fruits as works of the flesh: how we should be living our human life. These are not what these are about. These are about what GOD sows into us, by means of the process of his gospel, that produces good fruit from us (Col 1:5-6). This is not about doing good works in our flesh; it is about receiving good seed into our spirit. These nine fruits of the Spirit are positive emotions he is working into us.

LOVE. This is God’s agape, unconditional love, not human conditional love based on what others say and do. Love is received from God by us, used by us, and then shared with others. This is a warmth toward others — our heart opening up to them, in God’s love and presence.

JOY. This excited passion takes all that God has done and is doing in us, and imparts it to situations and the lives of others. It’s a cheerfulness that others can see: they are drawn to it and are impacted by it. It is not founded on life events, but on divine presence.

PEACE. Joy is produced by God’s peace within us. Joy and peace are not contingent upon worldly happenings. The opposite is true: they impact worldly happenings with the person of God. We do not look for things FROM the world, but take God’s presence INTO the world.

LONG SUFFERING. This is also called patience and perseverance. These express a ‘just do it,’ and a ‘never say die’ attitude. They express patience that never gives up: a DIVINE determination and passion.

GENTLENESS. This is a spiritual quality that puts others first, and makes us a servant. It is a willingness to change and adapt. It is being flexible when we encounter others who are less flexible and adapting.

GOODNESS. Jesus says only God is good. I see this as our response to our Creator and Father: appreciation, thankfulness, gratitude, worship. It is connecting with his goodness and allowing him to express it to others.

FAITH. This is where those of us who are just and righteous live. We do everything by faith, knowing that we are doing what our Father is doing. It is having confidence before God, and positive impact on others.

MEEKNESS. This is strength, and the power of God, not weakness. We are ‘yoked’ with Jesus, and thus share his ability in any situation. This recognizes human bankruptcy, and total dependence on God.

TEMPERANCE. This is self control in our bodies (our flesh) because it is under submission to our spirit and our soul. Our body is the temple of God himself. It is his presence, and his control in us — by means of all these fruits — that keeps us physically fit for the Potter’s constant use.

To reiterate, don’t view these as an exercise of human flesh. Never see them as a barometer of how well you are living the Christian life. See these as the work of the Spirit in us: the gospel seed God is sowing into us each day. We must receive them like daily manna, and rejoice in what God is doing in us and through us. The more we live in the fruit the Holy Spirit produces in us, the less opportunity we give to negative emotions that impact us and even control us. The more a field is filled with good strong wheat, the less room there is for destructive weeds.