Monday, July 12, 2021 Some material taken from Life Lessons - Dealing With Emotions
Be angry and yet do not sin, do not let the sun go down on your anger, and do not give the devil an opportunity. Ephesians 26:27
When Emotions Are Out of Control
Emotion are truly a gift from God. Some of our emotions that God gave us elicit some very strong feelings. Love, excitement, happiness, and joy are all wonderful emotions that add great value to our lives. Even some negative emotions, like fear can be helpful by leading us to avoid dangerous situations. But negative emotions out of control will bring us down, and usually those around us as well. Living life in constant fear is not living at all, and uncontrolled anger can destroy relationships, friendships, and homes.
Our Heavenly Father knew that our emotions would get us in trouble and like the perfect and Holy God that He is, He provided guidance for us about how to handle our emotions. The Bible has everything we ever need to walk through this life, we just have to immerse ourselves in His word. God provided an answer to everything in His word. Of course, we don’t always look for answers in God’s word and that is when we get ourselves in deep water.
Emotions are powerful forces in our hearts and minds that can destroy our relationships, our peace, and success when we don’t handle them in the best way. We are our own worst enemies! We know this and we still let our emotions get out of control instead of working to control them, so we don’t damage relationships, opportunities, etc. It is important that we don’t create an environment where our children learn improper responses to normal emotions. With God’s help, we can learn to control our emotions and teach our children to as well. When we teach our children what emotions are and how to think about what they are feeling, we can teach them to name them and that is the first step in learning to control them.
In the Bible verse above, Jesus gives us a plan for anger, one of the most devastating emotions when out of control.
· Be angry… God knows that anger is an important and necessary emotion for a healthy person living in a fallen world. This command is qualified by three imperatives:
o Do not sin. The command is not to avoid anger, but to avoid sinful anger. Don’t get so angry that you sin.
o Do not let the sun go down while you are still angry. Don't nurse anger. This commands us to deal with our anger as soon as we are aware of it.
o Do not give the devil an opportunity - BEING ANGRY DOES NOT GIVE YOU RIGHTS. Just because you are angry does not mean you can abuse those around you - verbally or physically.
Satan loves for our emotions to be out of control, especially when we are alone and there is no one to remind us that he is the father of lies and we are believing them. He will feed our anger with self–pity, pride, self–righteousness, vengeance, defense of our rights, and every other sort of selfish sin. He will cause us to look at ourselves and our own selfish cause.
Even though we are Christians, we are human, and natural born sinners. We have to be vigilant and make sure we don’t let a seed of bitterness take root, or let anger fester, or explode in anger to those around us. When we focus on living a life that glorifies God, letting our emotions get out of control does not honor God or anyone else. We have the gift of the Holy Spirit to lead us in truth as to what is right and what is wrong, and if we are walking in the Spirit, He will help us. I does not mean we will never feel anger or sadness, or grief, but it does mean we have someone with us every step of the way to help us sort it all out.
