Everybody has them, some put them on display for all to see, yet others spend lots of energy hiding them, and yet even more alter them. What we are talking about is “emotions”.
Emotions gets a bad rap. We even get judgmental and label some people as “emotional”. When there is a sappy movie it can be categorized as “emotional”. When someone gets mad they are sometimes referred to as “emotional”.
What are your insights and thoughts on emotions? How are we to interact with our emotions? Or are we to ignore, shutdown and ignore our emotions?
What is your experience of being an emotional person? Or being around emotional people?
The Bible says in 1 Peter 4:2, “From now on, then, you must live the rest of your earthly lives controlled by God’s will and not by human desires” (TEV).
What are human desires? It’s our emotions and our affections. Now that we are a Christ-follower, our life should be controlled by God’s will, not by how we feel.
A few questions to ask about our emotions when we’re trying to figure out how to deal with how we feel. When we’re angry or upset or frustrated — whatever we’re feeling — ask these three questions:
- “What’s the real reason I’m feeling this?”
Maybe the answer is fear or worry. Maybe it relates to something our mom or dad said to us years ago, and when your wife or girlfriend said it to you, she got all the anger and we pent it up.
- “Is it true?”
Is what we’re feeling at that moment true? There’s a point in the Bible where Elijah gets so discouraged that he went to God and complained, “God, I’m the only one in the entire nation of Israel left serving you.” And God challenged him, saying, “Are you kidding me? I’ve got all these people who are still serving me! You’re acting like you’re the only one trying to do the right thing in the whole world! No. That’s not true.”
Have you ever gotten in a situation where you are just frustrated, think you aren’t getting any help and you just want to throw your hands up and complain to God like Elijah did?
- “Is what I’m feeling helping me or hurting me?”
Will you get what you want by continuing to feel this way? A lot of feelings we have feel natural, but they’re actually self-defeating.
Let’s say we go to a restaurant, and the service is extremely slow. We wait a long time to be served, and then a couple comes in 15 minutes after us and gets their meal before we do. We get increasingly more irritated until we feel something welling up inside us.
Have you been in this situation recently? Have you dealt with theses situations differently over the years?
What’s was the real reason we were feeling that way? We were hungry! Is it true? Yes. We’re frustrated because the service is slow. But is our emotion helping or hurting? Do you get better service by getting angry at the server? Absolutely not. Does nagging work? Has it ever worked?
When somebody tells you all the things you’re doing wrong, does it make you want to change? No! All it does is make you defensive.
When we ask ourself these simple questions, we get a better grip on why we feel the way we do and what we need to do to help the situation.
That’s called managing your emotions.