Go Ahead – Let Your Emotions Get the Best of You!

Galatians 5:22-23 (New Living Translation)
²² But the Holy Spirit produces this kind of fruit in our lives: love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, ²³ gentleness, and self-control. There is no law against these things!

Perspective is everything. It is not about what we see, but how we see it.  Nothing could be truer than when it comes to emotions. Many of us have spent time trying to keep negative emotions under control, thinking that those emotions are just a part of life. But the Word says otherwise in Galatians 5:22-23.

Noah Webster’s 1828 Dictionary states that emotions are “a moving of mind or soul.” We are a three-part being; spirit, soul, and body. Once we have made Jesus Savior and Lord of our lives, the soul (where we “want, think, feel”) is the part of us that will determine if we yield to our flesh (the things we do which don’t glorify God) or to our spirit (the part of us that became a new creature, just like Jesus, once we were born again.) Understanding this helps explain why our emotions are a prime target of the enemy. In doing life, the battlefield is the mind and if the enemy can get us to focus on negative emotions, he can limit our effectiveness in the Kingdom. One well-known minister of the gospel says, “Where the mind goes the man follows.”

Another well-known minister recently talked about getting a new perspective on emotions. He said overcoming negative emotions comes when we stop trying to fix them and instead focus on our God-given positive emotions; the Fruit of the Spirit. Love, joy and peace are the three emotions that express God’s Nature. The remaining Fruit, while not emotions per se, are an outgrowth of the first three. When we focus on the emotions God gave us, we stop trying to get rid of something, and instead embrace what we have already been given through the New Birth. Old negative emotions fade as our focus shifts to the Fruit of the Spirit which allows His GRACE to bring about the change we desire.

Beyond the positive feelings God’s emotions bring, this gospel teacher noted that the Fruit of the Spirit are actually a tool that God has given us to shut down the devil. He says,” We can exhaust the enemy with our love for people, depress him by having joy, weary him with peace, demoralize him with patience, discourage him with kindness, overwhelm him with goodness, disable him with faithfulness, trouble him with gentleness, and dismay him with self-control.”

One thing we should always remember about God is that He never just gives us enough. He always adds more than is necessary. He could have just given us His emotions to allow us to feel good, but He added an additional dimension by making those emotions a powerful tool in the battle we fight to enforce the defeat of the enemy in our lives. Surrendering our identity to the enemy through negative emotions should no longer be an option for us. It is time believers focused on our God-given emotions and let what God has blessed us with on the inside be seen on the outside by a world that is desperately looking for hope!

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