God created us in His image, He created us with emotions which are an inherent part of our being. Our emotions are intricately linked with thoughts, beliefs, and judgments which are at the core of our hearts or person.
God sees us as a whole person - you cannot divorce how you think from how you feel (Proverbs 23:7). As we grow physically and mentally, hopefully our emotions mature and develop at the same time so that we learn to respond to various situations in an honest, yet appropriate way, guided by and established in truth. This is what we call emotional intelligence or EQ.
Proverbs is teaching us how to develop a healthy EQ so that we can properly assess what is happening and then respond accordingly.
A hot-tempered man stirs up strife, but he who is slow to anger and patient calms disputes (Proverbs 15:18, AMP).
“If we respond to life’s challenges with godly wisdom,”
we will be blessed spiritually, emotionally, and physically.
Our emotions are:
Designed by God
Damaged by Sin
Delivered by Truth
Designed by God
There are numerous references regarding emotions, both God’s and human emotions throughout the Scriptures. God, who created our emotions, certainly has emotions of His own. Consider the following passages:
God rejoices over His people (Isaiah 62:5)
He is grieved by sin (Psalm 78:40; Ephesians 4:30)
He is angry with those who are stubborn and rebellious (Exodus 32:10)
He has compassion on those who love Him (Psalm 103:13). And Jesus was moved with compassion on the large crowd that was waiting expectantly because they were like sheep without a shepherd (Mark 6:34). So it says He started teaching them many things.
He hates sin (Proverbs 6:16)
He loves us with an everlasting love (Isaiah 54:8; Psalm 103:17)
God doesn't just want us to know what He thinks about us but wants us to know how He feels about us. He doesn’t just want us to know we are loved but He wants us to experience His love to the fullest.
How do we experience His love and compassion? Through the Holy Spirit who pours out God’s love to our hearts, from other Christians, being in the body of Christ, through friends and family and through an ongoing relationship with the Lord.
“When God created humankind, He gave us a full range of emotions.”
God designed these specific emotions for specific purposes and functions. It is through His Word we learn how our emotions can function in a healthy way.
Understanding God’s design and order for emotions is an essential pre-requisite to understanding when our emotions are functioning appropriately or inappropriately.
Damaged by Sin
The Bible makes clear that we are broken people living in a broken world. As a result, our emotional responses will not be perfect, at least not this side of heaven.
Even if your family and friends can’t fully understand the terror, the aloneness, the pain, and the abuse that you may have experienced, Jesus knows and understands.
There is hope for every person who turns to Jesus for healing.
He wants you to know you are not alone, that He will be with you through the whole process of healing.
Delivered by Truth
Because our emotions are intricately linked to our thoughts, beliefs, and judgments, our spiritual and even physical health, it is important to be self-aware.
If you want a healthy body, you have to eat healthy food and exercise.
If you want healthy emotions, you need to feed your mind with truth and exercise your faith.
Our minds control our will, our emotions, and direct every action of our lives. That is why it is so important to have the mind of Christ. His truth identifies where we need to be healed.
There are people with chemical imbalances, cerebral impairment and mental deficiencies who don’t have control over their minds or emotions and may need psychiatric care and medicine to help them to control their thoughts and there is no shame in this. But even a person who suffers from these maladies can experience God’s love, be renewed in their minds, and delivered by truth.
Growth in sanctification brings deliverance to our emotions.
When we change the way we think, we change the way we feel.
The sanctification of our intellects not only involves growth in wisdom and knowledge. Sanctification means we intentionally identify every useless, godless, discouraging thought that comes into our minds and bring it into obedience to Christ (2 Corinthians 10:5).
In other words, no matter what the thought is or where it came from, God has the final say. When we do this, we will find that our thoughts are more and more the thoughts that God himself imparts to us in his Word.
Here are some questions for you:
Do you take time to talk through your feelings with God? Do you share your anger, fear, sadness, disappointments as well as your joys with God?
Do you have a healthy awareness of your untamed emotions (your shadows)?
Are you honest with God, yourself and a few significant others about your wounds, weaknesses, struggles, doubts, and hurts deep beneath the surface of your life? Do you allow others to speak truth to you in those areas?
Do you take the time to ask hard questions to yourself even when you are fearful of where the answers might lead?
Practically speaking, have you thought about what you are feeding your mind? What do you wake up to, what do you go to sleep with, what are you listening to, what are you looking at?
Instead of being held captive by the past, what people have said or done to you, are you willing to walk with God and take responsibility for handling your emotions?
Remember, our emotions were designed by God and though they have been damaged by our sin or the sins of others, Jesus wants to deliver our emotions by giving us the wisdom and the power to respond to situations in an honest and healthy way, guided by and established in truth.
Jesus wants to bring health and healing to every area of our being - like Proverbs 4:20-22 advises us,
let His words penetrate deep into our heart because they bring life to those who find them and health and healing to the entire body.
