The Benefits of Emotions

 

Thoughts and emotions are not the enemy of our spirit or of the Spirit of God. God puts His desires in our heart, and uses negative thoughts and emotions as red flags to alert us to unmet needs and unresolved conflicts in our life.

As we take these issues to the cross, we gain God's perspective on them, and His wisdom and truth on how to overcome or to fulfill them, until His peace rules in our heart.

The word "emotion" comes from the Latin word "exmovere" which means "to move out". Our emotions motivate us to feel, and then to do something about them.

Emotions energize us, express how we feel, arouse our passions, spice up our life and restore our soul. Living without emotion is to live in a mental world of clinical, analytical thoughts without expression.

Embracing our emotions is healthy and fulfilling. Denying them is clinical and unhealthy. We block off a part of our self that is very much like our God, who exhibits emotion in so many ways.

Usually, an emotional person is empathetic, not weak; compassionate, not unstable; child-like, not childish. Emotions are very vital to our psychological and physiological well-being.

Emotions influence our attitude about our self, our world and other people. They also impact our actions. We think thoughts and then feel feelings.

Our personality influences our emotions and our emotions affect how other people perceive us. Owning our feelings without blaming them on other people is a healthy activity which allows us to effectively control them and to submit them to God's Holy Spirit to perfect them and to make them more like His fruit (Galatians 5:22-23).

Prayer:

Father God, unto You I lift up my soul. My soul often grieves because of the cares of this world. Only You know how to best renew my mind with Your Word, restore my emotions to true joy and peace, and return my will to following after You.

You are my heart, and my soul rejoices before you. You set my feet to dancing the dance of joy, and I acknowledge You in all of my ways. We attest to the fact that all glory is due to Your name. You alone are worthy of all of our praises (Ephesians 3:4; Psalm 25:1, 29:2).

Thought for the Day:

Our soul is our personality. It contains our thoughts, our choices and our emotions. Faith brings light to our soul, and helps us to think before we speak, so we do not trip over our own words.

A Worm or a Butterfly?

As human beings, we live in a body, make choices and think and feel with our soul, and live eternally through our spirit in either heaven or hell (John 3:16-18).

The carnal nature does not understand or accept the truths of the Spirit of God. These people considers them foolishness, because they cannot comprehend them, since their spirit is dead in sin (1 Corinthians 2:14).

They function in life only through their soul and body, judging right and wrong according to how it makes them think and feel (Psalm 139:13-14).

God sees the spirit of everyone ever born (Numbers 16:22), and calls us to live with a good conscience before God (Acts 23:1). He wants us to allow His Word to convict and to divide between our soul - our thoughts, choices and feelings - and our spirit (Hebrews 4:12).

God is not belittling the soul, nor recommending that we discount our soul; but simply that we do now allow our human understanding to control our life (Proverbs 3:5-6).

He desires that all men everywhere come to the saving truth of His Son, so their spirit is Born Again (Acts 17:30; John 3:1-21). Then, He abides within our spirit forever (1 Corinthians 3:16; 1 John 4:13). 

Prayer:

Father God, as Your children we can never cease praising You for saving us from a life of wallowing in the mire of this world. You transformed us into a butterfly from the meager existence of a worm. Thank You that Your Spirit pursues us until we accept Christ's sacrifice, so our spirit is Born Again.

Now we ask You to teach us to live, move and have our total being in You (Acts 17:28). Use Your Word to separate for us our soul and spirit, so that we can walk in Your Spirit every moment of every day, accomplishing only those works, which You created us to do (Ephesians 2:10).

Thought for the Day:

We daily give thanks to our wondrous God and the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who because of His mercies, which are new every single morning, caused us to be Born Again to a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus from the dead. - 1 Peter 1:3; Lamentations 3:22-23