Taming The Wild Emotions

Rogue emotions need to be kept firmly on a leash or even locked up. If we give way to any of them too much, we become their prisoners instead of their masters, and it’s essential we don’t end up trapped inside a cage with our untamed emotions!
Stefan Carey and Andrew Rooke

Over this last year, I have found myself awakened to emotions and feelings that have needed someone or something to tame them and bring them into submission to God’s truth and honest evaluation. It has been quite an amazing realization that all of these waves of emotions lived inside of me but were ignored for many years. Why was I not listening to them? How did this wild untamed stallion live inside of me, unknown for so long, and then one day wake up with such fierce control over my actions? I think that somehow, I believed that if I listened to them, they might make me weak as a leader and a pastor. Like it or not, I have discovered that I am a human, with a beating heart and with feelings about what God is doing in my life, how people in my life are living, and what is happening in my surroundings. As I have been adjusting to this new phenomenon of emotional pressure, it has become very clear that, if my emotions are given the freedom to run, they will run me right off of a cliff. So what do we do with these God-given emotional nerve-endings? How do i keep my heart alive and care for those around me when, not only are my own emotions unstable, but everyone I come in contact with has their own issues with instability?

This is where discipline of the mind comes into play. In the daily devotional book I follow, the author has been focusing on different aspects of “disciplining the mind” and not allowing it to simply wander. The mind, in so many ways, becomes the boundaries for the heart’s emotions. If you just take a moment to watch people and how they respond to emotions, it is easy to see the truth of this statement. When we take these feelings of pain, sadness, anger--whatever the emotion--and place it into the guidelines of truth, then it will protect us and those we love. I was watching a group of people at work, just yesterday, as they allowed one person, who is a complainer by nature, take a situation, stir up everyone’s emotions and, before you knew it, there was anger and disappointment, with no real truth behind the emotions stirred. The few people in the situation who took the time to find out the truth remained at peace. This is the same scenario that happens in every one of our lives on a daily basis.

So now we come to the all-important question of, “what must happen for our mind to be the guiding boundary to the feelings that long to control us?”

1. Submit Your Heart, Mind and Body to the Lord
Too many times we trust our own understanding and, if we are sick and unhealthy, we will never come to truthful, godly answers. I was watching the show “House” a couple of nights ago, and there was a doctor who inadvertently caught the disease that he was trying to cure in a patient and he began to go crazy. Here we have an amazing and well-trained doctor who could no longer be trusted, because the disease was affecting his mind and his emotional responses took control. If we have not submitted our hearts, minds, and bodies to the Lord and allowed Him to cleanse us and heal us, then what makes any of us think that we are standing on stable enough ground to make judgments about what we are seeing, hearing, thinking or feeling?


2. Slow Down and Seek Truth
If you are finding that you have to respond to something immediately while the emotions are fresh, then you probably are not the one in control. There may be a time for those difficult conversations and quite possibly, even consequences delivered for those actions that have taken place, but until truth is sought out it is comparable to taking a person who is driving 100 miles per hour and asking them to be gentle as they go over the speed bumps. When I speak of truth, I am referring to the truth of God and His promises found in scripture when one is immersed with them and not just splashed with a few of the good ideas during a church service.

3. Invite the Holy Spirit to Give Guidance
The Bible is very clear that the Lord has given us free will. It is unclear how it all works out but He has promised to not force you to do anything. He will guide you when the guidance is invited. He will stand, waiting for an invitation, watching your life unfold and weep at the painful consequences of prideful decisions when you think you are wise enough to figure it out yourself. He has great plans for those who will seek Him with all of their hearts.

4. Follow Truth Even When You Don’t Feel Like It
Now this is the most difficult part of following the Lord. Too many of us have been lied to and quickly bought the lie that the Lord wants us to be comfortable. I have always believed that the Lord will stretch us and push us like a partner pushes someone who is exercising. But I have personally found that what the Lord has asked me to do and who he has asked me to be is far more intense than a work-out partner. God has asked me to take feelings and emotions that seem more real than His existence and lay them aside to follow His admonitions. This feels very unnatural, and I am finding that I am being asked to do things like forgive, trust, and be at peace, when my whole being is screaming for me to run the opposite direction. I am being asked to do things that can only be done if given strength and ability found outside of who I am--a strength and ability that is only found in the One who is doing the asking. I am learning that my faith will only grow when I am willing to trust God and walk through pain.

Dear Lord,
Please help me and anyone reading this blog submit our hearts and minds to you. Help us be disciplined and focused. Help us position our lives in a place where we are willing to walk through the fire as long as you are walking with us. We need your perspective more than we need our own understanding. Help us be content in hearing your perspective when our emotions begin to scream at us and we try to take control of our own lives instead of trusting in you and your great plan.
Amen