This sermon is a revision of Rick Warren's sermon on Emotional Health in the 50 Days of Transformation. The original sermon was much too long for our time frame of preaching during service. It was adapted somewhat to make room for palm Sunday as well. Rick Warren did a great job.
HOW TO DEAL WITH HOW YOU FEEL
50 Days of Transformation – Part 4 (Emotional Health)
Pastor Rick 3/29/2015 Psalm 70:1-5 Luke 19:32-35
Let’s take a feeling test this morning. Let Me Ask this: What all did you feel yesterday. Who felt happy, sad, upset, angry, joyful, thankful, disappointed, depressed, jealous, ambitious, surprised, convicted, hopeful and who felt as though God wanted to use them to make a difference in someone’s life.
We’ve been looking during 50 Days of Transformation first at spiritual health. Then at physical health. Last week we looked at mental health.
This week we are going to look at emotional health. That is how to deal with how you feel. Last week we talked about how to manage your mind. Your thoughts. This week we are going to look at how to manage your emotions. Has anyone here ever had a change take place in your life because you didn’t keep your emotions in checkWe are going to look at what the Bible says about how to manage your emotions. How to deal with how you feel.
Mark 12:29-30 Jesus says this “The most important commandment is this, You must love the Lord your God with all your heart and all your soul and all your mind and all your strength.”
Do you understand the emotion involved in this passage. If this verse had said, you must love your favorite football team, or favorite singer, or favorite actor with all your heart, soul, mind and strength, what imagery comes to your mind. How are you going to act at the game, at the concert, or at the movie. Would people think you were a little radical, a little nuts.
God is saying, I want to have an emotional relationship with you, where you throw everything you have into it. God even complains when we don’t do it. He says, these people honor me with their lips, but their hearts are far from me. Have you ever seen somebody do something, and though they did it right, you could tell their heart just wasn’t in it. God wants us to be emotionally involved in our relationship to him.
UNDERSTAND MY EMOTIONS
Let me give you some facts about your emotions before we get into this.
1. First, God has emotions.
Jesus was God in the flesh. Can you imagine all the emotions he went through on Palm Sunday. He was happy to see the people turn out in large numbers. He was thankful for the praises of the people. He was disappointed that the Pharisees could not see what was taking place.
He was angry that that religious leaders wanted him to silence the crowd. He was sad that the people didn’t understand their true need. He cried because he knew the destruction the Roman army would inflict on some of the people there. He felt rejection because he knew the cross was still less than a week away.
God has emotions. The only reason you have emotions is because you’re made in God’s image. If God wasn’t an emotional God you wouldn’t have any emotions.
2. My ability to feel is a gift from God.
Your emotions are a gift from God. They may not always seem that way. But even the negative ones have a role in your life. God can use them to show you your need for him. Emotions are a great asset. They’re the one thing that make you human.
If you didn’t have emotions you’d just be a robot. How many of you would want to be married to a robot. It is your emotional ability that allows you to love and create and to be faithful and loyal and kind and generous and all of the emotions that are attached to the good things in life.
One of the most astounding verses in the Bible is Genesis 1:26 “Let us make man in our image.” In our likeness. As I said the only reason you have emotions is because God gave them to you. And you were made in his image.
3. There are two extremes to avoid.
There are two extremes you need to avoid in dealing with emotions. One is called emotionalism and the other is called stoicism
Emotionalism means all that matters is how I feel. Emotionalism is the extreme of saying the only thing that matters in life is how I feel. It doesn’t matter what I think, it doesn’t matter what’s right or wrong, it doesn’t matter what’s popular or unpopular, good or bad. What matters is doing what you feel. If it feels good do it. If I am full of Emotionalism, They control my life, they dominate my life, they run my life and I’m a very emotional person.
Stoicism – feelings aren’t important at all. Stoicism is the exact opposite. It basically says feelings aren’t important at all. The only thing that matters is your intellect and your will – your volition and your intelligence. So the stoics say emotions are not part of life; feelings don’t really matter.
We lean one way or the other, and have a tendency to marry someone on the other end. One of us wants to tell the whole story with all the drama, and the other one just wants to hear the basic facts. Like Joe Friday, from Dragnet, we say “the facts mam, just the facts.”
Actually both of these are extreme positions. And the happy medium is where you really want to be. It’s not emotionalism or stoicism. You want to know how to worship God with your emotions as shown by the facts of the truth of the Word of God.
God gave us our emotions for a reason. God wants us to worship him emotionally. God wants us to feel it. In fact God complains in the Scripture many times you’re just worshiping with your lips but not with your emotions, not with your heart. You don’t really feel it.
And by the way the word “emotion” isn’t used that often in the Bible because the Bible uses the word “passions” or “affections” or the number one term for emotions is “heart.”
We still use that today. When you fall in love, what part of your body do you symbolically give to the person to show it. You say “I give you my heart.” Heart is the symbol of love and emotions.
Even today we say “I love you with all my heart.” In the bible, the word of God, the mind represents the intellect and the heart represents emotions. Both of them are involved in the worship of our God. We come to church to learn about God and to feel the presence of God. That’s why praise and worship is as important as hearing the preached word.
We now know that those are actually two different circuit systems in your brain. Your emotions have an amazing system as well as your thoughts do. Some things you just react emotionally without even thinking about it.
4. GOD GAVE US THE BOOK OF PSALMS IN ORDER TO UNDERSTAND OUR EMOTIONS.
If you have a hard time with some emotions in your life you need to spend a lot of time in the book of Psalms. Psalms has every emotion known to man in it – the good ones and the bad ones. The positive and the negative.
You read some of those psalms and you think, Why is this chapter in the Bible? It’s there to teach you about even those negative emotions. Because not all psalms are about praise and thanksgiving.
There are psalms of anger and there are psalms of complaining and psalms of lament and sorrow. There are psalms of arguing with God. Every emotion known to man is in the Psalms and God is saying all of these are legitimate. I gave these things to you.
In Psalm 70 we read today in just five verses, we found desperation, frustration, anger, encouragement, confidence, humility and hope.
So we’re going to look today at how to deal with how you feel. It is important for us to learn how to deal with managing our emotions and how to deal with an unwanted devotion.
WHY I MUST LEARN TO MANAGE MY EMOTIONS
Four important reasons why you need to learn to deal with what you feel.
1. BECAUSE MY FEELINGS ARE OFTEN UNRELIABLE.
Our feelings are often unreliable. They can lead you in the wrong direction. How many times have you thought, I know this is the right thing to do. I just feel it in my gut. And you do it and it doesn’t work out. Every one of us have done that.
We have given people motives for doing things, that were not true. We have had a feeling this person would be a great friend. We have had a feeling this time we were going to win. Our feelings are often wrong. Our intuition does not always work. Your emotions often lead you down a blind alley. You can’t depend on everything you feel.
Last week Pastor Kellie told you, you don’t have to believe everything you think. I’m telling you, you don’t have to accept everything you feel. Because not everything you feel is right. Not everything you feel is reality.
Some of the things you feel about yourself are flat out dead wrong. Some of the things you feel about other people are dead wrong. You say, I’m sure this is the right direction, but it’s not. So you need to manage your emotions.
Proverbs 14:12 says this “There is a way that SEEMS right to a person , but in the end, it leads to death.” So your emotions are not infallible. Just because you feel it doesn’t make it true. Our feelings are often wrong and they often guide us in the wrong direction.
The second reason I need to control my emotions is;
2. BECAUSE I DON’T WANT TO BE MANIPULATED.
If you don’t control your emotions they will control you and you will be manipulated by your moods. If you’re always guided by your feelings, You will reject the truth of the Word of God, because you feel as though something else is more noble or more just or more loving.
If you’re always guided by feelings other people are going to take advantage of you. In fact salesmen and advertisers are trained in how to stir up your emotions because they know if they can get you hooked emotionally you’re going to buy the product. So the color of the packaging and the music in the commercial and the things that they say in the presentation are all designed to get you emotionally involved to the point of saying, I really want one of those.
And if you make decisions like what you buy based on emotion it’s called impulse buying, you’re going to buy stuff that you don’t really need or want. Has anybody ever done this? Could I see your hands? We all have! You go home and you go, Why in the world did I buy that?
The Bible says in Proverbs 25:28 – I love this in the New American Bible, “Like an open city with no defenses is the person with no check on his feelings.”
Remember in the days Proverbs was written, you built walls around the city to keep the enemy out. Otherwise the enemy could just rush into the city and take whatever they wanted.
Let me show you this verse in another translation, the New Living Translation says this “A person without self control is as defenseless as a city with broken down walls.” Not only are you defenseless against the manipulation of other people but you are defenseless to the manipulation by your old nature.
Your old nature will use your feelings to turn you inside out. It will convince you, you deserve whatever you feel like having. The sinful nature in me, can use my best feelings against me and against the Word of God.
We have people feeling as though Jesus was not loving when he said marriage was between a man and a woman. So now people feel as though they are being more loving and compassionate than Jesus, by letting Jesus know he was wrong, it doesn’t have to be a man and a woman. How can you be more loving or compassionate than Jesus was?
The woman caught in adultery felt like what she was doing was right. Jesus had compassion on her by telling her to go and sin no more.
Worst of all Satan’s favorite tool in your life is negative emotions. He will use fear to keep you in bondage. He will use resentment and jealousy and envy to get you off track from the will of God. He’ll use bitterness, worry, anxiety and shame to keep us from growing in Christ. He’ll use discouragement to keep us from going to God in prayer.
If you don’t know how to manage your emotions you are helpless against Satan. Because he wreaks so much havoc in our lives emotionally.
1 Peter 5:8 says this “Be self-controlled and alert. Your enemy the devil prowls around like a roaring lion looking for someone to devour.” If you don’t have self control he will eat you up.
The third reason I need to control my emotions because:
3. BECAUSE I WANT TO PLEASE GOD.
God cannot be God in my life if emotions are god in my life. God can’t rule my life if emotions rule my life. Jesus can’t be Lord of my life if my emotions are Lord of my life. If I make all my decisions simply based on how I feel then I’ve made my feelings god. And then God can’t be God.
The Bible says in Romans 8:6-8 “To be controlled by human nature results in death; to be controlled by the Spirit results in life and peace. . . Those who obey their human nature cannot please God.”
So you can’t please God if your emotions dominate your life and they’re running your life and your decisions are made based on how do I feel rather than what does God say.
The fourth reason I must manage my emotions is…
4. BECAUSE I WANT TO SUCCEED IN LIFE.
This is one of the number one predictors of success or failure in your life. Do you know how to manage your moods? Do you know how to deal with how you feel? Do you know how to control your emotions? If you don’t learn how to do this you will never be the success in life that God wants you to be and that you want to be.
One day Jesus had been rejected by a town and James and John
Study after study after study have shown that your EQ is more important than your IQ. That for success in business Emotional Quotient is far more important than your Intelligence Quotient. A lot of people who don’t have a high IQ are very successful in life. They’ve got good smarts in dealing with their emotions. As a result they are people-people. They know how to get along with others.
We’ve all known people who live by their emotions and waste their life. They don’t feel like doing anything so they don’t do anything.
How many people do you know who ruin their reputation because of their lack of self control? How many people have been kicked out of school, have been sent to jail, have families who want nothing to do with them all because of a lack of self control.
When you give your heart to Jesus that includes your emotions. So when you say, “I gave my heart to Jesus,” you gave your emotions to him to be managed by him. Because the heart is the seat of your emotions. Jesus wants to be Lord of how you feel not just what you think and what you do. He wants to be Lord of your emotions.
In fact the Bible says this to believers 1 Peter 4:2 “From now on you must live the rest of your earthly lives [the rest of your earthy lives] controlled by God’s will and not by human desires.”
HOW TO MANAGE AN UNWANTED FEELING
How do I manage an unmanageable or unwieldy or an unwanted feeling? You do three things.
The first thing you do is to name it.
1. NAME IT.
The first thing you have to do in dealing with an emotion is to name it. You must name it. What is it that you are actually feeling. If you don’t know what the problem is, then you can’t work on it. You can’t talk to God about it. Washing a dirty car and making it look nice and clean is not going to make the car run if the car is out of gas. What is your real problem?
Sometimes we are not as in touch with our emotions as we think we are. This time when I left my mom, there in the driveway as I went to back away in the car, I almost started to cry. I wonder what prompted those tears. Why are we feeling the way we do. What is behind out situation so we can talk to God about it.
If you can’t name it you can’t change it. You’ve got to name it first.
We may at times feel like David, Psalm 55:2 “My thoughts are restless and I’m confused.” That’s the way we are a lot of times about our feelings. We’re confused.
To become an emotionally strong man, an emotionally strong woman, ask these two questions.
First, what am I really feeling? That’s the first question. What am I really feeling? What I mean by that is you need to scratch beneath the surface. Because what you think you’re feeling is often not the real feeling. Sometimes you think “I’m feeling a little down today… I’m feeling a little discouraged… I’ve got the blues… I’m a little depressed…” You think the problem is depression.
No, that’s not the problem. You need to ask, What’s making me depressed? You look a little deeper and it was “I got criticized at work and I didn’t like that.” Or “I just got laid off.” Or “An expectation didn’t happen the way I expected it to happen.” You need to look and find the disappointment or find the worry. Sometimes it’s fear. Sometimes it’s repressed or put down or covered up anger. So a lot of times what you think you’re feeling, it’s not. What am I really feeling here? “Maybe my irritation is not with you. honey. My irritation was with what somebody said to me right before I left work and came home. And now I’m taking it out on you.” You know what I’m talking abouit? It’s a transference. So you say, what am I really feeling?
Then the other question you ask is, What are my triggers? What triggered this? - is a good thing to say.
If I were to ask you to name the emotion that gives you the most trouble in your life would you be able to name it? If you don’t, you’re not as in touch with yourself as you think you are. Because you have certain emotions that trigger responses and you have certain triggers that trigger emotions.
Sometimes the trigger can be sight. In other words I was at a particular place and I saw that and all of a sudden I feel very moody or very angry. It brings up something of the past.
Sometimes a smell can trigger an emotion. You smell something and it makes you feel warm and comfortable or it makes you feel afraid and angry.
A trigger might be something you hear. The sound of somebody’s voice. Or a certain noise.
Touch. The way someone touches you can trigger an emotional response.
You need to know these things. You can’t manage what you don’t know.
Taste. You can taste certain things and it will send you back to childhood. And you have all kinds of experiences on that.
So you say, what am I really feeling and what triggered this?
You have to identify the problem before you can overcome it. Other wise you will keep telling yourself, everything is fine, when it is not.
The second thing you do, that the Bible tells us to do is this…
2. CHALLENGE IT.
You challenge what you’re feeling. You don’t just automatically accept what you’re feeling. You don’t automatically assume that what you feel is the truth, correct or even reality. You challenge it.
Are things really as bad as I feel they are? Probably not. Or are things really as good as I feel they are? Probably not.
So you need to ask yourself some questions. You challenge it.
God knows what you’re feeling even when you don’t know it. And God knows what triggered it even when you don’t know what triggered that emotion. If you say, “God, I don’t know what I’m feeling, I don’t know where it came from but I need your help,” that’s a good thing to do. David often asked God to evaluate his feelings so since God is impartial God can help you out.
The Bible says in Psalm 26:2 “Lord, cross examine me. Test my motives and my affections.” What are your affections? They’re your emotions. Test my motives and my feelings, what I feel, my affections, my emotions.
So you ask God to help you evaluate it. Let me give you another one that is even more personal.
• SOMETIMES YOU NEED A FRIEND TO CHALLENGE YOU. GET A PARTNER.
Get a friend to help you or get in a small group to help you out.
Have you given anybody in your life the permission to challenge your feelings? Or does everybody have to be a yes-man or a yes-woman to you? You feel a certain way and there’s no room for “Are you sure?” A true friend is somebody you give permission to say, Are you sure about that? You give them the ability to challenge your emotion and say, “Rick, I don’t think you’re thinking correctly right now. I don’t think what you’re feeling is actually true…”
Job had a friend like that. His name was Eliphaz. In Job 15:12 Eliphaz asked Job “Why has your heart carried you away, and why do your eyes flash?” That’s a poetic way of saying, How come you’ve run off the deep end? Why do you get so angry?
Ask three questions.
Let me give you three questions to ask about your own emotions when you’re trying to figure out how to deal with how I feel.
1. What’s the real reason that I’m feeling this? That goes back to what we were talking earlier. Maybe it’s fear. Maybe it’s worry. Maybe it’s hooked into something your dad said to you years and years and years ago and when your husband said it to you all of a sudden he gets all the wrath that you pent up against your dad. Or vice versa.
The second question to ask yourself….
2. Is it true? Is what I’m feeling right now true? There’s a point where Elijah in the Bible gets so down, discouraged, depressed. He comes crying to God and he’s complaining and he says, “God, I’m the only one in the entire nation of Israel left serving you.” And God challenges him, Are you kidding me? I’ve got all these people who are still serving me! Why are you acting like this? You’re acting like you’re the only one trying to do the right thing in the whole world! No. That’s not true.
3. Is what I’m feeling helping me or hurting me? Sometimes this is the simplest thing to changing an emotion by simply saying is what I’m feeling right now going to help me get what I want to get or is it actually going to hinder me getting what I want? In other words, will I get what I want by continuing to feel this way? A lot of feelings we have feel natural but they’re actually self defeating.
So you ask yourself is this emotion actually getting me where I want to go?
So you need to ask yourself, I know I’m, frustrated right now with this person in my life but is expressing my frustration at them going to actually make a change and I get what I want out of this? No, it’s not.
That’s called managing your emotions.
You’ve got to name it – here’s what I’m feeling. And here’s the trigger. Then you’ve got to challenge it – what’s the real reason I’m feeling this way. Is it true? Is it helping me or is it hurting me?
Then the third thing you’ve got to do is ….
3. TAME IT.
You can tame it by changing it. You determine what your mood is and how long it is going to last.
A. Sometimes you just need to CHANGE what you’re feeling.
Some emotions are so destructive, so damaging, so hurtful, so non effective the other thing you can do is to change it. You’ve got to change what you’re feeling.
Philippians 2:5 says this “Your attitude should be the same as that of Christ Jesus.” So your attitude – that includes your emotions, what you’re feeling should be the same as that of Jesus. So you ask yourself, How would Jesus feel in this situation? Would Jesus get irritated with this waitress? No. Would Jesus be yelling at the person? No.
Let go of those emotions that are leading you to act contrary to the will of God.
B. Sometimes you need to CHANNEL what you’re feeling.
But sometimes you can even take a negative emotion that you’re feeling and rather than change it, you channel, it. You channel it. What does that mean? You use it for good.
For instance: Let’s say you feel your child has been the victim of some injustice because of the school system. You are so angry you just want to hit somebody or something. Channel that anger into showing up at school board meetings and voicing your concerns. Find out how do you get on the school board. O go to Parent Teacher conferences to work positively with the teacher and try to find out what you can do about a situation.
Hitting somebody or breaking something in anger is probably not going to get you what you want. But can my anger be used for good to help other people? Yes. And all of a sudden you become a champion for justice. Because you know what it means to have experienced injustice. That make sense?
So you take a negative emotion – anger – and when you use your anger for your benefit that’s selfish anger. That’s a sin. When you use your anger for the benefit of other people that’s righteous anger.
Anger is not a sin. The Bible says in Scripture, “Be angry and sin not.” It’s what you do with that anger and it’s the reason you’re angry that makes it a sin or not
So you can take a negative emotion and you can use it in a positive way.
Let me give you another example: Many of you have wanted to be married and it just didn’t happen. Your love has been blocked to date. Some of you are married and you wanted to have children. And it hasn’t happened. And your love has been blocked. To date.
What do you do with a blocked love? Do you decide to never love anybody?
What do you do with a blocked love? You re-channel it. Maybe you didn’t get to love the person you wanted to love. But the world is full of people who need your love. Maybe you didn’t get to have the children you wanted to have. But there’s a 137 million orphans in the world. And there are children on your street who need your love.
You re-channel a blocked love. You use it for good. You don’t stew in your hurt. You use it for good. If you don’t change the emotion you channel the emotion. And use it for good.
What pain in your life are you using for good? Maybe you have been in so much pain you didn’t even want to talk about it. Then you need to learn to manage your emotions. You need to name it, you need to challenge it, and then you need to channel it if you’re not going to change it. And use it for good.
God can use it in your life. Your greatest ministry could come out of your deepest pain. Your greatest ministry will not come out of your strength and successes. Your strength and successes people just go, goody for you. You’re good at it. But if it comes out of your pain then it can help others.
So you change it or you channel it.
How do you tame a wild emotion? Not by will power. The Bible says this in Zechariah 4:6 “You will not succeed by your own strength or power. But by my Spirit says the Lord almighty.” You don’t change an emotion by willpower. It doesn’t work that way. It’s not by power, it’s not by might. It’s by my Spirit says the Lord.
1. Every day ask God to fill me with his Spirit.
Every single day. I don’t get out of bed. My feet don’t touch the ground without me saying, “Holy Spirit, fill me today. I need your Spirit in my life. Because it’s not by might or by power, not willpower but by your Spirit I’m going to be able to manage my moods and my emotions today.”
“When the Holy Spirit controls our lives, he will produce this kind of fruit in us: love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control.”
Galatians 5:22-23 (NLT)
Self control comes from God control. The more I let God control my mind and emotions the more self control I have.
It says when the Holy Spirit controls your life he fills you with this. When you’re filled with love, joy, peace, patience, gentleness, goodness, faithfulness, meekness, self control then that’s a whole lot better than being filled with anger, worry, fear, guilt, shame, worry and all these other things.
So what about it? When you’re put under pressure at work, at home or anywhere else do you know what comes out of you? Whatever is inside of you.
But when you’re filled with the Spirit and the world puts pressure on you what’s going to come out? Love, joy, peace, patience….
So whatever is inside of you is going to come out. So the first key to managing emotions is to be filled with the Spirit so you’re full of love and joy.
2. The other thing to do is not only every day ask God to fill me with the Spirit but everyday ask God to help me manage my mouth.
You knew I was going to get to this one! Every day I ask God to help me manage my mouth. I get up in the morning and I say, Lord, put a guard on my mouth. Zip it up. The Bible says “In a multitude of words there is sin.” Proverbs 13:3 says this, “Self control means controlling the tongue.”
The Bible says that your tongue is like the rudder on a big ship. A little tiny rudder can direct a big ship in any direction. The tongue is the rudder of your life. What you say is where you’re going to go. And you’re not going to experience what God wants you to have until you say what God wants you to say. So you say, Lord help me to manage my mouth.
Here’s the last key. Make God’s Word my word. Fill yourself with the word of God and the Word of God will come out of you. Listen, Read, Think About It.
Psalm 119:11 says this “I have hidden your word in my heart [What’s your heart? That’s where your emotions are.] that I might not sin against you.” And Psalm 19:14 “May the words of my mouth and the meditations of my heart be pleasing in your sight O Lord.”
Notice the connection between your heart and your mouth. What’s inside your heart is going to come out of your mouth. Jesus said, “It’s not what goes in you that makes you unclean; it’s what comes out of you that makes you unclean……” My heart is revealed in my words. So some of you what you need to say is God I need a heart transplant. I’ve got a bitter heart. I’ve got a worried heart. I’ve got an angry heart. I’ve got a lonely heart. I’ve got a prideful heart. I’ve got an arrogant heart. God, I’ve had a jealous heart. I’ve got an envious heart. I’ve had an impatient heart. God, I need a heart transplant.”
When you say that to God and you say, fill me with your Spirit, he’ll put a new heart inside of you. And when you get a new heart you get new words and your words direct your life.
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