I do not understand what I do. For what I want to do
I do not do, but what I hate I do.
Romans 7:15
Like every Christian, I struggle with managing my emotions. Or, more correctly stated, I struggle with letting the Holy Spirit manage my emotions through the principles of God’s Word.
From your own personal experience, you already know that it is far easier to manage almost anything in life other than your emotions. Even your money is more easily managed than your emotions!
Since the Bible never teaches us to be dispassionate or unfeeling—like the Buddhist or Hindu faiths—we all must learn how to manage our emotions. In their proper place, they are a gift from God. Properly used, our emotions enrich our lives and relationships. Our lives would be flat without our emotions and feelings accentuating and punctuating our lives and experiences.
The Apostle Paul was one of the greatest saints who ever lived and served the Lord. He expressed this emotional struggle in Romans 7:15. What the spirit wants, the flesh doesn’t want. What the flesh wants, the spirit doesn’t want. There is enmity between these two; they are constantly battling each other for dominance. Both want to control, but they both can’t! One always has to submit to the other.
The good news is that by God’s power through His Holy Spirit, we can manage our emotions. The witness of the Bible and Christian experience is that we can have Spirit-controlled temperaments rather than emotionally controlled temperaments.
We were created by God for relationships. He made this possible when He created within us a radical need for all of our relationships. He did this because He created us for a relationship with Him. He had to do this, for He is supernatural, and to relate we have to have a mind that can interact with His.
Our emotions were radically damaged by the fall of man. Therefore, they have to be healed if we are ever going to have meaningful relationships. A healthy relationship with ourselves and a happy relationship with others begins with a holy relationship with God. Both sin and self have to be dealt with in order for us to be able to build holy, healthy, and happy relationships.
So, the quality of your life is determined by the quality of your relationships. Your emotions determine your relationships. Consequently, your emotional state either causes you to move out and move toward healthy relationships, or it causes you to withdraw and pull back from building healthy relationships.
It is my hope and my prayer that whatever your current emotional condition, whether it is one of fear, insecurity, anxiety, grief, confusion, anger, or depression, that God will bring you emotional healing and emotional maturity (Psalm 34:17–19).
We don’t have to live in the futility of our minds. We can be healed, delivered, and freed; we can be made whole. We must open our lives to the healing power of the Holy Spirit, so that we can become whole people and enjoy the relationships that He created us to have.