Reading: Mark 12: 28-34
28 One of the teachers of the law came and heard them debating. Noticing that Jesus had given them a good answer, he asked him, ‘Of all the commandments, which is the most important?’ 29 ‘The most important one,’ answered Jesus, ‘is this: “Hear, O Israel: the Lord our God, the Lord is one. 30 Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength.” 31 The second is this: “Love your neighbour as yourself.” There is no commandment greater than these.’32 ‘Well said, teacher,’ the man replied. ‘You are right in saying that God is one and there is no other but him. 33 To love him with all your heart, with all your understanding and with all your strength, and to love your neighbour as yourself is more important than all burnt offerings and sacrifices.’34 When Jesus saw that he had answered wisely, he said to him, ‘You are not far from the kingdom of God.’ And from then on no one dared ask him any more questions.
Teaching:
We’re continuing our series on how God wants to see transformation take place throughout our lives. And today we are going to think about how God desires for our emotions and feelings to come in line with his. Now I suspect at this stage when we start talking about our feelings and emotions, then the men here will probably switch off because us men don’t like talking about how we feel.
But if we consider our reading today, Jesus reminds us that the most important thing in our lives is to love the Lord our God, but he reminds us that we are to love him with all of our heart. When we think about emotions, we might think about how are heart it feeling. And so Jesus reminds the scribes that we are to love God with all that’s in our heart. So, if I was to say that I give you my heart, what am I talking about? It’s a symbol of how much we love one another. Alison gave me a Valentine card on Friday, and it said these words, “My heart belongs to you”. Ahhhhh. It doesn’t mean that the large muscle that’s pumping blood around her body is being given to me. No, it means that her feelings of love that she has are being given to me.
Our emotions and feelings are important to God – he doesn’t ignore how we feel. And throughout the bible there are lots of people who talk to God about their feelings and emotions. The one book where you see this the most is in the psalms – every emotion is on display there. The writers of the psalms declare their praise and joy to the Lord. They pour out their grief and their anger to the Lord. They express their love and their pleasure. It’s all there, every emotion.
So, if I am going to know what it is to feel, to have those emotions, well I go to God’s word. And there’s something of a comfort for me in knowing that the emotions that I might go through every week in my walk with the Lord, these are emotions that we can see in the scriptures. But we can also see from scripture the repercussions of how if we don’t handle our emotions in the right way it can lead to bigger issues.
So, let’s now look at some reasons why we need to manage our emotions. Why is it important?
Well because our feelings are often unreliable.
Our emotions can lead us in the wrong direction. Sometimes I know a feeling in my gut and I will go off and do something as a result of that. But sometimes our emotions can lead us down the wrong path. We shouldn’t always accept everything that we are feeling. I can’t remember how many times as I’ve maybe been dealing with something, Alison will say to me that I can’t respond in a particular way because of how I am feeling – that I need to stop and not respond. Proverbs 14:12 says ‘There is a path before each person that seems right, but it ends in death’. There may be things that seem right to you, but that doesn’t mean it will always lead to the right way. Sometimes we have to be careful that our emotions can be unreliable.
Secondly, the reason we must manage our emotions is because you don’t want to be manipulated.
Here’s the truth – if we don’t learn to control our emotions, they will control us. And as a result, we will be manipulated by our moods. If all we do is be motivated by our feelings rather than what is right and what is true, then other people are going to take advantage of us. Here’s a story by way of example. The other week I was scrolling one evening on Facebook – a very wrong thing to do as it wastes our lives – but I was scrolling, and I saw this little advert for a useful thing for the house. I thought to myself, hey that’s really useful. And then I saw that the supplier was doing a special deal to buy it for £2. £2. I thought to myself, that’s such a good deal. Now I can’t believe what I did next. I clicked on the advert, and put in my debit card details. Everything was ordered. The next day, I received a message from the Ulster Bank to say that a payment of £90 had been withdrawn from my bank account and they had stopped it, concerned that it was fraudulent. What a fool I felt. I had been motivated by my emotions and had quickly responded without thinking to myself whether it was true and right. Now you might be thinking, what a fool Jonny was. But I bet that some of you before this week is out will have seen something advertised, and you will be on google exploring it – based on how you were feeling when you saw it.
So, we have to be careful. Proverbs 25:28 says ‘A person without self-control is like a city with broken-down walls’. This is one of Satan’s greatest tools by manipulating our emotions. He will use worry or envy or bitterness or shame to beat you up. And if you don’t know how to manage your emotions you and I will be helpless against the schemes of the devil. Peter said this is 1 Peter 5:8 “Stay alert! Watch out for your great enemy, the devil. He prowls around like a roaring lion, looking for someone to devour”.
So, watch you don’t get manipulated through your emotions
And then thirdly, the reason why we should manage these things, is because we should want to please God with our emotions
God cannot be God of my emotions if I allow them to become the God of my life (those are not my words). If your emotions control you, with every interaction, then God is not the God of your life – you are. Romans 8, 6-8, Paul says it this way, “So letting your sinful nature control your mind leads to death. But letting the Spirit control your mind leads to life and peace. For the sinful nature is always hostile to God. It never did obey God’s laws, and it never will. That’s why those who are still under the control of their sinful nature can never please God”.
If I am relying on my emotions, I am not going to experience life and peace. If we want to please the Lord, we cannot allow our feelings and emotions to dominate our lives.
So then fourthly, the reason why I should manage my emotions, is because I want to succeed in life.
Do you know how to manage your moods and emotions and how you feel? If we don’t manage these then God cannot use us the way he wants to. If you live by your emotions, then you must be careful because you will miss out on all that God wants to see happen in your life. For example, if you were to waken up this morning and say, well I don’t feel like going along to church, I don’t feel like going to work, then we are going to be in deep trouble. Here’s again what the writer of the Proverbs says in 5:23, ‘[they] will die for lack of self-control; [they] will be lost because of [their] great foolishness’. Can you think of a moment in your life, where in an instant, you responded to an emotion, you lost self-control, and in a moment, you regretted it. When we give Jesus our heart, we give him our emotions. I give him my heart, my passions, everything about me. Jesus wants to be the Lord of how you feel, not just what you think and what you do. 1 Peter 4:2 “You should no longer spend the rest of your life giving in to the sinful desires of the flesh. But do what God wants as long as you live in this world”. So manage your emotions because you want the success that God has planned for you.
So here’s the question – are your emotions and feelings being controlled by God’s will or are you allowing your life to be controlled by your emotions? You can say, oh yes I am controlled by God, but on a daily basis how has that been seen in the decisions you have made? When you make a decision in life, it’s my prayer that you stop, and you consult the Lord in what to do. We can’t allow our emotions to be the determining factor for every decision if we exclude the Lord from them.
So, what about those unwanted feelings, what do you do about them when the pop into your mind?
Well firstly we have got to name our feeling.
Over the last month or so I’ve been writing essays for a post grad that I’m trying to complete. And some of the stuff that I am looking at means I have to reflect on actions that I have taken – how I have been feeling in a certain situation. And I’ve had to think about decisions I’ve made and write down whether there has been a prejudice in my heart that has resulted in how I have acted. I’ve had to name how I’ve been feelings. You see at times we have got to reflect on our actions, and ask the difficult question – can I name that feeling in my heart. If you don’t know what the problem is then you won’t be able to address it. And that is why we need to be in touch with our emotions. When someone asks you how are you feeling, I wonder after the standard response of ‘yeah ok’, do you ever later reflect on how you are really feeling. Do you ever sit and be honest with yourself about the emotion you have. What are the triggers that may kick off an emotion? Name how you are feeling.
And then you have to challenge your emotion.
David asked God regularly to challenge his emotions. Psalm 139:23 “Search me O God, and know my heart”. You see God knows how you are feeling even if you don’t quite know yourself. He wants you to examine those feelings as to whether they are good for you or not. And you know it might be good for someone who you consider a good friend to come alongside you and challenge you, We all need people in our life who love us enough to say to us, “I don’t think you are approaching this correctly”. We all need people who love us, so that when our emotions get the better of us, can speak into our lives, Satan will manipulate us so we need to challenge why we are feeling the way we are.
So name how you are feeling, challenge it, And then you have got to tame your emotions-
Sometimes you have got to change what you are feeling. Sometimes there is so much destruction in how you are feeling, that you have got to change it. We have got to ask the question, how would Jesus deal with that situation. Paul says in Philippians 2:5, “In your relationships with one another, have the same mindset as Christ Jesus”. So here’s how you do it – for example ask yourself, how would Jesus treat that person who’s winding you up. We have got to be willing to allow our feelings and emotions to be changed. We must dismiss the feelings that don’t make us more like Jesus. If Jesus wouldn’t respond that way then neither should we. Now I realise that there are some serious issues in your life and your past that stir up your emotions, and there’s a righteous anger that bubbles inside you. But remember that you can allow Satan to manipulate you or your can decide that you are going to channel your emotions for the glory of God.
So I want to finish with this – Zechariah 4:6, “Not by might, nor by power, but by my Spirit, says the Lord Almighty—you will succeed because of my Spirit, though you are few and weak”.
I’m not asking you to walk away from here and have some kind of plan on how to control your emotions, because remember we are helpless without the Lord. We need him. This week it’s about being honest with ourselves and cry out to God saying, Lord I cannot control my emotions in my own power. It’s only by your power and your spirit. So tomorrow when you waken up, ask the Lord to fill you with his Holy Spirit. I hope you hear the Lord say “Ask me today”. And he will fill you with what is listed in Galatians 5:22 Hear these words – ‘But 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’.
When we come to Love the Lord our God with all our heart and soul and mind and strength, we are saying that in every aspect of our lives we want him to be the one we honour. Let our hearts and emotions this week be captivated with a desire to have God direct each response. Why not take a second before you are about to respond to something this week – whether in work, or in our family, wherever, and stop to think about how your feeling, asking God to help you manage those emtions and respond under his guidance. David knew all about this – here’s what he says in Psalm 19:14 ‘May the words of my mouth and the meditation of my heart (that’s our feelings and emotions) be pleasing to you, O Lord, my rock and my redeemer’. Make that your prayer this week. Maybe memorise that verse for all your decisions. Wil you live differently this week. That’s transformation. We all have emotions to deal with (none of us live as robots), but will we allow the Lord to influence our emotions. Will we live biblically. Will we live with an attitude to please him and honour him in how we respond positively to how we are feeling. May God guide and direct your thoughts and attitudes as you learn to align your thoughts to his.