Are Negative Emotions Controlling You?
by Angie Lewis

 

 

Emotions play a big role in our life. They are active and alive twenty-four hours a day, even in our dreams. Emotions literally tell us what to do with our marriage, family, job, career, self, and how we love others. If we don’t control the course that our emotions run, we might be heading down the road towards destruction.

Are you allowing emotions to control your life?
When was the last time you got angry? What do you do when your friend turns their back on you?  What do you do when your spouse disrespects you? What do you do when your children continue to misbehave?

What happens if your emotions tell you that you don't love your spouse anymore? What are you going to do? Do you let jealousy and resentment tell you what to do in certain circumstances? 

Before we can understand the full potential of our self and our emotions we need to understand a little bit about who we are, and why we do and say the things we do. How do we handle our selves with certain issues and particular circumstances?

What do we do when conflict rears its ugly head in our marriage? We get emotional, right? We lash out with anger, or we clam up in resentment, or express our self improperly. Are we letting our emotions rule our marriage, our self, and our life? 

Most of us, in some way or another, let emotions control us. We have a hard time giving things over to God, even though it is what He instructs us to do. Why do you think that is? Why does God not let us live the way we want?

Is it because we are imperfect here on earth? Our own understanding is off course. Meaning, we do imperfect things? We error, we sin, we become angry, we disrespect the ones we love the most, we lie, some of us cheat, steal, and then some of us do really bad things, all because we are imperfect people. 

God wants us to give to Him our imperfections and He will make things right in His way. God doesn’t want us to use our feelings to do unconstructive things, but constructive things.

As you all know, we have good emotions and bad emotions. Some of us are more emotional than others, and we use those feelings to control who we are. But this stunts the growth process, and causes all kinds of problems for our loved ones.

It’s okay to have feelings, and to even get angry, but how we express, or don’t express that anger is the key here. It can make or break a marriage or relationship in the long run.   

The problem is that some days we just feel like crap (pardon the slang). We feel so much like crap that everyone around us gets treated like crap! You know the feeling. :o)

What's happening is we are letting our emotions control the person God intended us to be. We have so much potential in us just waiting to come out, and yet, we haven’t submitted our bitter and resent filled person over to God, instead we have decided, selfishly, I might add, to handle situations under our own understanding of things. But what do we know? How can we love self and break free from the selfish aspect of who we are? Let’s read on and find out.  

To love means to give. Well, how do you give to yourself? By freeing your self of unwanted emotions and negativity that upset the apple cart in your life. Are you still with me?

Some of us who haven’t learned to be attuned with the spiritual aspect of our character are still letting negative emotions impact the way we behave towards others. This is why we get angry and disrespectful, maybe even violent towards those we love. We are filled up literally with negative emotions.
 
Why do you think people are selfish? Selfishness stems from neediness. We are needy because our emotions are not fixing the problems in our life and marriage. Anger, bitterness, resentment, disrespect, pride selfishness, rebelliousness, these things do not fix our marriage, family, or how we feel inside. They just keep piling up! The more the crappy emotions pile up the more selfish we become. It is a never-ending story!

How can bitterness and resentment control me?

Resentment is just another way of thinking. Resent-filled thinking is very flawed to say the least. I know these things; I lived in my resentment for almost a decade, even though I didn’t know it at the time.

Resentment told me not to forgive my husband. It told me to look for my husband’s faults and dissect his personality. This error in thinking kept me from growing out from self and being happy in my marriage. I literally lived in my emotions.

Believe me, emotions can wreck havoc in our lives. They might tell us it is okay to have affairs, to steal, cheat, lie, do drugs, or treat our spouse with disrespect and contempt. But that is not who we are?
 
All that needs to be done here is to discover the spiritual aspect of our character and grow more into the loving nature of our Creator. We do that by giving up the old emotional selfish person over to God and ask Him to fix us.

The bible tells us that Jesus Christ left us His Spirit of Truth and Wisdom. If we listen to Truth and Wisdom it will fix us!

“We have not received the spirit of the world but the Spirit who is from God, that we may UNDERSTAND WHAT GOD HAS FREELY GIVEN US!”

1Corinthians 2:12

Do you understand what God has freely given you?  

Some of us do understand, and that is why we have already chosen to be a part of God’s family, and because of that, we now have the potential within us to grow out from our emotions, and into a better way to love and accept others, which is from a spiritually based standpoint.

We have increased spiritual awareness within our personality by freeing old pains and past hurts, giving them to God. And the awesome thing about it, we don’t even have to get all religious over it! 

When we realize the spiritual potential within us, we actually start applying God's spiritual tools into our marriage, career, job, family, children, and whatever else we do in life. This is not something religious, but something spiritual.

Those who believe in Christ's death and resurrection and put their faith in Him will know all they need to know to be free to love, free to be who they are, and free to just be! God has revealed it to them by His Spirit -- the Holy Spirit.

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”The Spirit searches all things, even the deep things of God. For who among men knows the thoughts of a man except the man's spirit within him.

In the same way, no one knows the thoughts of God except the Spirit of God. This is what we speak, not in words taught us by human wisdom but in words taught by the Spirit of God.

The man without the Spirit does not accept the things that come from the Spirit of God, for they are foolishness to him, and he cannot understand them, because they are spiritually discerned.” 
1 Corinthians 2:10-14

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Copyright 2006 Angie Lewis ~ Heaven Ministries
Reprints are allowed by citing the author, website, and copyright, thanks!

 
 

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