Managing Your Emotions: Instead of Your Emotions Managing You Read online

  A good example of this type of fearless constancy in the face of frightening circumstances is found in the book of Exodus when the Children of Israel stood on the banks of the Red Sea and saw the army of Pharaoh coming after them to destroy them.

  Moses told the people, Fear not; stand still (firm, confident, undismayed) and see the salvation of the Lord which He will work for you today. For the Egyptians you have seen today you shall never see again.

  The Lord will fight for you, and you shall hold your peace and remain at rest. Exodus 14:13,14

  When confronted with a situation like the one that the Israelites faced in this passage, we are to do what they were told to do: remain constant, hold our peace, stand at rest, and let God do our fighting for us.

  Keeping Calm the Day of Adversity

  Blessed (happy, fortunate, to be envied) is the man whom You discipline and instruct, O Lord, and teach out of Your law,

  That You may give him power to keep himself calm in the days of adversity, until the [inevitable] pit of corruption is dug for the wicked.

  For the Lord will not cast off nor spurn His people, neither will He abandon His heritage.

  For justice will return to the [uncompromisingly] righteous, and all the upright in heart will follow it. Psalm 94:12-15

  What is the Lord saying to us here in this passage? He is saying that He deals with us and disciplines us for a reason. He does that so we will come to the point where we can keep ourselves calm in the day of adversity.

  In verses 14 and 15 notice the emphasis on God's faithfulness and justice toward us, His inheritance, the uncompromisingly righteous. We can be sure that if we are being obedient to the Word and will of God and are being led by His Holy Spirit, we have nothing to fear from our enemies, because the Lord Himself will fight our battles for us.

  But we must want to be helped. As we have seen, even God cannot help someone who doesn't really want to be helped. If you and I really want to be helped, then we must remain stable as we wait upon Him to move in our behalf

  Remaining Stable

  He who dwells in the secret place of the Most High shall remain stable and fixed under the shadow of the Almighty [Whose power no foe can withstand]. Psalm 91:1

  When you and I feel a tide of emotions beginning to rise up within us, we need to return to the secret place of the Most High, crying out to Him: “Father, help me to resist this surge of emotions that threatens to overwhelm me!”

  If we will do that, the Lord has promised to intervene on our behalf. We need to learn to take refuge under His shadow, where we will be safe and secure, knowing that no power in heaven or on earth can withstand Him.

  Avoiding Emotional Highs and Lows

  In our efforts to develop emotional maturity, we must be careful to avoid both extremes: highs and lows.

  Most of us have heard a great deal of teaching about emotional lows such as discouragement, depression, despondency, and despair. But the Lord has revealed to me that we also need to avoid the other extreme, which is emotional highs.

  God has shown me that if we give in to extreme highs we are as out of balance as we are when we give in to extreme lows. To maintain an emotional balance, we need to stay on a level plain, somewhere between both extremes.

  It may be hard for some people to maintain emotional stability because they are addicted to excitement. For some reason, they just can't seem to settle down and live ordinary, everyday lives like everyone else.

  Such people have to have something exciting going on all the time. If they don't, they soon get bored and start looking for something to “turn them on.” Their search for excitement often leads to excessive emotional stimulation, not to the steady, deep-seated joy that is supposed to characterize the life of the believer.

  It is not wrong to be excited, but it is dangerous to be excessive.

  Joy as Calm Delight

  I have told you these things, that My joy and delight may be in you, and that your joy and gladness may be full measure and complete and overflowing. John 15:11

  Sometimes we believers seem to think that in order to be filled with the joy of the Lord we have to be turned-on, fired-up, and super-hyped!

  Jesus did tell us that His joy and delight are to be in us to the full measure. But that does not mean that we are to swing from chandeliers!

  I know that the word joy has often been defined by some teachers and ministers as “hilarity,” and there is some basis for that definition. But according to Strong's concordance, the actual meaning of the Greek word chara translated joy in John 15:11 is “calm delight.”1

  I like that definition because I have seen it displayed in my own marriage. For more than thirty years I have watched my husband Dave live a life of calm delight, and it has been a great blessing to me.

  Dave likens this kind of calm delight to a bubbling brook that just flows along quietly and peacefully, bringing refreshment to everything and everyone along its path.

  Yet so many of us are like the ocean. Our emotions come in and go out like the roaring tide. One moment we are surging forward overflowing everything in our path, and the next moment we are rushing back out leaving debris everywhere.

  After years of living that kind of ebb-and-flow life, I came to want so much to be able to have the kind of peaceful existence that marked the life of my husband. I understand the stress and turmoil that can be caused by excessive highs and lows.

  I am not saying that it is wrong to ever get excited. But I am saying that we need to be careful about becoming all “hyped up,” because invariably hype leads to disillusionment and disappointment.

  Be Adaptable and Adjustable

  Rejoice with those who rejoice [sharing others' joy], and weep with those who weep [sharing others' grief].

  Live in harmony with one another; do not be haughty (snobbish, high-minded, exclusive), but readily adjust yourself to [people, things] and give yourselves to humble tasks. Never overestimate yourself or be wise in your own conceits. Romans 12:15,16

  There is a balance that needs to be maintained in this very delicate area of appropriate emotional responses.

  For example, when Dave surprised me with the beautiful 14-karat gold watch I had wanted so badly, I was filled with joy, meaning that I had calm delight about it. I thanked God that I had a husband who loved me enough to do such nice things for me. I also thanked the Lord that I had had the sense to let Him work out His plan for me, instead of trying to do it myself. If I had bought the one I thought I was able to afford, I would have ended up with a cheap watch that I would not have been happy with very long.

  Although I was delighted, I did not do what I would have done ten years earlier. I did not run to the office and show everyone what I had on my wrist. In fact, I disciplined myself not to tell anybody about it but my children and closest friends.

  If someone noticed and said, “Oh, you've got a new watch,” I would say, “Yes, Dave bought it for me. Wasn't that sweet of him?”

  Many times we take away the joy and blessedness that should exist between us and the Lord because when He does something special for us we run all over town enthusiastically boasting to people about what has happened.

  But that is not the end of the story. The very next morning I noticed that the watch wasn't keeping proper time.

  I thought, “Oh, Dave didn't set it right.”

  I pulled out the stem to set the watch, and the stem wouldn't turn the hands. I wouldn't say that I was discouraged, but it was a bit of a disappointment.

  My daughter Sandy said to me, “Mom, you sure are being calm for somebody who just got an expensive watch and found out it's not working.”

  Do you know why I was acting that way? Because since I had not let myself get overly excited about the watch in the first place, I wasn't overly distressed when it didn't work right. Had I run around showing it off and bragging about it to everyone, I would have allowed it to become the center of my joy. Then when I discovered that it wasn't working, I would have been crush
ed, and my joy would have gone down the drain.

  We need to learn to enjoy life and the nice things that come to us in it without getting all emotional.

  Let me give you another example.

  Some time ago we bought a new house just as I was learning what I am sharing with you about calm delight. People kept asking me, “Are you excited about your new house?” The truth is that I wasn't excited. I had a calm delight, but I was not the least bit excited.

  I knew the house was a gift from the Lord, and I thankfully accepted it as such. I had a peace about it, but that was all.

  We had lived in the previous house for seventeen years, so it was time for a change. The new house was also a good financial investment for us. So for those reasons I was filled with calm delight, but I really was not emotionally excited at all. Neither did I grieve and mourn when I left our home of seventeen years. Our children were babies there. The first Bible study I taught was there, plus other memories. But I was determined not to be worn out emotionally by the time we moved into our new house.

  I had learned to adapt and adjust to my changing circumstances without getting all emotional.

  Emotional Boredom

  When you first start giving up emotional hype, for a while you may feel bored.

  For several months after the Lord brought me out of emotional hype and into calm delight I literally had to fight off the thought, “This is boring.”

  The reason is that, like many other Christians, I had become addicted to emotion.

  Emotional Addictions

  I had spent so many years worrying and fretting, figuring and reasoning, conniving and manipulating, riding the crests and troughs of emotional waves, that when my mind was brought down to a calm delight, my flesh went into trauma.

  The Lord used that experience to teach me an important lesson. He showed me many of us have emotional addictions.

  Like many others, I was so addicted to worry that if I didn't have anything to worry about I would worry about not having any worries! Other people are so addicted to guilt that if they haven't done anything to be guilty of, they feel guilty about not feeling guilty!

  In the same way it is possible to get addicted to excitement. Just as a drug addict runs around looking for a chemical “fix,” excitement addicts run around looking for an excitement “fix.” Some people just don't know how to live ordinary, everyday lives.

  Others are so compulsively goal-oriented that they are always looking for some new challenge. As soon as they have attained one objective, they are bored again until they can find some new goal to reach for.

  One young man like that who went to work for us told me one day, “I think I'm finally beginning to grasp something that has been really hard for me to get through my head.”

  “What's that?” I asked.

  “I guess I'm finally beginning to learn that a lot of life is just getting up and going to bed, getting up and going to bed.”

  If we goal-oriented types could ever learn that truth, we could save ourselves and everyone around us a lot of headaches!

  We may not all be called to some great earth-shaking work. The anointing of God does come for great works, but it also comes to help us supernaturally enjoy ordinary, everyday life.

  As Christians, we are called to love God, to fellowship with Him and our fellowman, to be a blessing everywhere we go, to bring a little joy into people's lives, to live in harmony with our spouse, to raise the kids that He gives us, and to just keep “getting up and going to bed” — and to do it joyfully unto Him. Psalm 100:2 tells us to serve the Lord with gladness!

  There will be days when God brings excitement into our lives, but we should not spend our entire lifetime seeking after such emotional highs.

  Sometimes my meetings are exciting, and I appreciate it when that happens. I figure the Lord knew I needed that bit of encouragement to keep me going.

  But even there we have to be careful, because excitement creates a hunger for more and more excitement. If we are not careful, we will end up seeking excitement rather than seeking the will of God. We can begin to think that if a church service was not exciting something was wrong. I may leave a meeting I have attended feeling very satisfied yet not excited.

  You and I need to learn not to be so affected by our outward circumstances.

  Not every one of my meetings is gloriously exciting. New houses come along only once or twice in a lifetime. It is only rarely that we are surprised with a new gold watch. Many days come and go without any great emotional fanfare. But remember, we are anointed with the Holy Spirit to properly handle ordinary, everyday life.

  The place where we get into trouble is when there is nothing going on — so we try to start something. We do need some variety in our daily routine. But we also need to learn to be led by the Spirit and not by our own emotional addictions.

  Not every day is a holiday. Not every meal is a banquet. Not every event is an extravaganza. Most of the time life just goes along on a regular, even keel.

  That's what we should do too. We should learn to take control of our emotions and avoid the mood swings that will keep us from enjoying the continual calm delight that God has planned for us in this life.

  6

  Understanding and Overcoming Depression

  I almost titled this chapter “Uppers and Downers.” In fact, I had written that title in my notes, but I changed my mind. I thought you might think this chapter is about drugs, but it is not about drugs at all.

  There are a lot of “uppers” and “downers” in this life besides those induced by drugs. In this chapter I intend to show Satan is the one who brings the “downers,” and Jesus is the One Who brings the “uppers.”

  Down in The Pit

  I waited patiently and expectantly for the Lord; and He inclined to me and heard my cry.

  He drew me up out of a horrible pit [a pit of tumult and of destruction], out of the miry clay (froth and slime), and set my feet upon a rock, steadying my steps and establishing my goings. Psalm 40:1,2

  When the Bible speaks of “the pit,” as in this passage from the book of Psalms, I always think of the depths of depression.

  As we will see later, David often spoke of feeling as though he was going down into a pit and calling out to the Lord to rescue him and set his feet on solid, level ground.

  Like David, nobody wants to be in the pit of depression. It is a terrible place. I cannot think of a worse place to be. Besides the depression itself, there are the horrible thoughts that Satan calls back to the memory while in that low state.

  When we are deeply depressed, we feel bad enough as it is. Then the devil comes along to add to our misery by reminding us of all the horrible things we have ever thought or said or done. His goal is to keep us so miserable and hopeless that we will never rise up to cause him any problems or to fulfill the call of God on our lives.

  We must learn to resist descending into the pit of depression where we are at the mercy of the tormentor of our souls who is out to totally destroy us and our witness for Christ.

  Level Ground

  Deliver me, O Lord, from my enemies; I flee to You to hide me.

  Teach me to do Your will, for You are my God; let Your good Spirit lead me into a level country and into the land of uprightness. Psalm 143:9,10

  As we saw in the last chapter, if we are to avoid extreme lows, one thing we must do is to avoid extreme highs. We must learn to come into balance. When we get too emotionally high, inevitably we must come down. When we do, often we do not stop at the normal level of emotions — what David called “the level country” — but we continue to plummet into the depths of depression.

  I really believe that what David was talking about in Psalm 143 was not actual level ground, but level emotions.

  A lady who works with manic-depressives once told me that, in dealing with these types, mental health officials have to not only keep them from sinking into deep depression but also from rising to emotional heights — because one leads
to the other. Their goal is to keep patients as much as possible on an even level, a place of steady emotional balance.

  As we have seen, as believers, you and I are to keep as much as possible on an even level. We are to avoid getting so addicted to emotionalism that we have to stay constantly on an emotional high or else we risk falling into the depths of depression. Instead of riding on an emotional roller coaster from one extreme to the other, we are to walk in the joy of the Lord, which we have defined as calm delight.

  “Downers”

  Why art thou cast down, O my soul? and why art thou disquieted within me? hope in God: for I shall yet praise him, who is the health of my countenance, and my God. Psalm 43:5 kjv

  According to the concordance, the word “depression” does not appear in the King James Version of the Bible. The closest term to appear there is “cast down,” as we see in Psalm 43:5 in which David asks, “Why are you cast down, O my soul?”

  However, although depression itself is not mentioned by name in the Bible, there are other emotion-related items discussed there such as: despair, discourage(ment), disappoint(ment), destruction, debt, disease, distress, and division. These are just some of the things that Satan uses to try to bring us down into depression.

  All these “D words” are what might be called forerunners to depression. Since we all have to be on our guard against them, I have studied each of them to learn more about them and their effect on us as believers.

  Despair

  We are hedged in (pressed) on every side [troubled and oppressed in every way], but not cramped or crushed; we suffer embarrassments and are perplexed and unable to find a way out, but not driven to despair. 2 Corinthians 4:8