How To Manage Your Emotion

HOW TO HANDLE YOUR EMOTION
This sermon is a revision of Rick Warren's sermon on Emotional Health
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.
Has anyone here ever had a change take place in your life because you didn’t keep your emotions in check? We 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) 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.” (matthew15: 8-9)
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.
Let me give you some facts about your emotions.
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. 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.
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.
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 must I learn to manage my emotions?
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. 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 YOU 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 nobler 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 (NLT) “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. 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.
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.”

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HOW TO HANDLE YOUR EMOTION

This sermon is a revision of Rick Warren's sermon on Emotional Health

Let me give you some facts about your emotions.

1. First, God has emotions.

2. My ability to feel is a gift from God.

3. God gave us our emotions for a reason.

Why must I learn to manage my emotions?

1. BECAUSE MY FEELINGS ARE OFTEN UNRELIABLE.

The second reason I need to control my emotions is;

2. BECAUSE YOU DON’T WANT TO BE MANIPULATED.

The third reason I need to control my emotions because:

3. BECAUSE I WANT TO PLEASE GOD.

The fourth reason I must manage my emotions is…

4. BECAUSE I WANT TO SUCCEED IN LIFE.

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