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