It's Time To Grow Up!

Human beings are physical, spiritual, and emotional unities.

We relate to our environment with our bodies, and we relate to God through our spirits.

So, when you begin to have emotions that are threatening your joy and peace, or feelings that urge you to stray from God's plan for your life, do what Jesus did.  

Seek the Lord in prayer, and ask Him for the strength to feel those emotions, and do God's will anyways.  

Whenever Satan tries to plant a thought or emotion in my mind, the first step I must make is to recognize it as a threat!  

It's a threat to my joy, my peace, and my relationship with God.

The more you ignore your emotions, the less you will feel their control. 

Then you will have officially learned how to control emotions instead of allowing them to control you.

This is a secret of staying in faith..

Emotions Powerfully Affect Our Lives

Imagine what it would be like to be intelligent, volitional beings without emotions. We'd be like computers, machines with no sensitivity, no ability to relate, no sorrows, and no joys. That doesn't sound very appealing to me! 

Our emotions were given not to control us but to enable us to enjoy life.

Heb. 5:11 of whom we have much to say, and hard to explain, since you have become dull of hearing.12 For though by this time you ought to be teachers, you need someone to teach you again the first principles of the oracles of God; and you have come to need milk and not solid food. 13 For everyone who partakes only of milk is unskilled in the word of righteousness, for he is a babe. 14 But solid food belongs to those who are of full age, that is, those who by reason of use have their senses exercised to discern both good and evil.

Maturity is delayed when we become dull of hearing

Dull - no-thros' From a derivative of; sluggish, that is, (literally) lazy, or (figuratively) stupid:—dull, slothful.

Rom 12:2 And do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind, that you may prove what is that good and acceptable and perfect will of God.

Transformed - met-am-or-fo'-o;  to transform (literally or figuratively “metamorphose”):—change, transfigure, transform.

What keeps us from thriving? 

What stunts our spiritual lives and frustrates our development? 

Why are we disappointed in the Christian life? 

Why does God seem far away, not intimate or near?

Sometimes this failure to thrive is caused by emotional obstacles that have crippled us, given us a wrong concept of God, or made us devalue our worth and the word.. 

When it comes to emotions we can't make our feelings the focus of our attention, as society today seems to have done with the motto, "If it feels good, do it." 

Ephesians 4:20 But you have not so learned Christ, 21if indeed you have heard Him and have been taught by Him, as the truth is in Jesus: 22 that you put off, concerning your former conduct, the old man which grows corrupt according to the deceitful lusts, 23 and be renewed in the spirit of your mind, 24 and that you put on the new man which was created according to God, in true righteousness and holiness.

Ephesians 4:11 And He Himself gave some to be apostles, some prophets, some evangelists, and some pastors and teachers, 12for the equipping of the saints for the work of ministry, for the edifying of the body of Christ, 13till we all come to the unity of the faith and of the knowledge of the Son of God, to a perfect man, to the measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ; 14that we should no longer be children, tossed to and fro and carried about with every wind of doctrine, by the trickery of men, in the cunning craftiness of deceitful plotting, 15but, speaking the truth in love, may grow up in all things into Him who is the head—Christ—

The bible doesn’t tell you how to live it shows you how to live.

We listen more to our feeling than we do to God, or the word.

You know how much counseling my wife and i have done in ministry?

We tell people don’t do this, or that, we warn them, give them versus of the bible.

We must go back to the Bible for some important facts and principles about how to handle our emotions in a godly manner, beginning with the idea that:

However people are more in tune with their feelings that they can hear good counsel.

people think that because i have invested so much emotionally in something i must not let it go to waste..

Beloved learn how to let things go.. Let it go!

Genesis 20:9  And Sarah saw the son of Hagar the Egyptian, whom she had borne to Abraham, scoffing. 10Therefore she said to Abraham, “Cast out this bondwoman and her son; for the son of this bondwoman shall not be heir with my son, namely with Isaac.” 11And the matter was very displeasing in Abraham’s sight because of his son.

Displeased- raw-ah'- A primitive root; (literally by broken to pieces); figuratively to make (or be) good for nothing, that is, bad (physically, socially or morally).  to afflict, associate selves by mistake , break (down, in pieces), + displease, do harm, (do) hurt self, (behave self, deal) ill, do mischief, punish, still vex, (do) wicked, be (deal, do) worse.

Other examples are plentiful: Selfishness is applauded and encouraged. 

Men and women walk out of marriages. 

Children are aborted, neglected, abused, and often left to raise themselves. 

Uncontrolled anger is exploding in random violence unparalleled in our history as a nation. 

All of this and more are the results of blindly following our feelings without any respect for God in our lives.

2 Cor 3:16 Nevertheless when one turns to the Lord, the veil is taken away. 17Now the Lord is the Spirit; and where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is liberty. 18But we all, with unveiled face, beholding as in a mirror the glory of the Lord, are being transformed into the same image from glory to glory, just as by the Spirit of the Lord.

The best way to mature people is unveil Jesus in the scripture..

We often think we can solve our spiritual needs with a change in our physical circumstances or moving to another city, changing a mate, changing churches, and some times those thing are needed but what we need is to grow up and be transformed.. 

We take a little vacation. We go to the mall and buy a whole new wardrobe. 

For others, it's living for pleasure. 

But those remedies are just Band-Aids or temporary anesthetics. 

2 Cor 3:14 But their minds were blinded. For until this day the same veil remains unlifted in the reading of the Old Testament, because the veil is taken away in Christ. 15But even to this day, when Moses is read, a veil lies on their heart.

Transformation comes as Jesus is read in the scriptures.

2 Cor 3:2 You are our epistle written in our hearts, known and read by all men; 3clearly you are an epistle of Christ, ministered by us, written not with ink but by the Spirit of the living God, not on tablets of stone but on tablets of flesh, that is, of the heart.

Versus 7 thru 16 are in parenthesis  He is the spirit of the old testament. But they couldn’t see Him.

God wants our emotional stability to be based on our relationship with Him rather than on physical or chemical stimuli.

2 Cor 3:4 And we have such trust through Christ toward God. 5Not that we are sufficient of ourselves to think of anything as being from ourselves, but our sufficiency is from God, 6who also made us sufficient as ministers of the new covenant, not of the letter but of the Spirit; for the letter kills, but the Spirit gives life.

7But if the ministry of death, written and engraved on stones, was glorious, so that the children of Israel could not look steadily at the face of Moses because of the glory of his countenance, which glory was passing away, 8how will the ministry of the Spirit not be more glorious? 9For if the ministry of condemnation had glory, the ministry of righteousness exceeds much more in glory. 10For even what was made glorious had no glory in this respect, because of the glory that excels. 11For if what is passing away was glorious, what remains is much more glorious.