Automatic Transcript Generated
Speaker 1
Gloria is asking, what does the Bible say about discernment and emotions? Are our emotions interfering with good discernment choices we make? How do we know? I love this question.
Speaker 2
It’s a really good question, because so.
Speaker 1
Often within the faith communities, emotions are viewed as this evil thing. When God created emotions in us, he created us with a limbic system that is where our emotions are experienced and processed and emotions are energy. I mean, you’ve probably heard emotions are energy in motion, and without emotions, we wouldn’t really function. So emotions are a part of how we’re made. So I love this question, and that’s.
Speaker 2
A good way to set up the question, right? Like, why do we have emotions? Are they evil? No, right? It’s sort of like the spice of life that God gave us to make life interesting. And it’s just had to motivate us at times to take action. And God expressed his emotions right. Jesus wept. We all know the Bible has lots of these verses about God being angry and furious. Why is it saying that God’s telling us he made us in his image. He has emotions, too. But what does God do with his emotions? Is he controlled by his motions? Or does he use that to express something to show why he’s motivated to do something? So let’s start with our first verse then, about discernment, which is this is a great question. How do we discern whether these emotions are right or wrong? So I don’t think there’s a Bible verse. I could be wrong, but I’m not sure of one that just says outright. This is how you tell if your motion is good or bad. But we do have a framework for generally judging things, and that’s first John 41. Hopefully we could put that up.
Speaker 2
This is probably the most famous verse on judgment or discernment. One john four one. So it says, Beloved, do not believe every spirit. You could replace spirit with any person, any book, any emotion, whatever. It is something that’s trying to influence you.
Speaker 1
Every thought.
Speaker 2
Every thought. Yeah, great. Every thought. But test the spirits, whether they are of God, because many false prophets have gone out into the world. So John’s commending us to test the spirits. Don’t just take it for granted. There’s unfortunately a lot of people out there who say, just go with your feelings, go with your gut. The Bible says no. Test these things. Test them to see if it is from God. How do we test that? Isaiah 820. Isaiah 820 gives us the test. This is the most sure test you can do to see if something is from God or not. I can’t give you any other test, really, but this. And it says to the law and to the testimony, if they do not speak according to this word, it is because there’s no light in them. So the law and the testimony is an Old Testament way of saying, the Bible, Amen, the books of Moses, what all the prophets said, and then now we have the New Testament. These are all the testimonies given to us, telling us about Jesus, about God. And from this now, we can discern what’s right or wrong.
Speaker 2
And so many people say, oh, the Bible isn’t relevant for today. I strongly disagree. The more I read it, the more I am astonished how well even these old stories still apply to today, how much the old advice still applies to us. It’s still 100% relevant if you spend time to figure out the principles that the Bible is trying to teach us. Some people get too caught up in literalism, you know, just taking word for word. And well, because this Bible verse deals with a donkey, it doesn’t apply to a car or things like that. No, we need to think of the principles. So let’s talk about now, about the emotions and discerning and we’re going to look at verse that’s not necessarily about emotions, but it’s maybe the greater context of in which we work and function and we experience emotions. So let’s look at two corinthians ten, starting at verse three. Second corinthians ten, starting at verse three. We’ll go through verse five. It says, for though we walk in the flesh, we do not war according to the flesh. So we’re human, we have flesh and bones. But on verse four it says, for the weapons of our warfare are not carnal, but mighty in God.
Speaker 2
So if we’re just relying on ourselves, dealing with ourselves, we’re going to be held back, because we are carnal, we have flesh, we have emotions. But in verse five, it talks about this concept of bringing every thought into captivity to the obedience of Christ. So somehow, through God, we get this power to bring our thoughts into captivity. We have a way that we can override at times what our carnal cells are wanting to do. We often talk about how we have the frontal lobe that can think and process, have judgment and reason. And then we also do have, as when he said, right, this limbic system, this reptilian brain, some people call it, this part of the brain which a lot of animals have, which you’re just dealing with basic survival, right? Fright, scare, got to run, these sort of things. That system is a part of us. But are we going to be run and motivated and driven by the back of our head or are we going to use the front of our head to control ourselves? And Winnie and I have done a documentary on mental health and we know sometimes it is very difficult to just reading yourself out of what’s going on in the back of your head.
Speaker 2
And sometimes you really do need to get therapy, you need to get help from the proper experts that can really help the front of your brain and your back of your brain talk to each other the right way. It’s complex. But the Bible is also telling you if you turn to God and with the help of his spirit, you can also overcome these things. And by his spirit we get the power to control our flesh. Let’s look at Romans seven starting at verse 14 and then we’ll jump to verse 18. Verse 14 says, for we know that the law is spiritual, but I am carnal sold under sin. And the sold under sin part is important too. Satan is going to play on and take advantage of our carnal self because that’s the easiest to manipulate. It really drives us and motivates us. And all he has to do is get us to stop thinking a little bit and let our emotions, let our drives, our flesh, control us. And then he can steer us in terrible directions. Whereas God gave us these saints again to be good things. Like a man is supposed to look at his wife and just love her and be totally attracted to her.
Speaker 2
But Satan might twist what should be a good thing and make it so that a man will lust over every woman he looks at. So we have to use our mind to control the desires that Satan didn’t take advantage of and manipulating. And this is what Romans seven is about. Let’s look at verse 18, says, for I know that in me that is in my flesh nothing good dwells, for the will is present with me. But how to perform what is good I do not find for the good that I will to do, I do not do, but the evil I will not, or I don’t want to do, that I do. Verse 21. I find then a law that evil is present within me, the one who wills to do good. Okay, so I find a law that the evil present within me, the one who wills to do good. Complicated verse, but you got this evil within me, right? But you have this will, you want to do good. I delight in the law of God according to the inward man. But I see another law in my members warring against the law of my mind, bringing me into captivity to the law of sin which is in my members, o wretched man that I am, who will deliver me from this body of death.
Speaker 2
I mean, it’s this struggle, right, where we’re just being brought down by Satan, taking advantage of our emotions, taking advantage of our carnal desires. These things God put in us for good. He’s making them evil, trying to have those control us. But what does verse 25 say is the solution? Does I thank God through Christ our Lord. So then the mind I myself served the law of God, but with the flesh, the law of sin. So basically God is intervening. We have Christ now who’s delivering us from death, delivering us by his spirit from the carnality. And if you read on in Romans eight, it goes even deeper about for those who live according to the flesh set their minds on the things of the flesh. But those who live according to the spirit, the things of the spirit, verse six, verse six of chapter eight, it says, for to be carnally minded is death, but to be spiritually minded is life and peace. For the carnal mind is enmity against God. Your God’s enemy is saying if you’re just pursuing your carnal desires, right, because love is often self denied. Love is putting others first.
Speaker 2
But if you’re just doing me, me, I want this, I want that, I want to please myself. That is the root of sin. That could be sin of itself putting you against God.
Speaker 1
And what’s so fascinating to me about these verses we’re reading right now is this is the struggle that every true believer goes through.
Speaker 2
Every human.
Speaker 1
Yeah, every human goes through. There’s so much sin in this world and we end up being partakers of it without even meaning to, just growing up in this world and having all these sinful influences around us. When we find the word of God and we see his true character and his love and the immenseness of that love, it makes us face these struggles that we have and it’s like, whoa.
Speaker 3
Exactly.
Speaker 1
I didn’t even realize that I was sinning and that I was struggling with it because I want to do what’s good and I’m doing good in all these ways. But as we become more and more aware of the purity and the holiness of God, then we see these challenges even more. And I just love how these verses right here just so much speak to this psychological struggle. And it really is a psychological, really what this is talking about that every single person has to go through. And this is you look at these different mental illness conditions that are out there and we really deep dived into like, schizophrenia and bipolar and psychosis and personality disorders and all of these things that are like pretty hard core. And at the root of all of them, the person is struggling with these emotions that are thoughts and feelings that there’s this desire to do something that’s not good. And they’re like, I don’t want to do that. And they pull away from people and they isolate because they don’t want to hurt people. And they’re struggling with this at an intense level. And it does help you realize how these are spiritual battles, even though there’s biochemistry involved with many of them as well.
Speaker 1
But, yeah, these verses just really dive in and open that up.
Speaker 2
Yeah. And this is considered some of the most difficult passages in the Bible, romans seven and eight. But I think when you look at it through this lens of this mental health, this struggle that we’re dealing with, it’s so real and it captures it. And so the solution in verse nine, as we mentioned before, is but you are not in the flesh, but in the Spirit, if indeed, indeed the spirit of God dwells within you. I mean, it really does take a divine miraculous intervention to break us out of this cycle. We would be utterly hopeless if God just left us to be under Satan’s control. We would be lost, would be maybe all dead, or we would just be awful. Whatever we have to restrain from doing sin is thanks to God’s help, god’s intervention. We need his spirit more than ever all the time to help us break through. This is one thing where we notice there’s a lot of good techniques out there in the secular world for dealing with mental health issues. But I think Christians and followers of Christ have a one up because you know that you don’t have to find the power within yourself because we believe from the biblical perspective, we don’t have the ability within yourself.
Speaker 2
It has to come from God. God gives us that ability. He promises to give us that ability to intervene too.
Speaker 1
And it’s not to say that we don’t have a role. We always have to choose. We have to choose to accept that ability and to internalize that. We have to choose to embrace the character of Christ and the character of.
Speaker 2
God, and that’s what Paul is exactly saying.
Speaker 1
And internalize that. Gobble that up and swallow it down and just like become that in how we handle issues. Even to the point of when you look at Christ at the cross and everything that was done to Him in that time, he did not retaliate against these people. He did not try to save Himself from what was happening to Him. He loved them even when they were harming Him. And so even when we feel harmed by something that someone else is doing. What scripture is teaching us here is that God loved us even in those situations, even when we were harming Him.
Speaker 2
Yeah, and that’s a good point. Think of the temptations Jesus was experiencing when that’s happening. Being betrayed, the sadness, the anger when he’s being whipped. Yeah, you’re right. Get more anger, potentially.
Speaker 1
And it was in that moment, in the worst of that, that he chose to love anyway. He chose to love the people who were literally killing Him and rejecting Him.
Speaker 2
And the whole time he’s trying to help them. Doesn’t that get you really angry when you’re trying to help someone and they.
Speaker 1
Get upset at you and attack you and you’re like, it hurts, it’s hard and it’s not easy. But God loved us even when we were killing Him, so that we could love others even when they are wronging us. And it’s just, wow, I like you.
Speaker 2
To say that that’s even better than what’s said in the Bible. Christ loved us even when we were killing him, not just when we were sinners, even when we were killing him. Yeah, that is so true. Go ahead, Tina.
Speaker 3
Oh, no. I appreciate the discussion you guys are having right now. I think when it comes to emotions and these things, there’s definitely a spiritual aspect to it which I think you guys are really touching on. And I think that the Bible, like you’re saying, has practical tools to help us when it comes to emotional things. I really like the verses you shared as far as bringing into captivity every thought to the obedience of Christ. I think that’s a really good verse. I relate to this question a lot that my sister is asking because I’m a very emotional person. I think I have a lot of estrogen or something. My emotions should be a two, but they’re a ten a lot of the time. And so I really ask God to help me with that because it’s hard sometimes to keep yourself under control. But one thing that kind of has blessed me is verse in Jeremiah 17. In verse nine, it says basically that the heart is deceitful above all things and desperately wicked. Who can know it? And so basically, we can’t really trust our heart all the time. We can’t trust how we feel all the time.
Speaker 3
But if it says in verse ten, i, the Lord, search the heart, I try the reins even to give every man according to his ways and according to the fruit of his doings. And so God is the one that knows really what’s inside of us. And I think it’s so beautiful. The verse I quote all the time, and I love it, is Isaiah 118 where it says, come now, let us reason together, says the Lord. And so God wants to reason with us. And I think that’s such an important piece in dealing with emotions because sometimes when you just feel so, you don’t really understand, why am I even feeling this way? It’s confusing. A lot of times our feelings are confusing. And I recently had a situation a few weeks ago where I was really struggling with just anger with somebody and I was really upset with them, and I was like, God, why am I even feeling this way? And I really had to get to.
Speaker 1
The root of it.
Speaker 3
I was like, Lord, try me, examine me, know my ways, know my thoughts and help me see why I’m so upset about this situation that happened with this person. And God helped me to work through those feelings. And I figured out I was upset because I felt that there was an injustice and I had to forgive and I had to let go. And when I did that, I can’t tell you how free I felt. And I know that if it was left to myself, I would just have resentment and those feelings would just stay inside. But God helped me to reason through what I was feeling and to come up with a good solution, which was in this case, I needed to forgive this person and to use wisdom and how to avoid issues with them in the future. And I just think God is so good in that when we have things that we need to, we don’t even know why we’re feeling them to God will help us reason through them. And then sometimes we just feel like doing stuff that maybe we shouldn’t do. And that’s the beauty of God’s word. Just like you’re saying test the spirits.
Speaker 3
Because the apostle Paul says the just shall live by faith. You see, that Romans 117 and he’s actually quoting the Old Testament in hebaca two four. And basically, you know, you might not feel like, you know, doing something that’s right, but you do it by faith. And I always have heard this in this really great seminar about mental health. They’re saying it’s faith over feelings and you need to trust God’s word by faith more than just maybe how you feel about doing something. Like, I don’t feel like forgiving I don’t feel like being honest. I don’t feel like doing the Matthew 18 thing where I go directly to the person, address an issue with them. But that’s what God is calling us to do and we do it by faith. So anyway, I just wanted to throw that in there as well.
Speaker 1
Yes.
Speaker 2
Oh, wonderful points.
Speaker 1
Very good.
Speaker 2
I’ll just wrap this up here. I got a ton of verses. We could go forever on this topic, but maybe just end with, I think, one verse that really helps for discernment because you can learn about all the wrong ways of doing something, all the wrong things. And actually, let me clarify, say you can never learn all the wrong ways, all the wrong things, the truth, the right way is a thin and narrow path and just all the other directions, any other way is the wrong way. So how do you know what’s the right feeling, the right emotions, the right way to act, to think and all I think a great verse for this is Galatians five, starting at verse 22. And hopefully we could put it up. Everybody knows this verse, hopefully should be a stranger, but let it burn into your mind. If this is how I should be striving to be feeling, and if I don’t, where can I get that help says, but the fruit of the spirit, so we’re talking about the spirit is the one that breaks us out of being controlled by carnal cells.
Speaker 1
So the fruit of the spirit and this is also like I think you could replace the word spirit here with the direction of those emotions when they are knowing discerning. Are the emotions producing the fruit that’s talked about here or the way I.
Speaker 2
Would reframe it is what is the source of these things?
Speaker 1
It’s both. It’s what is the source that’s coming into us? And then which direction is our emotions going anyway? We should finish the verse.
Speaker 2
So yeah. What’s the trajectory, what’s the source and where’s it going? But the fruit of the spirit is love, joy, peace, long suffering, kindness, goodness, faithfulness. Verse 23. And gentleness self control. Against such, there is no law. So, yeah, if you’re anxious and worried, what does the Bible say? You need to feel like says you need to feel peace. If you’re sad and depressed, what does the body say? You need to feel like you need to feel joy. If you’re angry, how should you really be feeling? Ideally, you need to be long suffering. You need kindness, goodness. If you’re hopeless, you need faithfulness. So these are what we should strive for? Yeah. Instead of lust, we need to have love. So we got the guys right here.
Speaker 1
I think the other perspective on this is that when we are looking at where is our emotion taking us and what behavior is going to come from that? Because emotions are energy and motion. Emotions drive behaviors. If that emotion is driving us to do something that is going to bear fruit that is not consistent with these fruits, then we know that that emotion is something we need to work on with God and with our spirit, with God’s spirit, with our psyche. We need to work on these things until we can shift it to the point where that emotion is actually driving us to do something that is bearing good fruit.
Speaker 2
This fruit, your emotion is driving you to do something. Maybe don’t ignore that emotion, acknowledge it, figure out why is it that way? What is it trying to compel you to do, but find the good outcome of a good solution from what it’s trying to have you do?
Speaker 1
Right?
Speaker 2
Yeah. That’s a great way to channel that.
Speaker 1
Emotion into something that’s going to bear love, joy, peace, long suffering, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self control. What behaviors can we do that’s going to produce that fruit?
Speaker 2
As opposed to responding in a destructive yes, exactly.
For full episode:
https://youtu.be/0XTFec0zaao
Share this video with a friend: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4M_od36bw34
In His Service
BibleAsk Team
