A most recent study conducted on more than 800 men shows that there are at least twenty-seven kinds of emotions that human beings experience and are all highly interconnected. Some of these emotions are: boredom, admiration, adoration, anxiety, joy, nostalgia, romance, relief, interest, sexual desire, satisfaction, surprise and many more. These scientists concluded that emotions are not states that occur in isolation, but instead are gradients of emotion and that these feelings are deeply interconnected. With this in mind, we understand that emotions play a critical role in how we live, make decisions and engage with others on a daily basis.
Evaluating Emotions Through The Worldly Lens
The heart is deceitful above all things and beyond cure. Who can understand it? NIV
Based on the mentioned study above, we learn that a man can feel twenty-seven different emotions in the course of one day. These can be caused by the way other individuals engage with this person, how their day at work, school or home went, who spoke to them and what emotion they stirred throughout that conversation and so on. In our theme scripture, The Lord speaks to His prophet Jeremiah and explains the depth of evil a man is able to conceive in his heart because the heart is deceitful. He also states in the next verse, , that He alone is able to search the heart and reward every man according to what they deserve.
The world encourages you to follow your heart, to trust your gut, or to trust that every evil person will not prosper and every good person will thrive. This way however, is deceitful on its own. God is the only one who is able to search the heart of every man and because of this, you may judge evil what God deems good and you may deem good what is contemptible in the sight of God. Your heart is able to feel twenty-seven different ways in a day and based on this fact alone, you can see that it would be dangerous to make decisions based on these ever fluctuating feelings.
Many are stuck in marriages that they built on a fleeting romance which was a feeling based on other feelings such as attraction, sexual desire leading to infatuation. Others are stuck in jobs they despise because they took whatever was available out of anxiety, fear, need to prove something to their peers or to be associated with a certain company or person. Some are also stuck in dangerous and toxic relationships because of nostalgia, boredom or empathic pain. This is the result of man relying on his own understanding. In Jesus promises that when He goes to the Father, He will send us a helper,the Holy Spirit, who will counsel, advise, comfort, strengthen, advocate, intercede, even standby us. Paul reiterates the same advice in saying: ‘But I say, walk by the Spirit, and you will not gratify the desires of the flesh.’ Paul means that when you follow the guidance of this Helper, it is so rare, almost impossible to fall victim to the traps and lies that sprout out of this deceitful heart.
Weighing Emotions By The Holy Spirit
For this is the will of God, even your sanctification, that ye should abstain from fornication: that every one of you should know how to possess his vessel in sanctification and honor Kjv
The Apostle Paul tells us of a truth that is timeless ‘this treasure is in earthen vessels that the sufficiency may be of God’ What is this treasure you may ask? This treasure is the light which God commanded out of darkness the same light He made to shine in our hearts, that it may illuminate the knowledge of the glory of God revealed in the face of His Son, Jesus Christ. As in our theme scripture, Paul tells us then that a perfected man in this knowledge is able to possess, to control, to tame his vessel, the body, not to entertain any of these deceitful emotions which lead to satisfying the flesh and its desires.
When you have understood how this process works, you will realize that your emotions do not have as much power as you have been told they do. You are the one who decides what to feed, for that which you feed grows and that which you starve dies. The spirit of God in you is fed by the Word of God which you ingest in your time of communion and the flesh is fed every time you give in to the stirring, the pressing urge to satisfy a desire caused by an emotion.
For example, if you are angry and you choose to lash out with words or throw punches, you have fed the desire of the flesh. If you choose to walk away or look for a peaceful way to solve the conflict at hand regardless of how much you’d want to do the former, you will have abided by the word of truth, which exhorts you to live at peace with all men if you can ().
If you have never given your life to Jesus Christ, and you feel that this is the perfect time, pray this prayer:
“Lord Jesus, I thank you because you died for my sins and you were raised for my glory. Today, I receive you as my Lord and Savior. I am born again. Amen.”
