We are spiritual beings, created in the image of God when God breathed His His ruach breath or spirit, into us, giving us our own spirit. Our spirit is the essence of who we are, the emotions, personalities, character traits, thought process, etc. that give us our own unique identity.
The problem is once our spirit’s became corrupted by sin, the rest of our lives starts to show the results of that corruption, becoming cracked or utterly destroyed. The only way to regain wholeness is through a life with Jesus, allowing Him to transform and heal us through His Holy Spirit
Yesterday, we looked at how when we submit our lives to Jesus, the Holy Spirit comes and makes our lives His dwelling place and begins the work of healing, cleansing, and transforming us so that we no longer have to be broken and corrupt.
Today we’re going to look at how the Holy Spirit works in us in the area of our emotions help us to learn how to THRIVE in this specific area of life.
GOD GAVE US EMOTIONS
I mentioned last week that emotions are part of who we are. God created us to experience the same emotions that He has, both positive and negative: love, peace, joy, anger, hatred, jealousy, sadness, compassion, grief, etc.
The difference is that God is perfectly in control over all of His emotions and doesn’t base any of His decisions on the negative ones.
The Bible is clear that He loves and is full of compassion for us is, but is also full of anger, jealousy, sadness, and grief when we sin. The Bible says He loves us, but hates our sin and the injustice we commit. He is slow to anger and abounding with love, grace, and mercy for us. This shows us that He doesn’t let the anger control Him but bases all of His decisions on love and His grace, showing His goodness and kindness. However, Scripture is very clear that He is just and eventually He will pour out His anger on the world.
We, on the other hand, give into our emotions rather quickly, both positive and negative.
While we might want to show love, we are quick to get angry and lash out when we’re upset about something. We are quick to murder someone, or murder them in our hearts, when we hate them. We are quick to give into our own evil lusts, committing sexual sin, even going as far as rape. We are quick to give into our fear, becoming incapable of making decisions because we are controlled by anxiety and worry. We make poor financial decisions because we desire something. We steal from others simply because we want or think we need something that they have.
Our corrupt emotions and our inability to master them show the effects that sin has on us.
JESUS CAME TO HEAL
Our corrupt emotions and our inability to master them show the effects that sin has on us. The good news for us, though, is that Jesus came to redeem us from the curse that was put on us because of sin. The word redeem means to “buy back.”
Many think that it is just our eternal souls that Jesus bought back by His sacrifice. Our souls/spirits are now free from the effects of sin.
But, here’s the thing we have to remember: our emotions are part of our spirits. We can’t separate one from the other. Many followers of Jesus live in fear that our emotions are evil and not to be trusted, but forget that God created us to have these emotions. He just needed to redeem them in order for the effects of sin to be cleansed so that we no longer are controlled by them.
How does this cleansing happen?
I mentioned that the role of the Holy Spirit is to transform the lives of those who follow Jesus and to teach us how to be like Him, renewing our minds as we listen to and obey His voice.
This means that as long as we follow Jesus and submit to the Holy Spirit, we can trust that the Holy Spirit can cleanse our emotions as part of the renewal process.
We don’t have to be afraid of our emotions anymore. Jesus paid the price to redeem them and gave us the Holy Spirit to help us learn how to control them again, just like He does. As we master our feelings, we start to develop the character of God again. Paul emphasizes these character traits in Galatians 5 when he compares the fruit of the flesh versus the fruit of the spirit saying:
Now the works of the flesh are evident, which are: adultery, fornication, uncleanness, lewdness, idolatry, sorcery, hatred, contentions, jealousies, outbursts of wrath, selfish ambitions, dissensions, heresies, envy, murders, drunkenness, revelries, and the like; of which I tell you beforehand, just as I also told you in time past, that those who practice such things will not inherit the kingdom of God.
But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, longsuffering, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control. Against such there is no law. And those who are Christ’s have crucified the flesh with its passions and desires. If we live in the Spirit, let us also walk in the Spirit.
The distinction between those who let emotions and desires control them versus those who let the Holy Spirit teach them how to surrender them are very clear. We can also see the transformation that can occur within us as we learn to follow the Spirit rather than the flesh.
Where before we let hatred control us, we now walk in love
Where before we let sadness and depression control us we now have joy.
Where before we let fear and anxiety control us we now have peace.
Where before we let impatience rule us we now have longsuffering
Where before we were arrogant and mean we now walk in kindness.
Where before we were immoral and evil we now walk in goodness
Where before we were dishonest and unfaithful we are now faithful
Where before we were violent and brash in everything we did, we are now gentle.
Where before we did what we wanted, whenever we wanted, we now walk in self-control.
Each of these is a character trait of God that God intended to have as well, to represent Him to others and to creation. Unfortunately, these character traits were corrupted when sin entered the world, and we let our emotions and desires start to control us. But, Jesus came to redeem our emotions and sent the Holy Spirit that He could transform us again to see our emotions brought back under control so that He could reign in our lives.
OUR RESPONSIBILITY
However, like I said in the last episode there are 2 very important things that we have to be aware of:
Even though we have a new spirit, we still live in a fallen world. We can be tempted to fall back into sin if we are not careful.
There is an enemy out there who wants to destroy us and can deceive us into believing his lies, keeping us from growing if we are not careful.
In order to combat the temptations of the fallen world we live in and the lies of the enemy, we have a few responsibilities that we need to make sure we accomplish as we practice healthy spirituality with the Holy Spirit.
We must learn to listen to the voice of the Holy Spirit as He reveals truth to us and teaches us how to follow Him. (see my previous episodes on ways the Holy Spirit speaks to us and how to learn to listen to Him.)
We must be obedient to Him, submitting our lives to Him so that He can actually transform us.
We must not follow the ways of the world and allow Him to renew our minds, including how we react to our emotions. (Romans 12:2).
THE CHALLENGE
The only way to resist the enemy and avoid the temptations of the world is with His help. Without His help we will fall become into sin and become broken and chaotic once again.
But, with His help we can start to see us becoming more and more like Him, as we follow His voice and allow Him to renew us each and every day and teach us how to depend on Him to lead our emotions well.
As He renews us we start to see this area of our lives mature and become more and more healthy.
As we continue this series this week we are going to look and see how the Holy Spirit can renew us in each specific areas of our lives, starting with our emotions as we dive into what Scripture says about how to THRIVE in the area of our relational life tomorrow.
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