Emotions are a wonderful thing! God created us with great emotional depth. Happiness, compassion, enthusiasm, love, desire, and hope…all these feelings make life colorful and give depth to our existence. The opposite is also true. Fear, hated, worry, shame, regret, anger, and despair…these emotions can be devastating. Feelings can be so enjoyable, but they can also make us miserable and cause us to make choices we eventually regret. Many of us allow our feelings rule and control every area of our lives. We feel like we are constantly riding an emotional rollercoaster when it comes to our emotions. One minute we are happy and within the hour we feel sad. This can be extremely disruptive to positive living and even harmful to ourselves and those around us.
How can we make the ride stop and live with emotional stability and peace? Follows these 7 steps to bring your feelings under control.
How to Get Off the Emotional Rollercoaster
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Acknowledge the power of emotions and refuse to trust them.
We must realize that feelings are very powerful and can overwhelm us. Yes, they are real, but don’t forget that just because we feel something doesn’t mean it’s true or accurate. For example, I can get spooked in the dark. When I’ve gone out to take the garbage out at night and I feel someone is watching me. Now, no one is out there, but my feelings can tell me different. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve run back into the house terrified. Silly, but I let my feelings get the best of me.
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Realize emotional people think, act and speak based on their feelings.
This is so dangerous! I have to admit I am an emotional person. Many times I have blurted out in an emotional state and then had to come back and make things right with someone I hurt in my outburst. Other times I have held back in my fear and not done something that I later regretted.
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Understand feelings are neither good nor bad, but they are unreliable and must be controlled.
While they are normal reactions to life, feelings want to run the show. Satan knows this and tries to use them against us. His tactics began in the Garden of Eden when appealed to Eve’s feelings. He was able to convince her to trust those emotions and that led her to make the wrong choices. As they say, the rest is history. Be aware that Satan wants to gain control of your emotions and twist them so he can control your choices.
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Learn to stop, hold your feelings and think before you make a decision.
Ask yourself, “Are my feelings making this decision for me?” If they are then you must find the truth of the situation and base your choices on that truth, not just how you feel about it.
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When struggling with a negative emotion, challenge it with a truth from the Bible.
It’s not wrong to acknowledge to feelings, but they must be balanced against reality and the truth of God’s Word. I have struggled in the past with feeling badly over long ago confessed sins. Satan would bring them to my mind and make me feel unloved and unforgiven by God. Now, I didn’t have victory in this area until I learned to apply the truth of I John 1:9, “If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins, and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness.” When those negative feelings would arise I would take the truth of this Bible verse and repeat it over and over. Even when I didn’t “feel” forgiven, I still chose to believe that I was forgiven based on that truth and God’s faithfulness.
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Allow the Holy Spirit to control your emotions.
The precious Holy Spirit is the regulator of our human spirits. One of His jobs in the life of the believer is to contradict that which is false in this world and lead us into all truth. When we choose to allow Him to control our spirit, our feelings and our reactions, He causes spiritual growth resulting in spiritual fruit. Remember, the fruit of the spirit is the opposite of negative emotions!
- Choose not to live by emotions.It’s truly a choice. The human mind can only think one thought at a time. Each of us must decide to yield to the power and control of the Holy Spirit and run on the operating system of Biblical truth, not the faulty system of feelings.
God created us to enjoy the abundant life He has planned for us, but that is impossible unless we learn to control our emotion through the power of the Holy Spirit instead of letting those feelings control us!
Yes! #5