The closing line from the popular 70’s love song “You Light Up My Life” went like this: “It can’t be wrong when it feels so right, ‘cause you, you light up my life.” This mindset of feelings versus right and wrong still continues to permeate our society and culture today. People are driven by their feelings and emotions.  

Face it, we’re all emotional people. If you are living, you have at least some feelings. On one hand, some display few feelings while on the other hand, some are “emotional basket cases” and allow emotions to dictate every aspect of their lives. Since we were born with emotions that are part of human nature, the question is simply how do we respond to those emotions.

In her book Managing Your Emotions, Joyce Meyer points out that the word emotion comes from the “Latin ‘ex-movere’, meaning to move away. This is exactly what carnal, uncrucified, uncontrolled emotions try to do – move us to follow them away from or out of the will of God. This is precisely Satan’s plan for our lives – to get us to live by our carnal feelings so we never walk in the Spirit.”

I am absolutely convinced that too often we allow our emotions to get the best of us… we get emotionally out of control… we say, “I just got too emotional and lost it”… “I just let my emotions get the best of me.” In effect, we are admitting that we have allowed our emotions to control us.

The danger is that you can’t trust your emotions all the time. They can deceive you, trick you, convince you of things that are not even true! “The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately wicked: who can know it?” (Jeremiah 17:9). How many times do people fall in and out of love? Emotion has a definite place in human affairs, but when forced to stand alone, feelings usually reveal themselves to be unreliable and even a bit foolish at times.  Emotions have a tremendous impact on human behavior.

We must never allow our emotions to have more impact on our lives than God. The question becomes obvious: “Who controls you: God or your human emotions?” God desires to the be Lord of our lives, rather than us allowing our emotions to be the Lord of our lives. Is your faith in God stronger than your emotions? I am convinced there are those among us whose emotions are much stronger than their faith in God. They have allowed their emotions to rule and reign! However, if you refuse to give your feelings first place, they’ll never be able to defeat your faith. If your emotions rule you, they have become your God! God makes abundantly clear that “Thou shalt have no other gods before me (Exodus 20:3).” Being too emotional is a sin!

According to Dr. James Dobson in his best-selling guide Emotions – Can You Trust Them? “…emotions must always be accountable to the faculties of reason and will. This accountability is doubly important for we who purport to be Christians. If we are to be defeated during life’s pilgrimage, it is likely that negative emotions will play a dominant role in that discouragement. Satan is devastatingly effective in using the weapons of guilt, rejection, fear, embarrassment, grief, depression, loneliness, and misunderstanding. Indeed, human beings are vulnerable creatures who cannot withstand these satanic pressures without divine assistance.”

Waterbeds are a great example of controlling our emotions. The slightest movement in an old waterbed would create big waves and rock whoever else was in the bed right out of the bed. Since most people didn’t like sleeping on the “sea”, manufacturers came up with baffles, which help regulate and minimize the amount of movement possible and reduce the waves. In the same manner, as baffles regulate the waves of a waterbed, the Word of God, the power of the Holy Ghost, and the gift of the Spirit called temperance, which means self-control, enable us to keep our emotions in check. “Keep thy heart with all diligence; for out of it are the issues of life” (Proverbs 4:23).

No matter what you feel, do the right things and God will always bless you. As saints of the highest God, we cannot afford to walk around with our feelings on our sleeves. Don’t let your emotions get the best of you. The best way to represent Jesus Christ is for us to demonstrate to the world that we are emotionally balanced people. Let God have control of your emotions and you and everyone else will be better because of it!