Unless otherwise indicated, all Scripture quotations are taken from The Amplified Bible (AMP). Old Testament copyright © 1965, 1987 by The Zondervan Corporation, Grand Rapids, Michigan. The Amplified New Testament copyright © 1954, 1958, 1987 by The Lockman Foundation. Used by permission. Scripture quotations marked (xjv) are taken from the King James Version of the Bible. Scripture quotations marked (NIV) are taken from the Holy Bible, New International Version®. NIV®. Copyright © 1973, 1978, 1984 by International Bible Society. Used by permission of Zondervan Publishing House. All rights reserved. 6th Printing Managing Your Emotions Instead of Your Emotions Managing You! ISBN 1-57794- 0261 Copyright © 1997 by Joyce Meyer Life In The Word, Inc. P. O. Box 655 Fenton, Missouri 63026 Published by Harrison House, Inc. P.O. Box 35035 Tulsa, Oklahoma 74153 Printed in the United States of America. All rights reserved under International Copyright Law. Contents and/or cover may not be reproduced in whole or in part in any form without the express written consent of the Publisher. CONTENTS Introduction 1 How Not To Be Led by Your Feelings 2 Healing of Damaged Emotions, Part 1 3 Healing of Damaged Emotions, Part 2 4 Emotions and the Process of Forgiveness 5 Mood Swings 6 Understanding and Overcoming Depression 7 He Restoreth My Soul 8 Rooted in Shame 9 Understanding Co-Dependence 10 Restoring the Inner Child Conclusion INTRODUCTION Many of the thoughts in this book were originally presented in several seminar series I taught on the subject of emotions and emotional health and healing. In those meetings I made it clear to my listeners that the purpose of the presentation was not to teach them how to get rid of emotions, but how to manage emotions. As I told them, nobody will ever reach the place of not having emotions. Nobody will ever reach a point in life of not experiencing a wide variety of feelings. For example, no matter how hard you and I may try, we will always have to deal with the emotion of anger, which causes many people a lot of guilt and condemnation. The reason they come under guilt and condemnation is because they have the false idea that as Christians we are never to get angry. Yet the Bible does not teach that we are never to feel anger. Instead it teaches that when we do get angry, we are not to sin, but rather we are to manage or control our anger in the proper way: "Be ye angry, and sin not: let not the sun go down upon your wrath" (Eph. 4:26 KJV). There was a time when God gave me a real revelation about that Scripture. I had gotten angry at my husband one day as I was about to leave home to go preach. Guilt and condemnation came over me asking, "How can you go out and preach to others after getting angry like that this morning?" Of course, I was still angry, so that question bothered me. As I began to meditate on it, the Lord revealed to me this verse in Ephesians which says to be angry and sin not. God caused me to understand that anger is just an emotion. Like all emotions, it was given to us by God Himself for a reason. If we didn't have the capacity to become angry, we would never know when someone else was mistreating us. That's what anger is for. Like pain, it is there to warn us that something is wrong. As with all emotions, the problem is Satan tries to use and abuse our anger to lead us into sin. Many times people come to me for counseling, saying, "I have this deep-seated anger inside me." This anger is often a wound left over from childhood hurts. In that case, the answer is not so much to get rid of the anger, but to get at the root of what is causing it to hang on and cause problems after all these years. This is part of staying in balance. It is not right to go around feeling angry all the time, any more than it is right to go around feeling pain all the time. But we must remember that we are human beings and are equipped with certain feelings and emotions like anger that were given to us by God for a reason. Our job is not so much to try to get rid of those emotions, but to learn how to manage them. Another example of emotions is sexual feelings. Imagine for a moment that you are looking through a magazine or a catalog and you spot a photograph of an attractive person of the opposite sex. Suddenly you feel a sexual emotion. Does this mean you are perverted and have something desperately wrong with you? Does it mean you are not really saved — that you don't truly love God or your spouse? No, it simply means that you are human and subject to all the same emotional feelings and reactions experienced by other human beings. The important thing is how you handle your emotions. God equips us with all kinds of feelings, including sexual feelings. As Christians, we are not to rid ourselves of those feelings, nor do we need to feel guilty because we have them, but rather we are to learn to vent them properly — in the right way with the right person — with the marriage partner God has given us (the one we love). We are also to learn, with God's help, to keep those feelings under control until we are married. Romans 6:2 tells us that if we are Christians we have died to sin. It does not tell us that sin is dead! Sin still initially presents itself in the form of temptation and then it becomes a full-blown problem if we give in to the temptation. I recommend reading the sixth chapter of Romans in its entirety. If you do that, you will see that our instruction is to resist sin in the power of the Holy Spirit. We are not told that we will never feel, but we are told not to continue offering our bodies as instruments of sin. It is important to remember that emotions won't disappear and go away. They will always be there. We must not deny their existence or feel guilty because of them. Instead we are to channel them in the right direction. We are to deny the flesh the right to rule us, but we are not to deny that it exists. As we will see later on, the Bible teaches us to be well-balanced. Often, our problem is that we tend to go from one extreme to another. Either we try not to have any emotions at all, or else we give vent to every emotion we feel whether it is right to do so or not. It seems that the majority of people are either emotional or emotionless. What is really needed is balance— the ability to show emotions when they are positive and helpful, and to control emotions when they are negative and destructive. When we are angry and frustrated by something in our life, we often take out our anger and frustration on someone else — usually our spouse, children, or someone else with whom we share a close relationship. The problem is not our anger and frustration as much as it is our lack of control. Another example is patience — or the lack of it. In my natural personality, I have a tendency to be very impatient. I want things done. I want them done right. And, I want them done right away. I don't want to have to tell anyone twice — and certainly not three times! But the more I read about Jesus and His gentleness, humility, kindness, and longsuffering, the more I desire not to be controlled by impatience. So for a long time I have been working with the Holy Spirit to bring that emotion into proper balance. The main thing is to understand what emotions are and to recognize that we have them because God gave them to us. Then we need to start dealing with them instead of simply venting and consequently feeling guilty and condemned because of them. We serve a God Who is pleased with whatever effort we, as believers in Jesus Christ, make to move in His direction. God is not hard to please. He does not expect us to be absolutely perfect. He just expects us to keep moving toward Him and believing in Him, letting Him work with us to bring us into conformity to His will and ways. The message of these pages is simple: There is nothing wrong with emotions, as long as they are kept under control. The Lord led me to write this book to help you learn to manage your emotions. HOW NOT TO BE LED BY YOUR FEELINGS There are several definitions of the word "emotions." According to Webster's dictionary, the root source of this term is the Latin ex-movere, meaning to move away. I find that definition very interesting because that is what carnal, uncrucified emotions try to do — to move us to follow them away from or out of the will of God. In fact, that is Satan's plan for our lives — to get us to live by our carnal feelings so we never walk in the Spirit. The dictionary also says that emotions are "a complex, usually strong subjective response...involving physiological changes as a preparation for action." That is true.