Monday, May 24, 2010
Did you know that if you can master your emotional life, you can produce more joy? Our negative feelings and reactions deplete us of our energy and steal our joy. Emotional strength gives us fuel so that we can experience life the way God wants us to. It is not necessary or even healthy to deny our problems, but if we dwell on them, we become bound to them and they have power over us. Emotional strength is found when we give God our attention instead of our problems.
In his book The 4:8 Principle, Tommy Newberry tells us that emotions are like biochemical couriers that provide feedback about our mood. Emotions help us to feel whatever we are thinking. These couriers tell our bodies whether to communicate pain or joy. What we think shows up in our emotions. It makes sense then to think about things that bring us joy instead of pain.
I encourage you to try Newberry’s strategy for improving your capacity for joy. Make a list of three positive emotions you want to increase and a list of negative emotions that you want to decrease. Then over the next few weeks use the Laws of Emotional Strength to decrease negative emotions and increase positive ones.
The Laws of Emotional Strength
1. The Law of Attention: Knowing that you will feel what you dwell on, make it a practice to broadcast your blessings and think about your hopes and dreams and the future God has planned for you.
2. The Law of Exchange: Replace a negative thought with a positive one. Replace thoughts of fear with thoughts of boldness. Replace thoughts of criticism with thoughts of praise.
3. The Law of Reversibility: Learn to act your way into the feelings you desire. Fake it till you feel it. This is not hypocrisy. It means that you will respond to circumstances in a way that obeys God’s principles and eventually your feelings will follow.
In his book The 4:8 Principle, Tommy Newberry tells us that emotions are like biochemical couriers that provide feedback about our mood. Emotions help us to feel whatever we are thinking. These couriers tell our bodies whether to communicate pain or joy. What we think shows up in our emotions. It makes sense then to think about things that bring us joy instead of pain.
I encourage you to try Newberry’s strategy for improving your capacity for joy. Make a list of three positive emotions you want to increase and a list of negative emotions that you want to decrease. Then over the next few weeks use the Laws of Emotional Strength to decrease negative emotions and increase positive ones.
The Laws of Emotional Strength
1. The Law of Attention: Knowing that you will feel what you dwell on, make it a practice to broadcast your blessings and think about your hopes and dreams and the future God has planned for you.
2. The Law of Exchange: Replace a negative thought with a positive one. Replace thoughts of fear with thoughts of boldness. Replace thoughts of criticism with thoughts of praise.
3. The Law of Reversibility: Learn to act your way into the feelings you desire. Fake it till you feel it. This is not hypocrisy. It means that you will respond to circumstances in a way that obeys God’s principles and eventually your feelings will follow.
Making our emotions obedient to Christ takes action. It takes motion. In fact, the word emotion is 86% motion! Both our actions and emotions need to be pleasing to God. Let’s work this week to increase our positive emotions so that we will experience the joy and peace that our Father wants us to have.
Take every thought captive to the obedience of Christ. 2 Corinthians 10:5
0 comments:
Post a Comment