Are you controlling your emotions?

“A person without self-control
is like a city with broken-down walls”.   Prov. 25:28 NLT

In our world today, people no longer base decisions and actions on solid moral values.   They have been programmed to act according to their feelings.   

Emotions are something that everyone must battle.

There was a once a famous song, titled “Feelings”.   Looking back, it became, in a sense, prophetic of our entire age.

Most people today make decisions, come to conclusions or react in given situations based almost exclusively on how things feel to them.   For more than a generation, most people have become subtly conditioned to listen to and stay in tune with their feelings, as a guide to their course of action in any given situation.

The vast majority of people, including society as a whole, once generally reacted to circumstances and the environment around them, based on the values that they had been taught----based on ethics, principles, morals, beliefs, integrity and overall character.   This meant people once viewed matters based much more on right versus wrong, good versus evil, proper versus improper and law versus sin.

Today, hurt feelings, emotions and perceptions have become much more important------they have been given much greater credence in people’s thinking---than probably any other time in history.

Children’s sporting events have experienced outrages over a simple call by an umpire that caused emotions to boil over.  How often do we hear of parents at Little League baseball, soccer, Little Guy football or other events assaulting coaches or umpires?

Why are so few children any longer actively taught to control their feelings?   The answer lies in the fact that most parents do not know how to control their own emotions.

Human nature is selfish----plain and simple!   It focuses almost entirely on the needs and concerns of SELF!  It is interested solely in what it can get. 

Of course, selfishness is inseparable from personal feelings.   True Godly love, on the other hand, is interested in and focused on the needs and concerns of others.  It is concerned with what it can give to others, not what it can get.

Most people are never actively taught to grow up emotionally.   They are never taught to develop and maintain emotional maturity, learning to keep a grip on every kind of human emotions, including rage, jealousy, resentment, vanity, fear, hatred, impatience….etc.  

In truth, all of these are impulses, flowing from emotions, which need to be actively controlled.

“…throw off your old sinful nature and your former way of life, which is corrupted by lust and deception.   Put on your new nature, created to be like God—truly righteous and holy”.    Eph. 4:22,24  NLT