Rick Warren - How to Deal with How You Feel - Part One

Hey, friends, thanks so much for joining us today on

Pastor Rick's Daily Hope, the Bible Teaching ministry of Pastor

Rick Warren.

We're so glad to have you with us.

And today, Rick continues in his series called Transformed. Together,

We'll dive into God's word and discover powerful principles that

can truly change our lives from the inside out spiritually, physically, mentally, emotionally, relationally, financially,

and vocationally. You'll experience how God's truth brings real transformation

to every part.

Of your life.

So excited to hear what Rick has to say today

in part one of a message called how to Deal

with How You Feel.

We've been looking during fifty days of Transformation, first at

spiritual health and then at physical help. Last week we

looked at mental health, and this week I want us

to look at emotional health, and that is how to

deal with how you feel. Last week we talked about

how to manage your mind, your thoughts, and this week

I want us to look at what the Bible says

about how to manage your emotions, how to deal with

how you feel, Mark twelfth, twenty nine to thirty. Jesus

says this the most important commandment is this. You must

love the Lord your God with all your heart and

all your soul, and all your mind and all your strength.

Do you hear the emotion in these words of Jesus.

Jesus is saying, I don't want you to just kind

of love me. I don't want you to kind of

love God. I want you to love God passionately, with

all your heart, all your soul, all your mind, and

all your strength. God wants an emotional relationship with you.

He didn't want to head knowledgey. I know, Jesus, I

know God, blah blah blah blah blah blah. I want

an emotional, passionate relationship that is full of feelings. Now,

let me give you some facts about your emotions before

we get into this. First, God has emotions. Many people

don't realize this. God has feelings. God is an emotional God.

God feels joy, he feels grief, he feels pain, he

feels hatred towards sin. He has frustration with the people

around him, just like you do. And God has emotions.

The only reason you have emotions is because you're made

in God's image. If God wasn't an emotional god, you

wouldn't have any emotions.

If God wasn't a God of love, there would be

no love on this planet.

God is love. God created romance. God created emotions, created feelings.

So God is an emotional god. Number two, My ability

to feel is a gift from God. Your emotions are

a gift from God. And now they may not always

seem that way, but even the negative ones have a

role in your life. Emotions are a great asset, the

one thing that make you human. If you didn't have emotion,

you just you'd be a robot. You wouldn't be a

human being. It is your emotional ability that allows you

to love and create, and to be faithful and loyal

and kind and generous, and all of the emotions that

are attached to the good things in life. One of

the most astounding verses in the Bible is Genesis one

twenty six. God said, let us make man in our image,

in our likeness. And as I said, the only reason

you have emotions is because God gave them to you

and you were made in His image. Now, number three,

there are two extremes that you need to avoid in

dealing with emotions, and one is called emotionalism and the

other is called stoicism.

Let me explain these to you.

Emotionalism means all that matters is how I feel. Emotionalism

is that the extreme is saying the only thing that

matters in life it is how I feel. Doesn't matter,

what I think, doesn't matter, what's right or wrong, doesn't

matter what's popular or unpopular, good or bad, And what

only matters is do what you feel, and if it feels.

Good, do it.

And that extreme of emotionalism means everything I do in

life is based on my emotions. They control my life,

they dominate my life, they run my life, and I'm

a very emotional person. Then stoicism is the exact opposite,

and it basically says feelings aren't important at all.

Feelings are not important at all.

The only thing that matters is your intellect and your will,

your volition and your intelligence. And so the stoics said,

you know, emotions are not a part of life. Feelings

really don't matter. That's really funny because stoics often marry

emotional people, and emotional people often marry stoics and a

typically often in a marriage you have one who's a

stuffer and one who's a gusher. Okay, stuffers and gushers

marry now. Stuffers always get frustrated with gushers because they

think they're too emotional, and gushers always get matter with

stuffers because they think they're too uptight and you know,

close down and shut down. Stuffers think you really shouldn't

be sharing your emotions, and gushers think if you're not

sharing your emotions, you're.

Not being authentic.

Okay, Actually both of these are extreme positions, and the

happy medium is where you really want to be. It's

not emotionalism or stoicism. It's interesting there are entire Christian

denominations built on these two approaches to emotions. You probably

know some Christians who have decided that it doesn't really

matter how you feel. The only thing that matters is

the truth of the Word of God, and they downplay emotion.

They say, you know what, that's like the caboose. The

train can run with or without the emotion.

It's not important. Well, that's not right, that's not right.

God gave you your emotions for a reason, and God

wants you to worship him emotionally. He wants you to

feel it. In fact, God complains in the scripture many

times about you're just worshiping with your lips, but not

with your emotion, not with your heart. You don't really

feel it. And by the way, the word emotion isn't

used that often in the Bible because instead the word

uses the Bible uses the word passions or affections, or

the number one term for emotions is heart. Heart is

a symbol of love and emotions. And even today I

say I love you with all my heart. And of

course in the Bible this is the metaphor that the

mind represents the intellect and the heart represents the emotions.

We now know that those are actually two different circuit

systems in your brain, that your emotions have an amazing

system as well as your thoughts do, and some things

you just react emotionally without even thinking about it. But

some Christians they just say emotions aren't important. And then

there are other Christians who say emotions are all that matters,

and when they come to church, they're looking for an emotion,

and when they worship, they want an ocean of emotion

and they want.

To quiver in the liver.

And if I haven't been enraptured in a moment of worship,

then I haven't worshiped.

Well, that's wrong too, And a lot of.

People are actually seeking an emotion, not seeking God when

they worship, and it becomes an idol too. So you

can make your mind an idol and make doctrine and

theology and intellectual an exercise of theology of God, or

you can make your emotion and your experience a God.

And both of those are wrong. Does that make sense?

And so God gave you both a mind and an emotion,

and they're both important to you now. Number four, The

Bible tells us that God gave us the Book of

Psalms in order to understand our emotions. And if you

have a hard time with some emotions in your life,

to spend a lot of time in the book of Psalms.

Psalms has every emotion known to man in it, the

good ones and the bad ones, the positive and the negative.

You read some of those psalms, you think, why is

this chapter in the Bible.

It's there to teach you about.

Even those negative emotions, because not all psalms are about

praise and thanksgiving. There are psalms of anger, there are

psalms of complaining, There are songs of lament and sorrow,

there are psalms.

Of arguing with God.

Every emotion known to mand is in the psalms, and

God is saying all of these are legitimate.

I gave these things to you.

So we're gonna look today at how to deal with

how you feel. But what I want to do this

weekend is.

Do two things. Talk to you about why.

The Bible says it's important to learn how to manage

your emotions, and that's a skill and you can get

good at it. Most people are not good at managing

their emotions. They're not good at at all. But you can,

and if you do, you will have enormous advance over

the other people in your life. If you know how

to manage your emotions, it's key to peace of mind.

It's the key to success and a lot of other things.

Let's look at God's word now and look at why.

First I need to learn to manage my emotions, and

then get into.

How do you do it?

Okay, so quickly for important reasons why you need to

learn to deal with what you feel? Number one, because

my feelings are often unreliable. My feelings are often unreliable.

They can lead you in the wrong direction. How many

times have you thought, I know this is the right

thing to do. I just feel it in my gut,

and you do it, and it doesn't work out.

Every one of us have done it.

Your gut is often wrong, your intuition is often flawed.

Your emotions often lead you down a blind alley. You

can't depend on everything you feel.

Now.

Last week I said, you don't have to believe everything

you think, and you don't have to accept everything you feel,

because not everything you feel is right, not everything you

feel is authentic, and not everything you feel is reality.

Some of the things you feel about yourself are flat

out dead wrong, and some of the things you feel

about other people are dead wrong. You say, I'm sure

this is the right direction, but it's not. So you

need to manage your emotions. Proverbs fourteen twelve says this,

there's a way that seems circle seems there's a way

that seems right to a man, but in the end

it leads to death. So your emotions are not infallible.

Just because you feel it doesn't make it true. Our

feelings are often wrong, and they often guide us in

the wrong direction. Number two, I have to learn to

manage my emotion because I don't want to be manipulated.

And if you.

Don't control your emotions, they will control you. And you

will be manipulated by your moods. And if you're always

guided by your feelings rather than by what's right, by

your commitments, by the truth. If you're always guided by

feelings other people, people are going to take advantage of you.

They're going to they're going to take advantage of you.

In fact, salesmen and advertisers are trained in how to

stir up your emotions because they know that if they

can get you hooked emotionally, they're going to buy the product.

And so the color of the packaging and the music

and the commercial and the things that they say in

the presentation are all designed to elicit emotional response.

And if you make.

Decisions like what you buy based on emotion, that's called

impulse buying. You're going to buy stuff that you don't

really need or want. Has anybody ever done this? Could

I see your hands?

Yeah?

Yeah, we all have. We've go why in the world

did I buy that? Because the guy got my emotions?

And oh I need to buy that, I really need that.

The Bible says in Proverbs twenty five twenty eight I

love this in the New American Bible, like an open city

with no defenses is the man with no check on

his feelings. If you have no check on your feelings,

you have no governor, you have no moderator, you have

no manager on your feelings. He says, you're like a

city with no defenses. Let me show you this verse

in another translation here on the screen. New Living Translation

says this, a person without self control is as defenseless

as a city with broken down walls. Not only are

you defenseless against the manipulation of other people, but you

are defenseless to the manipulation by your old nature.

We talked about that last week.

And your old nature knows your moods, and it just

whips you around, and it puts a mood in your life,

and all of a sudden, you don't want to do

what you need to do, what's right to do, what's

helped to do, what's good to do, because you are

being manipulated by a mood. Worst of all, Satan's favorite tool.

Listen to this. Satan's favorite tool in your life is

of emotions. It's his favorite tool. He will use fear

to whip you around. He will use resentment and jealousy

and envy to whip you around. He'll use bitterness and

worry and anxiety. He'll use shame to beat you up.

Satan's favorite tool is to whip you around with negative emotions.

If you don't know how to manage your emotions, you

are helpless against Satan. You don't want to be manipulated,

so you want to learn the skill we're going to

look at this weekend, because he wrecks so much havoc

in our lives emotionally. First Peter five eight says this,

be self controlled and alert. Be self controlled and alert

your enemy. The devil prows around like a roaring line

looking for someone to vour. If you don't have self control,

he will eat your lunch. So what he's saying, okay,

number three, I need to manage my emotions because I

want to please God. I don't want to just know

that my feelings are unreliable, and I know that I

don't want to be manipulated by other people, or by

my old nature or by the devil. But I also

want to please God. And God cannot be God in

my life. If emotions are God in my life, God

can't rule my life. If my emotions rule my life,

Jesus can't be lord of my life. If my emotions

are my lord of my life. If I make all

my decisions simply based on how I feel, then I've

made my feelings God, and then God can't be God.

The Bible says in Romans eight six to eight, to

be controlled by human nature results in death, but to

be controlled by the spirit results in life and peace.

And those who obey their old human nature cannot please God.

Circle that so you can't please God if your emotions

dominate your life and they are running your life, and

your decisions are made based on how do I feel

rather than what does God say. Finally, number four, the

fourth reason I must manage my emotion is because I

want to succeed in life. This is one of the

number one predictors of success or failure in your life.

Do you know how to manage your moods? Do you

know how to deal with how you feel? Do you

know how to control your emotions? If you don't learn

how to do this, you will never be the success

in life that God wants you to be or that

you want to be. Study after study after study has

shown that your EQ is more important than your IQ.

That for success in business, emotional quotient is far more

important than your intelligence quotient. Your IQ isn't nearly a

lot of people don't have.

A high IQ.

Very successful in life, but they've got good smarts in

dealing with their emotions. They've got good smarts and deal

with how they feel, and as a result, they're people people.

They know how to how to get along with others.

We've all known people who live by their emotions and

waste their life. They get out in the morning and said,

what do I feel like doing today? Well, not much,

so they don't do it much. And if you deal don't.

If you only deal with how you feel and you

just go based on what you're feeling, you're not going

to succeed in life.

You're not going to make much of your life.

The Bible says in Proverbs Flight twenty three, people get lost.

You're talking about in life, people get lost and they

die because of their foolishness and their lack of self control.

How many people do you know who ruin the reputation

because of their lack of self control? How many people

do you know who ruined a job opportunity because of

something that happened on a stupid one night party and

foolishness and party and then all of a sudden boom

there you know, everything happened, from an unwanted pregnancy to

all kinds of different things. People get lost, people die,

that's the opposite of living because of their foolishness and

lack of self control. Now, when you give your heart

to Jesus, that includes your emotions. So when you say

I gave my heart to Jesus, you gave your emotions

to him to be managed by him. Because the heart

is the seat of your emotions. And Jesus wants to

be a lord of how you feel, not just what

you think and what you do. He wants to be

lord of your emotions.

Such a great message by Rick today and every day.

I sure hope you were just as encouraged as I was.

And now here's Rick with an important message.

Hi everybody, thanks so much for listening today. You know,

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