Power Thoughts: 12 Strategies to Win the Battle of the Mind (22 page)

Part of the appeal of stability and contentment is the fact that they enable us to enjoy our lives. None of us really like to have moments or days when emotions sink and we sit around in self-pity, filled with negative thoughts. We don’t enjoy ourselves when we are in that condition and no one else enjoys us either. Being in close relationship with anyone who is discontent, not dependable, and moody is extremely difficult. We can spend all of our time trying to keep them happy instead of being free to enjoy our own lives unless we realize we are not helping them by catering to their moods.

I have discovered that I like myself better when I am stable and consistent, and I believe the same is true for you. Becoming emotionally stable and consistent are so important to a powerful life, and as you grow in these qualities, you’ll find yourself strengthened as never before.

The pathway to change is to renew your mind. I had to begin believing that I could be content and stable before I actually saw the fruit of it in my life. I studied contentment quite often and read a lot of material on emotions. I began to think and say that I was content and emotionally stable. God’s word states that we can and should call things that are not as if they already existed (see Romans 4:17). When we have faith in our heart, we think and talk faith. We see the thing done by faith before we see it in reality. In this way we cooperate with God in the spiritual realm. We reach into the realm of the spirit with our thoughts and words and draw things out of it into the realm we live in.

Think about It

On a scale of 1 to 10 how would you rate your own emotional stability and contentment?

Emotions Are Here to Stay

We all have emotions, and we always will. They are part of being human. Since that is true, I believe emotional stability should be one of the main goals of every believer. We should seek God to learn how to manage our emotions and not allow them to manage us. An excerpt from the
Random House Dictionary
states that
emotions
are “any of the feelings of joy, sorrow, hate, love, etc.” Think about this: You’re out shopping for a specific item you’re in need of. You’ve made a commitment to get out of debt. You’ve agreed to discipline yourself in the area of your spending and not purchase things you don’t need. But while shopping, you discover that the stores are having a big sale—50 percent off merchandise that is already marked down. What do you do? You get excited. The more you look around, the more excited you get. Emotions are rising higher and higher. They begin to move out—because part of the devil’s plan to ruin your life is for you to follow your emotions.

An emotional person is defined as: “one easily affected with or stirred by emotion; one who displays emotion; one with a tendency to rely on or place too much value on emotion; one whose conduct is ruled by emotion rather than reason.” I couldn’t agree more with that definition, and I want to add several personal observations I have made about people who are not stable emotionally:

• A person who lives by emotions lives without principle.

• You cannot be spiritual (walk in the spirit) and be led by emotions.

• Emotions won’t go away, but you can learn to manage them.

• You can have emotions, but you can’t always rely on them.

I urge you to make emotional maturity a priority in your life. If you do not believe you are doing a good job managing your emotions, begin to pray and seek God for emotional maturity. I also encourage you to learn what upsets you the most or prompts you to behave emotionally and watch out for those temptations.

To help you get started, let me mention several Scriptures:

• Jeremiah 17:8 and Psalm 1:3 both instruct us to be like trees firmly planted.

• First Peter 5:8, 9 teaches us to be well-balanced and temperate (self-controlled) to keep Satan from devouring us. According to these verses, if we want to withstand him, we need to be rooted, established, strong, immovable, and determined.

• Philippians 1:28 tells us to be constantly fearless when Satan comes against us.

• Psalm 94:13 says God wants to give us power to stay calm in adversity.

All of these Scriptures are referring to being stable, so I encourage you to read them, meditate on them, and allow them to become ingrained in your thinking.

Think about It

In what ways can you begin to become more stable emotionally?

Level Out Your Ups and Downs

I’m sure you can tell by now that I believe some of life’s greatest challenges involve or result from the ups and downs of our emotions. Think about roller coasters. If you measured the length of a roller coaster track, you’d find that the distance it covers is far greater than the distance between where you get on and where you step off. By the time the ride is over, you’ve spent a great deal of time speeding to great heights and swooping to deep lows. On a roller coaster many people think that is entertaining, but if we let our emotions do that in everyday life, I can assure you that it is exhausting.

Instead of riding the emotional roller coaster, which only exhausts us, we need to become stable, solid, steadfast, persevering, determined people. Renewing your mind to think and believe that you are stable and content will help you get started. We can never enjoy any of God’s promises until we believe them for ourselves. In the world, we believe what we see, but in God’s kingdom we believe and then we see.

If we continue to let our emotions rule over us, there’s no way we’ll ever be the people we were meant to be. It does no good to merely
wish
that you were not so emotional. A choice must be made to change by completely renewing your mind. None of us will ever be totally rid of emotions and we don’t need to eliminate them from our lives, but we must learn to manage and control them—not allow them to control or have power over us. Emotions are not all bad, some of them are very enjoyable but they are rather fickle. You can feel one hundred ways in thirty days about the same thing.

Feelings change from day to day, hour to hour, sometimes even moment to moment. Not only do they change, they lie. For example, you may be in a crowd of people and
feel
everybody is talking about you, but that doesn’t mean they are. You may
feel
nobody understands you, but that doesn’t mean they don’t. You may
feel
you are not well liked, unappreciated, or even mistreated, but that doesn’t mean it is true. If you want to be a mature, disciplined, well-balanced person, you must be
determined
not to walk according to what you
feel
. If I am having a “touchy” day, I might feel people are not treating me very well, but in reality they are not treating me any differently than they always do—I am just more emotionally sensitive that day and things affect me differently than normal.

People often ask me, “How can I learn contentment and stability?” There are actually two answers and they are both straight out of the Bible. What are they? Patience and self-control!

Patience

God wants us to use wisdom, and wisdom encourages patience. Wisdom says, “Wait a little while, until the emotions settle down, before you do or say something, then check to see if you really believe it’s the right thing to do.” Emotions urge us toward haste, telling us that we must do something and do it right now! But godly wisdom tells us to be patient and wait until we have a clear picture of what we are to do and when we are to do it. We need to be able to step back from our situations and see them from God’s perspective. Then we need to make decisions based on what we
know
rather than on what we
feel.

Self-control

God has given us a free will and that means we have the privilege to choose what we will do and what we won’t do. As believers in Jesus Christ, God has given us a new nature, but at the same time we also have to deal with the old nature. The Bible states that we are to “put off” the old nature and “put on” the new nature. That is actually another way of saying we have choices to make. When we allow the old nature to rule, we will follow feelings when in reality we should operate in self-control. Self-control is a fruit of our new nature and all we need to do is develop it. We can develop self-control by using it, just as we can develop muscles by using them.

Exercising self-control is a form of freedom, not a type of bondage. You don’t have to do what you feel like doing. You’re free to do what you know is wise. Discipline and self-control will help you be what you say you want to be, but never will be without the help of self-control.

Practicing self-control will help you feel better about yourself; you will have more self-respect. You will also have more energy when you don’t allow your emotions to control you. When I was experiencing so many ups and downs, it actually made me physically tired. Going through all kinds of emotional changes takes a lot of energy. As God helped me learn to manage my emotions, I noticed that I also had more energy. If you have been tired lately, maybe you should stop and ask the Lord if the reason could be that you allow your emotions to manage you rather than you managing them.

Let me share a simple, everyday example about patience and self-control from my life. One time, I had saved up money to buy a good watch. I wanted a nice watch so the band wouldn’t change colors and turn my wrist green. One day, Dave and I were in the mall and happened to stop at a jewelry store, where I saw a watch that was very pretty. When we looked at it, we discovered that it was gold-plated. We knew it would probably eventually discolor, but it was pretty and sparkled a lot and I really liked it. Not only that, but the clerk offered to lower the price. So my emotions said, “Yes! That’s exactly what I want!”

But Dave said, “Well, you know it’s gold-plated, and it will eventually discolor.”

I said, “I know but I really like this watch. What should I do?”

“It’s your money,” he answered.

“I’ll tell you what I’m going to do,” I said to the clerk. “I’d like for you to hold the watch for me while I walk around the mall for a bit. If I want the watch, I’ll come back for it within the hour.”

So Dave and I walked around the mall for a while. As we did, we passed a dress shop. Because I needed a couple of new outfits, I went in and found a really nice suit. I tried it on, and it fit perfectly. I loved it.

“That’s a nice suit,” Dave observed. “You ought to get it.”

I looked at the price tag and thought,
It costs a lot more than I thought it would.
But I really wanted the suit! Actually there were three things I wanted right then. I wanted the watch; I wanted the suit; and I wanted
not
to be broke. What did I do? I applied wisdom and decided to wait. The watch—which really wasn’t of the quality I wanted—would have taken all of the money I had saved. The suit was beautiful, but again I would have needed to use most of my money. I decided that the best thing was to keep my money and wait until I was sure of what I wanted most. Had I made an emotional decision, I would have bought the watch when I saw it, rather than take time to think over my purchase and exercise self-control by not buying it impulsively. Usually the wisest course is
when in doubt, don’t!
The excitement you feel in the shopping mall will fade away once you get the item home, so that had better not be the basis of your purchasing decision.

When faced with decisions, especially major ones or difficult ones, practice self-control and wait until you have a clear answer before taking a step you might regret. Remember to be led by peace, not excitement. Emotions can be wonderful when managed and handled in a godly way, but they must not be allowed to take precedence over wisdom and knowledge. Let me say again, “Control your emotions and don’t let them control you.” Start thinking and saying, “I am content and emotionally stable.”

Think about It

In what area do you need to practice patience and exercise self-control in your life right now?

Stable People Get Promoted

Many people feel able and qualified to do a particular thing, and yet they live frustrated lives because the right doors don’t ever seem to open for them. Their opportunities never come. Why? While there is no single, succinct answer, I do want to offer some insights I believe God taught me that I hope will be helpful to you.

I believe many people are “able but not stable.” God has given them abilities, but they have not made the effort to mature in stability of character. Moses was a wonderful man of God; but he had an anger problem. Eventually God refused to let him lead the Israelites into the Promised Land because of his lack of stability in that area. So, I believe it is fair to say that his instability blocked his ability.

God must be able to trust us; and other people must be able to depend on us. When we are stable and mature in character, we do what we say we will do no matter how we happen to feel. Even if we feel grouchy, we don’t behave in unpleasant ways. We realize taking out a foul mood on the people around us is not right or mature. We continue to operate in the fruit of the Spirit even when we must endure circumstances and people that are not what we would like them to be. The apostle Paul said he had learned to be content whether he was getting what he wanted or not (see Philippians 4:11). I think he learned that being upset and cranky did no good, so he simply made the decision to trust God and go ahead and enjoy the day, regardless of his circumstance.

Life is not problem free, and it never will be. You will only find one group of people who are problem free, and you have to go to your local graveyard to find them. As long as we are breathing, we are going to have times of abundance and times when we struggle, times when circumstances are up and times when they’re down. Let circumstances do what they will—and as far as you’re concerned, be determined to remain stable.