Emotional Wholeness
Emotions
Pro 17:22
A merry heart doeth good like a medicine: but a broken spirit drieth the bones.
We are called to be emotionally healthy for God has brought us into a place of perfect security and protection. Good emotional health has to do with the benefits of our New Creation not with the benefits of our present circumstances. In this world circumstances always change but in Christ we are given the hope of Salvation which is God's promise of Eternal Life. This promise will never change. In Christ we are given every spiritual blessing in heavenly places which means the foundational truths upon which we build our life will never change. Our security is not in this world but in heaven.
Christ gives us His spirit, which lives withing, and if we follow Him, He will heal us on the inside. Our challenge is to first believe, and then allow the Scripture to renew our mind. With a renewed mind we can then emotionally possess our new identity. With healthy emotions we can then walk out who God says we are!
Jesus, through the victories of the Cross and the Resurrection gives every Christian the Holy Spirit; our bodies become the temple of the Holy Spirit. He writes His laws on our heart and He gives a sound mind, (2Tim. 1:7). In addition, one of the fruits of the Spirit is self-control, which means if we walk in obedience to the Word of God, then we will be strengthened to manage our thinking and our behavior because of the power of the Holy Spirit who dwells within us. In Christ, we can control our emotions! If we have no control over what we think and over how we feel then we really have no meaningful self-control.
The Just Will Live By Faith
If the truths of the Gospel do not inform our mind, then we are left to our own wisdom and our own strength to work out our emotional and spiritual health. But the just will live by faith, which means the just live by what God says not by their own wisdom and their own understanding.
New Wine
People have genuine emotional sickeness due to trauma, hormonal imbalances, and other organic or physical causes. But by far, the most common reasons for emotional dysfunction in the Christian are not organic, but not knowing how think in ways that produce healthy emotions. To learn new ways of healthyt thinking, which produce healthy emotions, we have to put on our new identity which will then enable us to see with God's eyes. If we continue to see life with our same old eyes then we will continue to think, feel, and act in the same old ways. To be useable, new wine must be put into new wineskins. In the same way, God gives us a new identity, but if our new identity does not renew our thinking then we remain in our same old emotional dysfunctions.
It is the opinion of Christian Armor Ministries that in the absence of organic disease, the Gospel provides the truths necessary for wholesome and fruitful living.
Only Christ
Nothing but emotional dependence on Christ and on the eternal work He has accomplished for us is able to bring us to a place of lasting emotional and spiritual health; no thing, no accomplishment, no person, no experience, and no pleasure, can meet our deepest emotional and spiritual needs. We were created to love and enjoy
God, and only when we love and enjoy Him above all else, will we find that place of peace
that passes understanding.God bless you,
Jim