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Emotions are mirror images of our thoughts.  These emotions are ever-changing because of the ability of our minds to naturally produce a continuous flow of thoughts. When we consciously choose to interrupt this stream and validate a thought, whether of Godly or fleshly origin, we give power to the thought and bring about an emotional response. 

Actual emotions do not come by choice, but the thoughts that we choose to claim as our own directly impact the resulting emotions. If we allow the enemy to exploit this direct thought-emotion transfer, he will use this to turn ourselves inward to our feelings, instead of having us look outward to the Truth.  Though humanly authentic in nature, these feelings that are produced by thoughts of deceptive origin cannot be trusted.  In our deception, if we take these feelings at face value and assume they are an accurate reflection of reality, we will live a defeated life filled with an unpredictable sequence of happiness and depression.

The ability to experience emotions was originally created to be a good and Godly reflection of our personal and creative Father; Christ displayed a Godly expression of the very emotions that He created. Honest emotions can be brought about by a reaction to an outside stimulus or an internal fluctuation in our body’s internal chemistry, but most emotional imbalances are spiritual in nature.  Under the influence of our flesh and deception, our feelings become a spiritual weapon against ourselves.  The ground upon which these emotional deceptions and strongholds are founded is at the core an issue of not trusting God, His goodness, His sovereignty, nor His promises; in our weakness, we choose to trust our emotions.  Our proneness to trust in ourselves can result from past experiences, learned patterns and responses, or traumatic events in our lives.  As we trust in our emotions and experience the pains of the ups and downs, we learn to shield ourselves by ignoring issues, avoiding conflict, suppressing an emotion, allowing an outburst of emotions, or turning to worldly pleasures and coping mechanisms.

God is the only One who can break Satan’s stronghold and control of our emotions, once we have yielded our will to His. However, we must be honest with our Father.  Though He already knows our hearts and thoughts before we even speak them in prayer, voicing them to God allows these emotions to be submitted to the only One who can reveal the deception and provide the solution to the root problem that gave way to the fleshly expression of the emotion in the first place.  Once we come to the end of our self-effort and realize the unquenchable desire for the stability found within the peace of Christ, we allow ourselves to fully experience the love and the sole satisfaction of a personal Father who loves us in a one-on-one relationship.

In and of ourselves, we cannot modify our feelings by changing our outward behavior, and we cannot change our beliefs by modifying our behavior.  We must focus on the truth of God’s word and His promises.  Meditating on His truths and staying connected to God through an intentional and attentive prayer time allows this truth to sink into our minds.  Through the power of the Holy Spirit revealed in prayer and in God’s word, confirmations of these truths and the love of God will be made evident to our spirit eyes, allowing the revelation of God’s truths to be owned as our beliefs.  These beliefs will be ingrained in our mind and will spiritually sift every outward and inward thought so as to produce Godly behaviors and desires; the more time that we spend with God, the more our desire for that direct fellowship with God will grow.  This increase in personal relationship with God will produce in us the Fruit of the Spirit, which involves both love and self-control; these will allow us to produce God-honoring feelings that are rooted in the truth and the love of God.  We can then use this Godly knowledge of truth-based emotions to not only allow God to work on us but to also allow Him to work through us in order to lift others up along the way.