Stewardship of all resources is important. Some are easier to identify, such as money and time. But one area that often gets overlooked is our emotions.
These also need to be handled with care, which leads to the question:
What does it look like to steward our emotions?
The goal is to have the right emotional response to each situation. If I rate my anger, sadness, shame or other feeling on a scale of 1 to 10, I will find that every situation deserves to have a unique acknowledgment. This comes as we develop discipline.
What about undisciplined emotions? They tend to view every event in life as a 10, which is not wise.
Being heated that the official blew a call at the end of a big game should not be on the same level as the passion we feel when we see the innocence of a child being stolen by the immaturity and recklessness of others.
We need to discern the level of our emotion before we can determine what the right response is.
It has been said that our emotions are great at telling us that something is wrong. That being said, they are terrible at actually solving the problem.
For example, anger is a common emotion that is helpful in letting us know that something that we view as an injustice has taken place. And it’s not wrong to be angry. However, complications usually arise when we use our anger to try and correct our problem or make it right. That is why there are multiple warnings in scripture such as:
“Don’t sin by letting anger control you. Think about it overnight and remain silent.”
– Psalm 4:4, NLT
Dallas Willard would call this lack of restraint a sin of commission. But then he added that are sins of omission as well. In the case of our emotions, this helps us see how we can also error in a much less noticeable (but no less severe) way by neglecting to condition our bodies to respond rightly to the feelings we are experiencing.
As a complement to Willard’s wisdom, there is plenty or research that shows us just how dangerous this can be. There is something known as neuroplasticity, which basically suggests that as we perform tasks or make decisions, patterns of connectivity in our brain are formed. This results in us behaving a certain way and over time can solidify in us a new default state of being.
What is the danger in this?
Using the examples from above, it may not seem like a big deal to not have overwhelming passion about your favorite team being “robbed” at the end of the season. On the other hand, if we continuously fail to respond to the sense of wrong we so strongly feel when we become aware of the impending harm of another person, we are slowly, but surely teaching our bodies to operate in apathy towards others.
One author said it so well:
“There is nothing more dangerous than a repeated experiencing of a fine emotion with no attempt to put it into action. It is a fact that every time a man feels a noble impulse without taking action, he becomes less likely ever to take action.”
– William Barclay
As I read that I am taken straight to the hospitable nature or lack thereof that exists in myself. As an introvert, I am very content staying out of the light and observing what is happening around me.
It is not that I don’t see people in need. I most definitely do. In fact, I can spot people shortly after they arrive or even from clear across a parking lot. But through many years of monotonous inactivity, I have trained myself to be okay with not saying ‘hi’ or acting to meet another’s need.
What Barclay’s statement says is that every consecutive time that I remain stagnant, the chances of me getting out of my comfort zone and walking across the room or opening my mouth get closer and closer to not ever happening. Regardless of how much I may want to change.
You and I simply don’t have the amount of pure willpower needed to overcome the way we daily train ourselves to respond.
Emotions are a gift from God. They are of utmost value to help us understand and respond to the world around us. But they are wasted when we fully give way to their every desire or when we ignore them altogether.
Regardless of how we may feel, the truth is that the way we choose to respond today is shaping the kind of person each of us is becoming.
So, what areas in your life is your response not in alignment with your fervor of feeling?
Let’s encourage one another to do the hard work of training our emotions. God will be glorified and we will better love those around us.
