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The battle to control emotions isn’t won at the time of conflict, but right now. By conflict, I mean your internal struggle. External circumstances may be the catalyst, but the real conflict is first fought inside, and you either are overcome by or gain control over your emotions.
The internal struggle may seem like a flash reaction, but control is either surrendered or gained in that instant. Your battle could be with anger, fear, jealousy, or any other thing that challenges for control. The moment of decision is just that – a moment. Therefore, you need to prepare now so you can have the right mind-set when the time comes.
Let’s use anger as an example. Consider this scenario:
Jane walks in the room and sees her daughter reading a novel. “Is your homework done?” she asks.
“I forgot.”
“How could you forget? You know what you’re supposed to be doing. We go through this every day.”
“You always start yelling at me.”
Jane tries to mask her frustration, but can’t keep a higher pitch from slipping into her voice. “I’m not yelling.”
“You’re yelling at me now. I wasn’t doing anything wrong.”
“I told you to do your schoolwork. You disobeyed me. That’s wrong.” The daughter rolls her eyes, amplifying Jane’s frustration. “Don’t you roll your eyes at me. I’m your mother!”
The situation escalates rapidly. The daughter argues; Jane argues. Jane shouts that she shouldn’t be arguing with her parents, while the daughter shouts that she feels mistreated. When her daughter says something like, ‘I hate you’, or ‘you hate me’, things are plunged into a free-for-all. Jane screeches at her daughter, her daughter screeches at Jane. By the time the dispute ends, both sides are mentally frazzled and stressed. The original problem has been lost in the cloud of conflict. Jane’s remaining day will be on edge. Stress hasn’t been relieved by the blow up. Instead, it has been amplified.
Jane readily admits she has a temper problem, but try as she might, she can’t control it. For a few moments at the beginning of the conflict, she thought about her need to control her emotions. Everyday seems to be filled with conflict and each day seems to get worse. At least her nerves are getting worse.
It’s not only anger that could fit into this situation. It could be jealousy, fear, or any other emotional response that builds stress or harms relationships.
Let’s go back and look at Jane’s breaking point – the point where she lost her cool. Voices are raising, but Jane hasn’t yet lost her temper. She feels the pressure building, but the safety valves haven’t yet blown off. Her daughter can’t see her own lack of responsibility, and Jane is trying to explain this to her. The daughter isn’t listening, she’s preparing for a counterattack. They go back and forth until the daughter decides to push Jane’s self-destruction button. The child knows where that button is. Or it could be many buttons. She knows what offends or hurts Jane, and when the child sees she is losing the battle, she falls back to the Nuclear Option.
If Jane has a weight problem, the nuclear option could be, “If you’d spend less time pigging out on chips and cake, maybe you wouldn’t feel so bad about yourself, and people will like you.” She might choose to zero in on Jane’s divorce and offer her versions of the reason why dad left her mother. The target of the nuclear option could be anything, but it is guaranteed that it will be disrespectful and hurtful.
Jane’s reaction is immediate. No longer is she thinking calmly. The button has been pressed and we have liftoff. “I am your mother,” Jane seethes. Then she shrieks, “How dare you talk to me that way.” Jane now launches her nuclear counterattack. All-out war has begun and there will be no winners.
Let’s stop for a moment and examine this scenario. In an argument, both sides are trying to get the upper hand. Oftentimes, the catalyst for the argument is petty. The main focus is on gaining control. While Jane may have originally intended to resolve a small problem, within a few words, the focus has shifted from the problem to regaining power. Jane isn’t trying to gain control of herself, but instead is trying to control her daughter.
The reality of human interaction is that no relationship can be healthy when one side is trying to control the other. Jane must first learn to control herself and then take steps to mature her daughter into self-control as well. Sometimes people are simply immature and unwilling to control their actions or do what is right. When our responsibility is to lead others, we may indeed have to force them to do what they are resistant to do. Even so, we must first control our reactions before we can have any hope of effectively communicating with others.
What could Jane have done to stop herself from losing control during this argument?
That was a trick question. War is not the time to strategize. Nor is the heat of an argument the time to plan your emotional response. The battle isn’t won during the conflict. The battle is won or lost right now, when you have a cool head and a clear mind. Jane had already lost the battle with her emotions before she said, “Why aren’t you doing your homework?”
Jane needs a new game plan. One thing is certain – her current reactions and counter-reactions are not working. They haven’t worked for years. The only solution she has considered is forcing the same reactions into the argument with more volume and frustration. Because Jane hasn’t considered a better course of action, she applies the same methods to the same situations. She reacts rather than responds.
A reaction is an automatic action without reasoning through a situation. A response is when we consider our options and decide on a reasonable course of action. A reaction isn’t controlled. A response is.
Applying more passion and trying harder to make a solution work isn’t effective. If shouting doesn’t resolve the problem, shouting louder won’t either. Even if you win the battle, it’s a losing victory. Jane is emotionally exhausted, her daughter is emotionally exhausted, and their relationship will continue to build stress in both of their lives.
The same scenario may apply to a husband, wife, sibling, co-worker, parent, in-laws, or any other relationship you are dealing with. When your current solution isn’t working, forcing it with bigger emotions won’t improve your odds of success. Quite the opposite. It guarantees failure.
When a square peg doesn’t fit into a round hole, does applying more force make it fit better? What about getting a bigger hammer? If you have a big enough hammer, you might be able to force the peg in, but not without destroying the peg, the hole, or both.
So why do we keep trying the same failing methods and growing more frustrated by the lack of results? We do this because we don’t have any other solutions. Jane doesn’t know what to do, so her frustration grows and she is now driven by the passions born through anger and not a passion for doing the right thing. And to make matters worse, Jane believes she is doing the right thing. Just because her daughter is wrong, doesn’t make Jane’s reaction right.
What is the solution? Admittedly, this is a difficult one to apply, but I assure you this will work. The reason solving the problem is so difficult is because we must first battle our own emotions before we can address the problem causing our grief. It’s a war on two fronts. The hardest battle is our internal one. Once we master our emotions, we can see clearly to address the problem that grates on our emotions. Consider the words of Jesus in Matthew 7:3-5
3 “And why do you look at the speck in your brother’s eye, but do not consider the plank in your own eye?
4 “Or how can you say to your brother, ‘Let me remove the speck from your eye’; and look, a plank is in your own eye?
5 “Hypocrite! First remove the plank from your own eye, and then you will see clearly to remove the speck from your brother’s eye.
Notice Jesus did not say we aren’t to worry about the speck in our brother’s eye. He said we must do something with ourselves first so we can see clearly to handle the situation. Stress and out of control emotions often are planks in our own eyes. The problem we are addressing is the speck.
Think back at the homework situation. Is this a big problem, or a small one? It’s a small speck of a problem that should have an easy resolution. The problem is only big because of the emotions added into the mix.
Jesus intentionally used an illustration that is exaggerated to the point of absurdity. Yet this is an accurate view of what we are doing in our daily human interactions.
The person with the speck in their eye bothers us. We see something wrong which needs to be fixed. It’s a real problem and is something that truly needs to be resolved. But we can’t fix it. The reason? Every time we step close enough to deal with the problem, the huge board in our eye bangs around and creates more problems. We can’t reach the speck. In fact, our plank is causing more damage than the speck ever could.
When we try to zero in on the speck, the plank blocks our view and the closer we get to the problem, the less we can see. Our plank dominates the situation, and soon it becomes the problem that overshadows the speck.
Isn’t this a great illustration of our emotional reactions? How many times have we lost sight of the real problem and began focusing on feelings and reactions on both sides? After a heated dispute, neither party cares about the speck. Instead, one side is saying “you hate me,” and the other side is saying, “You are so disrespectful.” One says, “You always,” the other says, “You never.” By the time the dispute runs its course, neither side is satisfied and neither party cares about the speck of a problem that began the dispute. The beam is all they see.
Remember our discussion of Cain’s anger in a previous chapter? When Cain became angry with his brother, Abel, what was the Lord’s warning? God warned him about his anger by saying, “Sin crouches at the door. Its desire is for you, but you should rule over it.” Cain chose to allow himself to be ruled by his emotions and the results were disastrous.
When emotions rule, it is always a recipe for disaster. We were not created to be ruled by our emotions. Someone is going to get hurt when we allow emotions to become the driving force in our lives. More times than not, the damage begins with you and then spreads out to those around you. There is a lot of turmoil inside before the symptoms bubble to the surface for others to see. By the time emotional problems are visible, much internal damage has already been done.
Emotional wounds are the hardest to heal. The Proverbs teach, “A brother offended is harder to be won than a city.” A city can be conquered, but no one’s heart can be won by force. Fortunately, emotional wounds can be healed, but not by brute force.
Healing comes through nurturing. Scars may remain, but we have constructive ways of dealing with them. In fact, a scar can become a blessing and a trophy of grace, but only after the wound has been healed. The first step in healing is to learn to deal with your emotions in healthy ways.
Let’s go back to our argument with Jane and her daughter. How can Jane learn to deal with her own emotions so she can handle the situation better? Should she ignore the problem? No. It is a problem that needs to be addressed. It’s a speck that needs to be removed. What will happen if we leave a speck of debris in our eye? It creates more problems, possibly an infection, and many bad things can happen from there. The speck needs to be removed, but not until Jane can get the plank out of the way. It is doing more damage than the speck, and the real problem can’t be addressed until the plank is gone. Jane needs to reevaluate her own reactions prior to addressing any problem.
To illustrate this, I’m going to use my own life. I’ve gone through this very thing. This is why I know the solution works. It is not an easy fix, but it is very much possible to overcome our emotions and regain control of our life. Not many people know this, but I’ll share my own personal confession with you.
I had a serious temper problem and I couldn’t see it. The real irony is that before I married, I was known as even tempered and laid-back. It wasn’t until I had to share my life with someone that these hidden flaws began to emerge. Let me first tell the story from the perspective I had at the time.
There would be times when life began closing in on me. Job stresses, tight money, too many home duties, and my wife’s complaints would all hit me at one time. I literally felt like the entire world was caving in on top of me. Then my wife would add the final weight that pushed me to the breaking point. She would complain about something, I didn’t want to be bothered with another issue, and she would keep pressing. I’d send out warning flares, but she never seemed to respond to them. The weight of everything became unbearable and I’d finally explode. Though I never physically hurt my wife, I would beat her back with angry words and my huge explosion of rage. I would get in her face and bully her into submission.
After the explosion, I felt a sense of relief. The weight of everything was off my back for a moment and I’d be back to my normal self in no time. Then I’d act as if nothing was wrong; however, my wife would be reeling from my reaction. In my mind, everything was justified. I tried to warn her, but she wouldn’t listen. She kept pressing even though I was getting to my breaking point. To me, this was a self-preservation measure. What I didn’t understand at the time was that each time I lost control, it made it harder to be in control the next time. The more I lost my temper, the more little things created stress in my life. I was giving myself over to emotions. My blowups became a constant occurrence and increased in frequency.
One day I had someone get angry with me. The issue was petty, but the person got in my face. Amazingly, I held my own temper and removed myself from the conflict. I was boiling inside, but I didn’t allow it to show. In the car on the way home, I told my wife, “There is nothing worse than having someone in your face and yelling.” As I spoke, I realized I had just hung myself with my own words. In that instant, my eyes were opened and I realized I had more guilt than the person I was complaining about.
Until this day, I never recognized my own temper problem. I had blinded myself to my own faults and instead blamed others for making me angry. Never mind that I was dropping a nuclear bomb on my wife for firing a cap gun.
Not only was I failing to exercise self-control, but I was using unjustifiable verbal force to bully my wife to get my way. I had never felt more convicted in my life. I determined that day to never get in her face again, and to get my temper under control. Not getting in her face was the easy part, but regaining control of my temper was not. I had allowed my anger to become my master and it did not want to step down from the throne of my life.
I determined two things in my heart that day. One, I would get my temper under control. Two, I would never again justify my explosions.
It wasn’t long before a new situation arose where I again felt the weight of the world bearing down on me. I tried with all my might, but I quickly hit my stress limit and exploded. I failed on point one, but I kept myself accountable on point two. Once I cooled down, I apologized to my wife for my reaction. I did a lot of apologizing. I can remember walking outside to cool down and praying, “Lord, why can’t I catch myself before I explode?”
One thing I quickly realized was even when I held my temper, I was only holding in the stress wanting to come out. Resisting an explosion wasn’t the answer. I had to find a way to deal with my stress to relieve the pressure. After the next eruption, during my cool down period, I began analyzing my feelings. What made me angry? I knew how I felt – the world was caving in on top of me. But what was the root of the problem? I began to follow my emotions back to the first signs of stress. What made me feel stressful?
I made an amazing discovery about myself. I was selfish. Shocking, I know. Almost without exception, my reaction was caused by my inability to order the world the way I wanted it to be. I thought something should be done one way, but my wife saw things differently. And did things differently. The root of the problem was that I wanted to control everything and everyone to fit my self-centered world view.
When I looked at the root of the problem, it was an emotional reaction to unfulfilled selfishness. None of the things bothering me truly mattered. I was making my desires the standard of right and wrong.
It has been over thirty years now, and I don’t remember the specifics of our arguments, so I’ll just use an absurd example that is a fairly common issue. I’ve seen people argue while loading the dishwasher. Some want bowls on top; the other wants bowls on the bottom. Some want to rinse all the food off before loading; the other leaves residue on the dish.
It was these types of petty issues which caused most of my stress. Granted, some of my stress came from work and the challenges of life that can’t be controlled, but the catalyst for my rage were things I felt I could control. My wife wanted me to take out the garbage now; I wanted to do it later. She then complained about the smell; I complained I was in the middle of something. She would come back and start again, and then we’d start bickering. As we bickered, I began to feel as if she were pressing down on me along with the rest of the world.
In truth, I wanted a world centered upon myself. If I didn’t want it, I shouldn’t be forced to do it. If I wanted to do it, I shouldn’t be denied. I was trying to keep everything within the boundaries of my self-centered world view. As things would escape the boundaries of my control, I would try to herd them back into place. The more things I had to keep under control, the more frustrated I became. The real pressure was caused by me trying to keep my world centered upon me. It was simply selfishness.
It was then I realized identifying selfishness was the first step toward changing my behavior. Because I had let myself lose control, I would often lose my temper before I could catch myself. I’d explode, calm down, analyze myself, and again realize my stress was over something petty, and I’d apologize to my wife. Then I’d lament before God as to why I couldn’t stop myself and look at the heart of my situation before blowing up.
Then one day I caught myself. I felt the pressure building and I was ready to blow, but I thought about my reaction and asked myself, “Is this justified?” When I looked at the problem I realized this wasn’t worthy of the emotional energy I was putting into it. This was something that truly didn’t matter. Then I felt silly for being angry. I cast the selfish thought away, acknowledged everything didn’t have to be my way, and the stress disappeared.
I still exploded more times than not, but I began catching myself more and more often. I would defuse the bomb and feel childish for my reaction because it was something that simply didn’t matter. Tomorrow I won’t even remember this, so why am I concerning myself with little things which have no bearing on my life whatsoever?.
Ultimately, my problem was a failure to fulfill what Jesus called one of the two greatest commandments. When asked what the greatest commandment was, Jesus said there were two. Love God with all your being was the first. The second comes out of the first – to love your neighbor as yourself. Love God with your all, and love others as yourself. I was willing to destroy others to love myself. Yet if I expressed the same love to others I wanted for myself, then I wouldn’t have been putting my perceived needs over my wife and others. Without realizing it, I was learning to apply this basic command to my life.
Other than losing my selfish little world, there was no loss. And my selfish world needed to be dismantled. As I put these things away, I found that life became much happier when the world wasn’t about me.
My wife never saw when I didn’t explode. She only saw when I did. It was many months before she even noticed the changes in my life. In fact, she had a hard time believing I was changing. It wasn’t until I began to look at life without self-centered eyes that I realized the emotional damage I had been doing to her and our marriage.
The Christian life is filled with breakthroughs. We live in ignorance and often suffer needlessly because we can’t see the plain truth before us. But then God prepares our hearts, orchestrates events, and then opens our eyes. It becomes a ‘wow’ moment. We then pass through the hedge of our blindness and walk into the path God has revealed and discover God’s life-changing truth. We only remain in failure when we refuse the revelation or are unwilling to take the steps to apply these truths to our lives.
This is what having someone get in my face did. It was a God-orchestrated event, placed at the right moment in my life to jolt my eyes open to what God was showing me. He showed me my self-created failure, but then showed me a plan of escape. He then called me to begin building my hopes around His plan instead of upon my desires. While I’m far from perfect, this part of my life is dead and buried. It is no longer mine.
Many other needs are present with me, and God reveals each stronghold of the flesh as He opens the door to freedom. That’s the difference between self-abasement and conviction. Many people see their failure. They grovel in guilt and become more unstable and worse in their reactions. But conviction is sweet. It is God’s revelation of a failure for the purpose of perfecting this area in our life according to His truth and His power to change us.
That’s the loving patience of God. He knows our failures. He also knows our stubborn pride. Yet the Lord still shows us compassion and leads us out of failure and closer to Him. That’s where success lives. It wasn’t me changing myself and determining not to be angry. I couldn’t restrain my anger. Part of me had to die. I didn’t understand what God was doing at the time, but He was calling me to die to myself so I could experience life in Him. It is as the Apostle Paul said, “I die daily.” It is daily dying to my selfish flesh so I can live for something better. This is what is taught in Romans 6:8-14
8 Now if we died with Christ, we believe that we shall also live with Him,
9 knowing that Christ, having been raised from the dead, dies no more. Death no longer has dominion over Him.
10 For the death that He died, He died to sin once for all; but the life that He lives, He lives to God.
11 Likewise you also, reckon yourselves to be dead indeed to sin, but alive to God in Christ Jesus our Lord.
12 Therefore do not let sin reign in your mortal body, that you should obey it in its lusts.
13 And do not present your members as instruments of unrighteousness to sin, but present yourselves to God as being alive from the dead, and your members as instruments of righteousness to God.
14 For sin shall not have dominion over you, for you are not under law but under grace.
In Christ we die to the flesh. How many things are in my life right now that I cannot see because of the blindness of my selfish pride? Many times since this event I have been brought to a new hedge to pass through. A hedge I didn’t even know held me, but God reveals a new spiritual understanding to me, and then leads me into a new path of life. This path calls me to pass through the hedge between the selfish flesh and into a deeper walk in the Spirit.
This is exactly what God is trying to do in your life. Pray for God to open your eyes to see.
I am unable to bear the burden of seeing the vast differences between myself and Christ. If God showed me all that needed to be changed, I would be overwhelmed and would give up. He shows me one fault at a time. And with God, the fault is revealed when God is about to lead me out of it. Guilt has no role to play.
Guilt causes us to hide from God in shame. I was guilty of my sin against my family and against God; however, the Lord called me to leave the guilt, shame, and failure behind so He could draw me into the Spirit and receive the sufficiency of His power through grace. Grace is God’s unearned favor toward us.
Dying to ourselves is very much a part of gaining control over our emotions. When God reveals your failure, it is a call for you to die to that part of your life. It is letting go of what is dead and to be crucified with Christ so you can walk in newness of life. And it doesn’t stop with what you know you’re struggling with. That is just one hedge to pass through.
Life is letting go of what is dying – self, being renewed with new life, and then purging the next selfish way of living so God can impart the next life-giving change. It is only when we are prideful that we stop growing. God wants to reveal the things He has in store for you, but this can only happen if you surrender to Him.
I must die daily. You must die daily. Today’s victory will be forgotten during tomorrow’s battles. The flesh will use apathy when all else fails. When you quit striving for godliness, you slowly lose ground.
God must open our eyes. And we don’t even realize we are blinded to our faults. It is as Paul instructed the church, “Anyone who thinks he knows anything, knows nothing he ought to know.” In other words, what you know is important and life-changing, but you haven’t reached perfection and there is so much more God has yet to reveal to you. Regardless of the depth of your understanding, you are just getting started.
It is His pleasure to give you His kingdom, and this begins with conforming to the likeness of Christ. We are a long way from this standard of perfection, but that’s okay. God changes us one step at a time.
When we quit seeing our need to change, pride is on the throne of our heart – regardless of how spiritual we or other people may think we are.
I’m not the same person I was in the early 90s. That’s not because I became a better person. It’s because part of me died. Many other parts of my old life have been put to death since then and the process still continues. Sometimes my old behaviors try to climb out of the grave, and I have to guard against them. I do so by standing upon the promise that I have been crucified with Christ and sin no longer has dominion over me. I frequently look back to the cross and remind myself and my flesh that the old man has been crucified. I have to be vigilant and watchful so I don’t give power back to my flesh.
I am now a spiritual man – born of God into a new life. I could not crucify my own life. This was the work of God who took my old life and buried it with Christ, and then raised me as a new creation, born from the Spirit. But now that I am born in the Spirit, I am called to reckon my flesh dead each time it rises up. It may attempt to take over, but I turn to the cross and offer my body as a living sacrifice. My eyes remain on Christ and my flesh remains crucified. I must refuse its call to come down and regain its former dominion.
The same is true for you. You are a spiritual person. The flesh tries to rise up and regain dominion, but reckon, or account, yourself dead to the flesh but alive to Christ.
This is how you prepare for the challenges you will face. Die to yourself so God can take away what is corrupted and establish you in the next step toward perfection. Your failure is not the problem. It’s resisting God’s call that is the problem. When you see a failure, it is the call of God. He’s about to do something spectacular, but you have to surrender your will and submit to His work.
Life Applications
- Memorize Matthew 22:36-40
- Identify something that frequently stirs your internal frustration or builds stress.
- Think about the root of the problem. What is it that bothers you and why?
- Strategize now as to how to deal with it in a healthy way.
- The next time you get angry or frustrated, walk through your emotional reactions. Again determine what bothered you and why?
- Examine your life and determine how you can respond to problems without reacting.
- Recognize you can’t control others or circumstances, but you can find strategies to respond in healthy ways.
- Pray for God to open your eyes as you seek and self-examine.
Review previous Life Applications.