Feeding your emotions with peace

S. SEKOU ABODUNRIN

6 For to be carnally minded is death; but to be spiritually minded is life and peace.
7 Because the carnal mind is enmity against God: for it is not subject to the law of God, neither indeed can be. Rom 8:6,7

We understand from the book of God, the bible that the only form of “death” that a believer can experience operates through the soul. Asides this soulish contact there is very little that gives us access into this participation in death. The soul consists of three parts, namely the mind, will and emotions. There are circumstances that we face day in and day out that make a pull on our soulish response.

We need to understand the implication of this fact. It is true that your spirit is participating in the life of God. It is also equally true that the carnal mind is not subject to the law of God. The expression of rebellion therefore manifests through the carnal mind. Since it is true that the carnal mind is enmity then we can safely say that we can trace every resistance that our spirit experiences to something that has been permitted through the soul. The thing to note is that consciously or unconsciously your soul is waging war [or mounting resistance] on your spirit this very minute. This war rages in your mind. You need to realise that there is an emotional response you have developed over the years – a certain bend or slant that determines the way your emotions will take sides in any circumstance. The trouble is that our emotions have been groomed in a different way than our spirit has been.

Your mind processes the information that your soul is constantly bombarded with whether this information is good or bad. The thing is that while your mind is powerful at processing these facts and can be depended upon to come up with some appropriate responses, it is not always the case, and this is because its processing is largely coloured by your emotional slant.
Left in its natural operation your emotions empower your mind to take decisions that are not necessarily based on any fact, just feeling.

The cares of life and the pull of the circumstances around you have a lot to do with the things you will be feeling. The effect of these cares of life is to force your emotions into a place of pressure. The pressure is usually transferred from your emotions straight to your mind overruling its logic and computation. The stronger the pressure that your emotions feel from the circumstances that it is exposed to, the more you feel the override that your emotion places upon your mind. You cannot afford then to leave your emotions unchecked, for left to roam it can unleash havoc within your mind and ultimately direct the flow of your responses in life.

This is how the emotions wage war on the spirit through the mind. While many people feel that the strongest member of the soul is the will, we can all relate to times and instances where we had “made up our mind” about certain things we would do should some sequence of events occur, then with amazement we watch ourselves respond in the very opposite way! Your will was intact all right, but your emotion had placed a override on your mind and caused your mind to send the “unexpected” response. In simple terms then, the most volatile member is the emotion.

Your spirit, full of the Zoë life of God seeks to express itself, but will not have the right of way as long as the emotion is left unchallenged. Your emotions will erect a war machine using your imaginations. The stronger these imaginations are, the greater the pressure measured out from your emotion into you mind, your mind will compute these strong images and produce actions that undermine your spirit’s effectiveness. You can relate to this – remember when you were in school, you are confidently sited working your way through a set of questions until you notice your class teacher walks up to you while you are trying to solve some equation you have been given. Left by yourself you are quite good with working out the answer within reasonable time. You notice to your horror that the teacher is heading your way and with every step taken closer to your desk, you discover that another force has taken over your mind! The very pen you have been holding all morning suddenly starts shaking clumsily in your hands! It is as though your mind goes on vacation and for the life of you; you cannot fathom what has hijacked your train of thought. That is a classic case of your emotions transferring pressure to your mind.

5 Casting down imaginations, and every high thing that exalteth itself against the knowledge of God, and bringing into captivity every thought to the obedience of Christ; 2 Cor 10:5

The system of warfare described in that verse has a lot to do with what you have your emotions plugged into as its source of “inspiration”. Usually your emotions will feed directly upon external evidence and outcomes and effectively becomes the point through which strongholds are erected in your mind. These stronghold are automatic ways that your emotions have been trained to respond to situations. They often go unchallenged because you feel that it is your personality at work. You hear of people that describe themselves as touchy, introverted, given to depression or the likes. The thing is we accept these as our personality and routinely respond to situation from that which we believe to be true about ourselves.

Imagination is powerful. It captures all that you see. What you see is often what you’d keep seeing. Largely the true potential of who we are never comes out; for all that we see expressed through ourselves is that which we have conditioned ourselves to see. Every situation becomes an opportunity for us to confirm that which we have consciously or unconsciously accepted – this places an override on our mind depriving it of an opportunity to showcase it differently. The point is that until your emotions are under your control you are holding yourself hostage. No external power can release you from this hold for it is a stronghold. You must cast it down!

God’s way of reversing this situation is to use your spirit to heal your emotions. When this is allowed to go through, your emotions begin to empower the right thoughts when they show up in your mind. God’s system does not function through panic or pressure. When your emotion is submitted to your spirit, the peace that is in your spirit will be measured out to your emotions instead of the pressure that the world administers through worry. This peace becomes a new kind of pressure.

Another way of describing the warfare is this, when you leave your emotions unchecked your mind does not find “good news” exciting enough to spend much time processing it. Instead your emotions turn on the juice when the wrong type of information shows up in the mind. In simple terms the emotions wage war on your spirit through the mind by causing your mind to disregard the information that your spirit presents!

You are definitely involved in a battle. Like all battles, if I don’t understand what the war is about I fight ineffectively. The battle is basically releasing the government of your life into the hands of your spirit so that you turn the tide on your emotions such that it no longer empowers the mind to actively process “bad” information. The slant of your mind is determined by your emotions. The battle is swinging that slant to side in with your spirit.

Let me put it gently, your emotions have declared war on your spirit!

You think it is just the way you “feel”, but the consequences are dire when you consider that your emotions have such a strong grip on your life. When you consider that your emotions through your mind define your contact with death and your contact with life. The death flows through the system of the world while the life flows through the system of God in your spirit nature. Your spirit doesn’t function on pressures and cares but peace. Your emotions need this peace.

If language means anything the thing that MUST change is not so much my circumstances as it is my emotion. It is usual to think that the problem is with the “situation”, but in reality you are not warring against the situation, but against imaginations and strongholds that are fuelled by your emotions holding your mind captive from productive operation. There are decisions that you are capable of making, but might never make because the emotion has a slant that defeats your well-being. Your mind will embrace change faster than your emotions. You can think of the emotions as the last frontier where your spirit carries its program of change. You see if your emotions have been exercised in being moody and depression-prone, you will have learned how to transfer confusion to your mind. This processes more confused thinking which feeds the emotions with more pressure and then the emotion measure out more distress to your mind in effect starting a generator of gloom. Your spirit is relaxed and complete in Christ Jesus. You must hand over the government to your spirit, so peace can reign in your whole being. This has nothing to do with situations changing for peace is not the absence of dire situations. It is the presence released into your emotions from your spirit.

…to be continued