Episode Transcript
[00:00:01] Speaker A: Thanks for tuning in to the Met Church podcast. Here at the Met, we are all about connecting people to God and one another. If you have any questions or want more information about what's happening here at the church, then head to our website@metchurch.com we would love to stay connected with you throughout the week through social media, so be sure to connect with us on Facebook, Instagram and Twitter now. Enjoy the message.
[00:00:24] Speaker B: Well, Happy New Year, everybody. I know this time of the year, people are making New Year's resolutions. I don't know if you do that. Some people set goals, they kind of have family meetings. And sometimes in the business world, you'll meet and you'll try to discuss where you've been and where you're going to try to take some assessment on where realistically you see yourself a year from now. That's all well and good, because every one of us in the room, we're interested in growth. We want to grow personally. We don't want to be where we were a year ago. We don't be stuck in that routine. You've all heard that old saying, if you always do what you've always done, you'll always get what you've always gotten. So we try to make sure you're growing and expanding and moving. You do that personally. You do it in your family life and you do it in your business life. We do it in our church life. We're interested in growing. But the reality of it is sometimes we're focused on the wrong thing. Sometimes you get focused on the growth of a thing and you neglect the health of a thing. Because God set everything up that is healthy to grow. Healthy kids grow, healthy plants grow. Everything that God has established and everything that he has created, the result of growth, rather, the result of health, is growth. And so we wanna focus as a church on being healthy. We wanna make sure that our families are healthy, our church is healthy, the businesses of our church are healthy. You're healthy in your personal life because healthy things, healthy people grow. And so we're gonna be talking about throughout, not just the new year, but throughout our spring season, we're gonna be talking about healthy hearts, because everything really begins with the heart. The Bible says in Proverbs 4, out of the heart flow all of the issues of life. Everything comes out of my. My heart in your heart. So we want to be assured our heart is healthy. And what does that look like, to have a healthy heart? And then we're going to move into healthy homes. We want our homes to be healthy. And then we're going to talk about healthy habits. We want to develop some good habits that will enhance greater growth. So this morning we're kicking it off, talking about a healthy heart. Now, I understand when I say a healthy heart, I'm talking about more than the muscle that's pumping blood through our bodies. So I hope that's healthy and that needs to be healthy. And we'll get to that later on in the.
But I'm not really speaking of that, because when the Bible says to love the Lord with all your heart, he's not talking about the muscle pumping blood through your body. He's talking about something else. And so when you begin to examine what the Bible means when it speaks of your heart, then you begin to understand. It speaks of my mind. I'll talk about that next week. How I think. It speaks of my will, what I do, and it speaks of my emotions. My emotions. So a healthy heart is someone who is healthy. They're healthy in their mind and their thinking. They're healthy in their will and their actions, and they're healthy in their emotions. And we even use that terminology when we say to someone, I love you with all my heart. What we mean by that is, with everything that I am, with all that I am, I love all that you are. You cannot possibly love someone more than to love them with all of your heart. And that's the desire of God for us to love him passionately, to love us, to love him emotionally, to love him with all of our heart. So I wanna kick it off this morning by talking about being healthy emotionally, having a healthy emotional experience in life. Healthy emotionally. Or another way I would talk about this is, how do you deal with how you feel?
Because feelings are important and feelings are essential. And by the way, God made us to have feelings. Have you ever thought about the fact that God is emotional? In Genesis 1:26, the Bible said, we are made in the image and in the likeness of God. So he made us emotional. And God has emotions, man, you look in the Bible, he was angry from time to time. Jesus got angry. He got frustrated with people. You ever have that emotion?
He was happy, he was sad. Jesus grieved. There were times in his walk on this earth when he experienced many of the emotions you and I experienced and many of the emotions you and I may be even experiencing today. Jesus was emotional. God is emotional. I heard about a guy that was really trying to improve on his connection with his wife and understanding her, even emotionally. So what he did for Christmas, he bought her a Mood ring. A mood ring. And so later they said, well, how's that mood ring working out? And he goes, well, when she's in a good mood, it turns green, bright green. And when she's in a bad mood, it leaves this red knot on my forehead for about three or four days. So he's learning how to read the moods. But that is important that we understand how we are because we are emotional people and understanding how we are to read our emotions. Let me give you the text for my talk to you this morning. It's in three John, verse two, rather, where John writing said, my dear friends, I pray that you may prosper in all things and be in health. Isn't that a wonderful expression for someone that you love and you care about? I hope you prosper. I hope you're in good health. And then he says this. Just as your soul prospers, he says, in other words, as you grow spiritually and you get healthy spiritually, I hope you're healthy in every other area of your life. And there's a beautiful correlation in that verse to my spiritual growth, to my physical growth and all the other areas of my life. And I think one can enhance the other and one can harm the other. We ought to be interested again in being healthy in every area. Now, when the Bible again talks about having healthy emotions, he underscores it again by how he desires us to love him with all the heart, soul and mind we are to love him passionately. And what happens to us in our human experience is. Is we tend to go to extremes. Extremes. Now, we are to be emotional, but we are not to be guided by our emotions. There are some people that get too deep into emotionalism and they base every decision based on their emotions. You ever heard this expression, if it feels good, do it well. That's emotionalism. And you have to be careful. That's the extreme. Now, you are to be emotional, but you have to be careful by being guided by your emotions, by making emotional decisions. Now, on the other hand, we are to be stoic. We are to be cerebral. We are to think through things. And there are moments where if you're not careful, you can become so cerebral it is paralysis by analysis. And you're so deep in your thinking that you don't feel anything. And so you have these two extremes of emotionalism and stoicism. And those two extremes tend to marry each other. Have you noticed that where you have someone and you're in conflict resolution and someone says to the other someone, and I'm not looking at anybody. Now they just say, you're way too emotional. We can't talk because you get emotional. And the other one says to the other one, well, you don't ever express emotion. I don't even know what you're feeling right now. And so anybody who can relate to that, so those extremes tend to attract, be attracted to one another. And I'm not saying that you're not to be stoic, and I'm not saying you're not to be emotional. I'm saying don't be extreme in either of those categories. It even affects our worship if you're not careful.
You sing without understanding. The psalmist said sing praises with understanding. Meaning we need to know what we're singing about. There needs to be understanding of scripture. Otherwise you will evaluate a service based on how you feel. I didn't feel. And so therefore there wasn't anything to feel. And then it becomes very self centered about my personal experience. If I didn't feel it, there wasn't anything going on in there. And then on the other extreme, you have the churches that don't think emotion is important at all. Oh, it's just all about getting deep and let's just go deep and you know, and that's all there. And they look at any expression of emotion as being shallow and you have to stay away from it. And I'm saying both of those extremes are bad. Neither of those extremes are healthy. You need to have the Word, you need to have depth. You need to understand scripture, but you also need to feel something when you're there. If you're alive, you ought to feel something. There ought to be something in the worship. There ought to be something in the service that moves you emotionally. So I'm just saying steer clear of the extremes. Steer clear of the extremes in your relationship. Steer clear of those extremes in your personal experience. So how do you do that? How do you do that? Okay, I'm struggling with everybody else. Let me tell you what I found out. I found out probably one of the most powerful books to understand the human emotion is the book of Psalm. It is an incredible book. I would encourage you to read a psalm every day. Maybe connect the psalm with the calendar of the week, but read a psalm every day. If you'll notice, when you read the Psalms, every emotion that you and I can experience is found in the Psalms. You've got David writing about happy times and David writing about sad times. You have David in some places giving praise to God and exalting God. And then you have David saying God, you've forsaken me. Where are you in my hour of need? I call and you don't hear. And you find David mad at God and exasperated at God. And so I'm just saying, when you read the Psalms, every emotion that you could possibly experience is in the Psalms. Notice the Psalms are not identified by chapters. There's Psalm 1, Psalm 2, Psalm. We don't refer to it as chapter one. We saw Psalm 1. They're songs. They're songs. They're literally singing about God, and they're singing about man's relationship and a woman's relationship to her Creator. And so the Psalms are a great study on our emotions and understanding that God wired us up to be emotional and the first step toward healthy emotions and how to deal with how you feel. Number one, I would tell you, if you're taking notes would be you have to, number one, characterize it. You have to identify the emotion that you're feeling. Look at Psalm 55, verse 2. My thoughts are restless. David said, I am confused. What was he doing? He was owning and acknowledging what he was feeling in that moment. I'm restless right now.
My spirit is stirred. I feel anxious in this moment, and I'm even confused. I'm not really sure, you know, which direction to go. I'm not sure what decision to make. I really don't know what I need to do. It is a beautiful expression of a man who was the apple of God's eye, who had the ability to identify the emotion that he was feeling. Listen to another place in Psalm where he writes this. Psalm 42, verse 11. Why are you cast down now? It's the inner monologue. He's talking to himself. He's saying, why am I so down right now? I should be happy. So many things are going on in my life that are good, and I'm not happy right now. Why am I cast down? What's going on? Why am I cast down? Why aren't you disquieted? It's the same word of sad. Another word is distressed. What's going on inside of me now, it's important because if I'm going to be healthy emotionally, I have to be able to identify what I'm feeling emotionally. I can't just gloss over it. I can't just ignore it. I have to understand what I'm feeling at the moment. Have you ever studied and we're not good at this. I'm not really good at this. Always. Anybody asks you, what are you feeling right now? And you go, I'm not. I don't know. I'm nothing.
Isn't it hard sometimes to identify a feeling? Especially if you're a guy? I have to tell you. But now some of that are obvious. You can identify if you're happy, you can identify if you're sad, you can identify if you're glad, you can identify if you're mad, you can identify some of the moods you can, but some of them you can't. So the first thing you have to do, if you're developing a healthy mood and you're trying to identify healthy or have healthy emotions and you're trying to identify the emotion that your experience is, you have to first of all say, what am I feeling right now? Here's the second thing I'd ask myself. What caused what I'm feeling right now? What caused it is a song on the radio.
Maybe it takes you back to a better time in a relationship, and all of a sudden you find yourself a little pensive or you find yourself a little sad because that song brought back a memory that maybe you're not experiencing. Maybe you see someone and maybe you had a bad experience with that person and maybe things never got reconciled. And all of a sudden now you've seen that person and it's put you in a different mood. You're at a different place, you know, because you've seen that person.
I can tell you. After 21 days in the Neuro ICU unit with Cindy, I sometimes have trouble going to a hospital.
It's a thing that I was visiting with some folks one day in a hospital, and they were on a breathing machine, much like what Cindy was on all that time. And I honestly, I've never had this before. I started having a panic attack. I didn't know what was going on with him. I thought, I may have to crawl up there in the bed next to this person and share that oxygen with the brother. I mean, I didn't know what was going on. I just felt like I was having trouble breathing. And I've been going to hospitals and making those visits since I was a kid. And all of a sudden, for the first time in my experience, and so I could easily identify the emotion. And once I got to the car, I identified what caused the emotion. It was because of something that I had been through and something that I've gone through. And by the way, something I'm still working through.
It is hard for me to do that sort of thing without, you know, without having some of those memories and some of those things. So I'm saying, when you have an emotion, try to identify what caused it. Because there's gonna be a cause to that effect. And the first step in having a healthy emotion is being able to identify what has created this emotion. Is this a positive thing? Is this a negative thing? Is this something that's going to help me or something that's going to work against me? Because listen, a perceived emotion can affect you as impactful as a real emotion, a perceived emotion. Mark Twain used to say, if a cat sets on a hot stove, a cat won't set on a cold stove. In fact, a cat will never set on another stove. I mean, once you've been burned, it imprints in your brain. And all of a sudden, now the perceived reality can be as impactful as the real reality. And so you have to identify, okay, I'm feeling this right now. I'm angry or I'm frustrated or where's this coming from? Is it that person? Is that song? Is this an experience? Am I just having this memory? Is this. This place that I'm in right now? What has caused the emotion that I'm feeling? I'm saying, in order to help you emotionally, you have to identify what you're feeling. And listen, be careful, because sometimes your emotions are not reliable. They're not reliable. You can, in fact, you can be manipulated by your emotions.
Listen to the Proverbs 14:12. There is a way that seems right to a person. It seems right, but the end thereof is the way of death. So he's saying, sometimes you feel that this is the thing. It seems right, this feels right, but it may not be right. So you have to guard against making decisions strictly out of the area of your emotions. I know back when I started out in ministry, pastors would typically accompany families to the funeral home to help the families make arrangements. And the reason that was so is because in many towns, we didn't really have a lot of that here. Cause I know the funeral homes and the directors here, and these are very honorable people. But there were some before the industry was regulated, there were some that would take advantage of people at that moment emotionally to get them to upcharge. You know, like, if you really love them, you wouldn't put them away in a pine box. We bury cats in those. I mean, you know, so now this is five times as much. But this shows how much you really love. Well, all of a sudden you're making an emotional decision on something that shouldn't be an emotional decision. And people were being taken advantage of and they were trying to get you to pay more because you're emotionally engaged in the moment. Now again, that happened in that industry. It's happened in a lot of different places. There are people who will get you into an emotional space to try to get you to make a decision. And they're manipulating you emotionally. And that can happen. We've all understood that. Impulse buying, right? Have you ever bought something and after you've bought it, you have buyer's remorse? I wish I thought through that. I wish I hadn't just in the emotion of the moment, made the decision. And I can help you a little bit with this. And this is something I've tried to learn on identifying emotion. Is this. Is this a decision that I'm feeling led to make or is this a decision I'm feeling pressured to make? There's a difference.
Here's what you need to understand. When God is in a decision, he will lead you in that direction. He will lead you. When the devil is involved in the situation, he will pressure you. He will pressure you. There's no place in scripture where God pressures his people to make a decision. He leads them. Isaiah said he gently leads those who are with young. We're called sheep in the Bible. We're not called cattle. And there's a reason, a lot of reasons. But one particularly is if you wanna move cattle. The way you move cattle is you push em.
You get behind them and you push em. And that's the way you can move cattle. You steer em and you push em. If you do that to sheep, you'll scatter them. You can't get behind sheep and push them. That's why the shepherd will get in front of them and lead them. So when God is leading you to make a decision, you'll know. And until you feel led to make the decision, don't make the decision. Sometimes the best decision is no decision. Sometimes the best thing to do is say, I'm not ready to make that decision yet. I'm gonna need more time with that. Well, you need to make that right now. Right now, man. This offer's gonna end now. It's gonna expire when you walk out of the door. That deal's done. Well, okay, the deal's done. There'll be another deal. I'm not ready to make the decision. I'm not ready to make the call. Don't pressure me. Don't pressure me into doing something I may regret later. I'm the one that's gonna pay for that decision, not you. So are you being pressured into this? Are you being led by this, that's an important distinction because you have to identify the emotion. And is the emotion tied to something you feel led to do or is it something you feel pressured into doing? The Bible says in Proverbs 25, 28, a person who has no control over their emotions, they have no self control, is as defenseless as a city without walls, meaning you have no defense. If you have no control over your emotions, you're gonna overreact, you're gonna underreact, you're gonna think through it and do nothing about it. You're gonna overthink it and do the wrong thing about it. If you're not balanced, you're like a city that is defenseless. A city without walls is what he would say. So we have to understand the value of being in control of our emotions. It's the secret to success is learning how to manage your mood. Have you ever met anybody that had a very high IQ but a very low eq?
I mean, their emotional intelligence was great. I'm sorry, Their intelligence quotient was great, but their emotional intelligence was very low. I've worked with people like that. I've hired a few of them.
It never ends up right.
When you're bringing somebody on your team, you ought to seek three things. Number one, you ought to seek their competence. Can they do the job? Are they qualified? Look at for their competence. Number two, look at their character. Their character. Do they have the character to do the job? Is this a person of integrity? And number three, what about their chemistry? Chemistry? Do they play nice with each other? This is where their emotional quotient comes in. You see, a person's IQ can get them a job that their EQ cannot allow them to keep. All of a sudden you've hired somebody based on iq, but the EQ of this person is so low that they're creating problems with all the team that they're working with and everyone they're attempting to lead because they have a very low emotional quotient. So emotional health is essential to the success in anyone's life. So the first thing to do to have an emotional healthy life is you have to characterize the emotion. Identify it. What am I feeling? Why am I feeling it? Number two, not only characterize it, number two, challenge it.
Challenge it. Psalm 26:2 Lord, cross examine me, test my motives and my affections. David said, check me, check yourself before you wreck yourself. Check this emotion. Make sure what I'm feeling is legit. Make sure this emotion is positive. Make sure this emotion is not destructive. Make sure what I'm feeling is legit, and I really need to understand this emotion.
Ask yourself, are things really as bad as they are? I mean, when you feel yourself in that spiral emotionally, stop and ask yourself, is it really as bad as I'm feeling right now? Most of the time it's probably not when you evaluate it. I've been through harder times. I've known people that have gone through hard. Not to minimize the emotion. But you're just trying to. You're trying to quantify it. You're trying to qualify it, right? So. And then ask yourself maybe a second question. Are things really as good as I think they are right now? And probably the answer to that is, no, they're probably not. But you're just. What you're doing is you're learning how to evaluate what you're feeling. You're learning how to understand the emotion that you're experiencing. Now to do this. Cause I'm not good at this. I'll be honest with you. Cindy was really good to help me with this. Sometimes you have to have someone who. Who loves you and knows you really well to help you with these types of challenges.
In the book of job, job 1512, job had a friend named Eliphaz. And Eliphaz calls Job out one time, and he said, why is your heart carried? Why has your heart carried you away? And why do your eyes flash?
He said, why are you so angry? Why are you going around just going off on people? Your eyes flash, you just. You're angry. And, boy, you gotta have somebody pretty close to you to call you out on that one, right? And Eliphaz was close to Job. If you've got someone you love and someone you can be honest with them and help them understand, look, right now you're at a place emotionally that if you don't get on top of this, people are gonna saturate your presence with their absence. No one wants to be around somebody that's emotionally unhealthy. And so the best thing you can do if you start seeing some characteristics in someone you love that are so unhealthy emotionally, whether they're one extreme or the other extreme, is to lovingly. I say that, you know, lovingly. Call them out. Remember the three terms of conflict resolution. Pick the right time. Not in here, right now, in front of all of us. Not a good time. Not over dinner with friends. Oh. Now that we're all together, I'm gonna confront you on something. Find the right time. Find the right turf. Make sure you're in a good place and find the right tone. Time, turf tone. And then all of a sudden you're saying, I'm not attacking you, I'm attacking this problem. This is a problem. We need to talk about this. I love you, I care about you. But we gotta reel this in a little bit. This is hurting you with other people and you don't even see it. And if they're mature enough, they'll accept it. And if they're not, just pray for em. I don't know what else you can do. But the reality of it is we all need someone close enough to us that help us to identify when we are not managing our emotions well. For example, Elijah here's a prophet of God and he got in a downward spiral where he wasn't handling his emotions well. He felt like God had given him an assignment that was unlike anything God had asked anyone else to do. And he based it off of what had just happened. In First Kings 18, he goes up to Mount Carmel, faces down 450 false prophets. Remember, the challenge was the God that answers by fire will be God. And so there was no mistaking this was going to be God. Baal. The prophets of BAAL danced around the altar. No fire falls. First thing Elijah does is rebuild the altar. Then he has barrels of water poured on the altar. Cause he didn't want him to think, you know, spontaneous combustion, you know, if some other thing had happened. A God that can't burn wet woods, no good. So he was saying, let's just, let's pour the water on there. And so the fire of God fell and consumed the altar. And those false prophets were put to death and God was exalted throughout all the land. And then go to chapter 19. And he's depressed, he's sad, he's angry at God and he's telling God I'm the only one. I'm the only one that's still standing. Everybody else is forsaken. It's just kind of woe is me stuff. And all of a sudden God asked him two different times in one. Kings 19. What's wrong with you, man? You were just on the mountain and a few minutes later you're down in the valley. Now, I'm not critical of Elijah. I understand that. Have you ever found in your life how after moments of great triumph can come great pressure in valleys?
I know in my life I can have a great mountain experience. And it's almost I'll have a valley experience that will follow it. I've shared this before, but one of the things I know about myself is after I do a weekend, after I speak on Sunday and I do these services, I know I'm not fit for anything. Sunday night I punch out, I check out. I have to have some solitude. I gotta plug in and refuel. Cause I'm just. I'm empty. I don't trust anything I would say. I don't believe anything I say after that. I just don't. So I don't say anything. I literally, I go home and I unplug and I will just simply veg and I'll be quiet. And I know that about me emotionally. I know I have to have solitude now. People think, oh, you're a public person and you're out with. And I am. I'm out with people all the time. But I'm really not an extrovert. I'm really more introverted. I thrive. I found out about myself during COVID Did you find out anything about you during COVID I thought, I kind of like this.
This isn't so bad. I mean, I love people, don't get me wrong. This is what I've been doing for 50 years. But I like not being around people too. I like just, you know what I mean, those longhorns, horses, none of those things talk back. So you can be around those things, you know, and decompress. But you gotta know that about you. I mean, you need some solitude. You need some times when you pull back. Because if you're always on, if you're always. I mean, nobody's wired to be at a 10 all the time. You gotta know when you're called to step up, you step up. And part of what I do is what I'm doing. And when I'm done doing what I'm doing and interacting with people, I need that time to decompress. And then I get back in it. Monday morning, we're back at it with our team and we're talking about Sunday's coming. So we're back on ministry again. But my point is, I know that about me and I'm just taking a page out of my life to share with you that say that may be true about you. And when you start trying to get healthy emotionally, as I try to do, and I've been working on this for a while, is I have to identify that about myself. I have to know what my peaks and valleys are, when I'm most likely to bottom out and understand that, and when I have those moments that I can identify, know what I have to do to replenish myself and protect that time. Just say, no, I can't. Let's do that on another day, another time. I'm just. I'm out of. I'm out of words. I'm out of energy. You understand that about yourself. Cause that's so important to being emotionally healthy, is identifying the emotion. And God said, Look, I got 7,000 more, Elijah that hadn't. That are being used. You're not the only one. I got 7,000 more. So God kind of helped him with his thinking. And helping him with his thinking changed his mood. So God helped him identify and address the mood. So he challenged it. Here's the third point, and we're done.
Once you've been able to characterize it and you've challenged it, number three, change it. Working on changing. I'm talking about destructive emotions. Changing it. Psalm 19:14. May the words of my mouth and the meditation of my heart be acceptable. Be pleasing in your sight, oh, Lord. That's part of my daily devotion. I'll just share that with you. Every day I try to discipline myself to pray that when I'm driving down the road and as I'm coming back into the office, that's one of the things that I'll pray every day. Lord, help the words of my mouth. Help the meditation of the things that I'm thinking about in my heart. Help those things to be pleasing. Because I know that's gonna affect how I act, it's gonna affect how I react. It's a beautiful way to pray. Because what I'm basically asking is, God, change my mood. And what I found is, right motions create right emotions. When you're involved doing positive good things, what's going to happen is the feeling will follow. Walk in the Spirit. Galatians 6. And you will not fulfill the lust of the flesh. So take good steps, make good decisions, and what happens is that emotion will follow those good decisions. Psalm 42:11. I quoted the first part of that verse where the psalmist said, why is my soul so disquieted? Why am I so sad? What's going on? But I didn't quote the last part. The last part of the verse, I'm gonna give it to you now. Hope in God, for I will yet praise him. He is the help of my countenance and my God. David immediately said, man, why am I sad? Why am I so frustrated? Why am I so disquieted? Okay, take a breath. I'm gonna hope in God. I'm gonna put it in his hands. Listen, there's Nothing that you or I will ever go through that God cannot handle. There's nothing you're going through in this moment that he's not aware of. Prayer is not making him aware. When you go through those moments where you're feeling despair and you're feeling despondent, know this. The God of heaven who loves you understands where you are. And there's nothing you're going to go through, nothing you will go through in life, you'll go through alone. He's with you every step of the way. He's promised never to leave you, and he's promised never to forsake you. And he is with you in everything, highs and lows, happy days and sad days, good times and bad times. He's with you. And listen, to change your mood, you have to remind yourself of that fact. Because the devil is a master of hiding the ball and keeping that information from us. And all of a sudden, we're just in that spiral, giving counsel to ourselves instead of relying on the counsel of God's word. So you have the power to change it. The power is tied to the presence of the Holy Spirit living within you. You can change those moods. Philippians 2. 5. Your attitude should be the kind that was shown by Jesus Christ. Let me give you another practical thing that I work on that might help you with this. Not only to change it, but to channel it. You can channel your emotions, channel that emotion into something positive. For example, think about anger, for example. There's good mad and bad mad. There's a mad that you can get. That's righteous indignation. Some people will tell you that their life changed the day they got just mad enough to do something about it. And sometimes that's what it takes. You just have to get downright snow white, blazing bright mad, and say, I'm sick and tired of being sick and tired. My life changes today. Sometimes you gotta get that mad to make a change in your life. So there's good mad. Good mad is Jesus turning over the tables of the money changers in the temple. That's good mad. It was righteous indignation. It was something that led him to do something that was positive and necessary. That's good mad. Bad mad is when you turn that anger in on yourself.
It can take on a form of depression. It can affect you emotionally, it can affect you physiologically. It's a bad anger when you turn it in on yourself and you're not channeling it in a positive direction. So learn how to channel the positive moods. Learn how to channel even Some of those negative moods in a way that benefits you and that will impact somebody else. In fact, remember the fruit of the Spirit. When he talks about being filled with the Holy Spirit, another thing to pray every day is, lord, fill me with your Holy Spirit. Galatians 5. Love, joy, peace, gentleness, goodness, meekness, temperance, self control. He said, against all these things, there's never been a law passed. In other words, you're not gonna mess up and you're gonna have the right attitude and the right mood if you are filled with the Holy Spirit. So I would tell you before I get out of bed, before you get out of bed, just say, lord, thank you for bringing me through a night and giving me another day of opportunity. Fill me with your Holy Spirit. Help me, Lord, to be a reflection of who you are in someone else's life. Help the words of my mouth and the meditation of my heart help it to be acceptable and pleasing to your sight. Lord, you are my strength and you are my redeemer. Start your day like that. Wake up saying, good morning, Lord, not good Lord, it's morning. I mean, change the way you think and the way you start your day. I guarantee you it will make a huge difference because what's in your heart will inevitably come right out of your life. Right out of your life. In fact, in Mark, chapter seven, Jesus said, it's not what goes into the person that defiles them, it's what comes out of the person person that defiles them. You really don't know what's in you until you get squeezed, you get bumped, or you get shaken. And what's in you when those moments come, will come out of you. And everybody in the room is full of something.
We're all full of something. And what's in you comes out of you. When you're just like the toothpaste, you squeeze it, you're not shocked. Toothpaste, you know, no one's fractured that. You knew what was in there. Well, when you have something, you see these road rage things. Well, did you put that in that person's heart or did what you do trigger what was already in their heart? The reality is, it was in there all the time. What happened just triggered that experience. My point is, if we don't check our heart, if we don't guard our heart, because out of it comes all the issues of life, then what comes out of us isn't gonna be pleasant. Cause eventually you're gonna get bumped and eventually you're gonna get squeezed.
Eventually you're gonna get pressured, and what's in you will come out of you when that happens. And so I'm saying guard your heart. And the first step toward a healthy heart is healthy emotions. Let's pray together. Lord, thank you for your word that is so practical and so powerful. And yet, Lord, sometimes we stumble over the simplicity of it. I pray all of us will just take away something from the message and from the worship that will help us to be healthy, healthier this week in relationships, in our personal life, in our business life, Father, help us to be healthy emotionally. And, Lord, I acknowledge that, man. We just touched the surface. There's so much more here. There are people that really need help with a therapist to work through emotions. And sometimes people need medical attention and therapy to help them with their emotions. And I recognize that. And so, Father, we've just given some practical steps, and I would say if these don't begin to fix it, they need to explore the other steps. Because I believe with all my heart you want your people to be healthy emotionally. So, Father, I pray you'll begin that work as we begin a new year of developing within us healthy emotions. And I pray finally for my friends who may never have trusted you. There may never have been a moment when they've humbled their heart and they've given their heart to you, that this might be the time where they say, lord Jesus, come into my heart and forgive my sin. With everything I know about me, I now trust all that I know about you, Father, I receive you as my Savior today. In Jesus name we pray. Amen.
[00:35:56] Speaker A: Thank you so much for tuning in today. If you have any questions or prayer requests, please contact us by visiting metchurch.com so that we can follow up with you this week. We look forward to seeing you next week.
