It may not be news to most of you, but I am learning that our emotions and our will are two completely different things. I guess it’s something I have always known, but never really thought about or delved in to before. This morning I was reading my morning devotion (which I need to be more devoted to reading because it’s just great and I always learn just what I need from it) and it spoke about our will and our emotions. This opened up a lot of questions for me, so here I am…asking questions, finding the answers, and writing about it here. I have always purposefully stated away from studying things like theology and apologetics and I’m reminded why as I search for answers this morning. It seems to me that it is really just a lot of different interpretations and opinions from a lot of different religions. I don’t have the space in my brain to figure that out. I go with what the Holy Spirit shows or tells me and I get my confirmation in the word and go from there.

A struggle in our home at the moment is our kids being the age where they are learning huge life lessons. It’s hard to watch them get hurt by others, come to the conclusion that life isn’t fair, and face the consequences of their own bad choices. One of our children was recently in a relationship that we could see from the beginning was going to end badly, but after a lot of prayer, we decided we had to let her make her path and just go the journey alongside with her so she knew she wasn’t alone. One thing that I could see from a parents perspective is that the relationship was based on emotion and fluff. Since that’s the basic prerequisite for young relationships most of us have been there at some point in our life. This morning when I read, “It is an act of your will, not your emotions.” God used the fresh thoughts I’ve had in seeing my child making decisions that were based on emotions and seemed so immature and unhealthy to me to show me how I do the same thing in my own life with my relationship with Him.

Whenever I think about “my will” I instantly think of when Jesus was in the garden praying before his crucifixion. He knew what was about to happen and understandably, he wasn’t excited about it. This morning while reading this story in Mark, I really started to think about the emotions of Jesus at this moment. I won’t lie and say I didn’t have some sort of relief or clarity to realize that Jesus was having painful anxiety over what was going to happen. He knew the consequence of Him being the Perfect Lamb was torture and death and He was scared and anxious about what was happening. My children and I all deal with extreme anxiety so I’ve been thinking a lot about it and asking God to show me about the issue through spiritual eyes. This morning, He showed me that the anxiety in itself is not the bad thing. It’s an emotion and He made those emotions and expects us to use them to drive us and make us human. However, I think the main purpose of those emotions is to give us this thing that we can use to submit ourselves to His will and not live a life reacting on our emotions. We have emotions and our choices are to submit to those emotions and react based on them (which signals immaturity) or we can take those emotions and acknowledge them then say, “God, I feel “this” way about it, but I choose to make my choices based on your will. I choose your will and not my emotions.” How many times have we seen in the Bible where someone reacted to how they felt instead of choosing to obey God by submitting to His will? David and Bathsheba comes to mind. This is a part of being human and it is something we will all spend earthly eternity dealing with so it doesn’t make us “bad” when we opt to follow our emotion instead of God’s will. It’s where His perfect grace can enter because that is what keeps us going when we mess up. If we didn’t mess up we wouldn’t need grace and if we didn’t need grace then Jesus went through all that for nothing.

I have more to say but I will end here today. Tomorrow I want to share what He has shown to me about anxiety. It’s something so many live with so I think it’s important enough to get it’s own page. My prayer for us all today is that we will be shown what His will for us is in whatever situations we are going through and that we will all come to a healthy relationship with our emotions but that we would be matured, even if it means to grow in the refiners fire.