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Three Questions to Manage Your Emotions
By Rick Warren

“From now on, then, you must live the rest of your earthly lives controlled by God’s will and not by human desires.” (1 Peter 4:2 TEV)

The Bible says in 1 Peter 4:2, “From now on, then, you must live the rest of your earthly lives controlled by God’s will and not by human desires” (TEV).

What are human desires? They're your emotions and your affections. Now that you are a Christ-follower, your life should be controlled by God’s will, not by how you feel.

Let me give you three questions to ask about your emotions when you’re trying to figure out how to deal with how you feel. When you’re angry or upset or frustrated — whatever you’re feeling — ask these three questions:

1. “What’s the real reason I’m feeling this?” Maybe the answer is fear or worry. Maybe it relates to something your dad said to you years ago, and when your husband said it to you, he got all the anger against your dad that you pent up.

2. “Is it true?” Is what you’re feeling at that moment true? There’s a point in the Bible where Elijah gets so discouraged that he went to God and complained, “God, I’m the only one in the entire nation of Israel left serving you.” And God challenged him, saying, “Are you kidding me? I’ve got all these people who are still serving me! You’re acting like you’re the only one trying to do the right thing in the whole world! No. That’s not true.”

3. “Is what I’m feeling helping me or hurting me?” Will you get what you want by continuing to feel this way? A lot of feelings we have feel natural, but they’re actually self-defeating.

Let’s say you go to a restaurant, and the service is extremely slow. You wait a long time to be served, and then a couple comes in 15 minutes after you and gets their meal before you do. You get increasingly more irritated until you feel something welling up inside you.

What’s the real reason you’re feeling that way? You’re hungry!

Is it true? Yes. You’re frustrated because the service is slow. But is your emotion helping or hurting? Do you get better service by getting angry at the server? Absolutely not.

Does nagging work? Has it ever worked? When somebody tells you all the things you’re doing wrong, does it make you want to change? No! All it does is make you defensive.

When you ask yourself these three questions, you get a better grip on why you feel the way you do and what you need to do to help the situation.

That’s called managing your emotions.

Talk It Over

Why do you think it’s hard to sometimes admit that the emotion we think we feel isn’t actually true?

Think of a recent experience where you felt angry or frustrated with someone. How do you think asking these three questions would have changed the outcome of the incident?

What do you think it means to be controlled by God’s will?