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Emotional Responses – by Holly Carr

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Scripture Reading

“Above all else, guard your heart, for everything you do flows from it” – Proverbs 4:23 NIV

Devotional Thoughts

Your emotions travel 80,000 times faster than your thoughts travel. Isn’t that amazing? This one piece of incredible information helps us to understand why when something bad happens, we feel raw and treacherous emotions, but we are not able to immediately remember what to do or who to call. Conversely, it is also true when something wonderful happens and we are wrapped up in the thrill of emotional exhilaration, at that moment also, we do not have the cognitive capacity to decide exactly what to do next. All reasonable and practical thinking arrives in our nerve center long after the emotion has expressed itself.

The tremendous speed of our emotional responses to life helps to explain why, even Christians, often tend to operate out of feelings rather than out of principle. Something – or Someone – needs to harness your emotions that travel at breakneck speed and force them to submit to the fruit that is only found in the Holy Spirit. If you continue to allow your emotions to rapidly yank you through life, you will always say things that are embarrassing, act in ways that are unbecoming, and never be the person that God intended for you to be. You will end up having the effect of a rapid-moving, volcanic eruption that decimates everyone in its violent, angry path.

There is little in life that is of more importance than securing control of your heart issues.

When the word “heart” is used, particularly in the Old Testament, it refers to one’s soul or the birthplace of the senses, emotions, and affections. Your heart determines how you will act in any situation and is the seat of your will and purpose in life. The Bible says to “guard” or to “watch over” that part of your life with utmost attention.

Your heart is of great value to God and it should be treated as a treasure of great worth.

The problem is with the heart itself: your heart does not want to be guarded. It desires to loudly express itself and all of its opinions. Your heart is passionate about ventilating, vomiting and vocalizing every little feeling it has ever experienced. The Bible never says that we are allowed to express everything that is in our heart – it simply says to guard it.

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