EMOTIONS-BAD AND GOOD

Fenced in by more than barbed wire.What is he really thinking as he notes the unknown stalker a few yards away. "Will I run(hop) or pretend there is no danger?"

       

      a bible study by Frank Hunting

 this was developed for people to study over a weekend 

Study 1

EMOTIONS ARE IMPORTANT

How important are emotions? Are they important enough to devote   a weekend to studying them?Usually when we talk about emotions in the way we shall over the weekend some Christians will pipe up: “Oh you’re having Psychological studies! I want studies from the Bible.”

If the word emotion doesn’t appear in the Bible, what we call emotions are spoken about again and again in scripture.Indeed they play a most important part in scripture teaching.

Modern Psychology backs up the emphasis given by the Bible to our emotions.Our emotions can cut us off from God…..and from our fellow men….and that is very, very serious.

EMOTIONS CAUSE

Emotions are the root cause of a whole range of human experience ……..good and bad…happy and unhappy…..delightful or miserable.

Emotions out of control cause splits in families,rows in churches,tummy ulcers,tension headaches and an amazing range of psychosomatic ailments…. And a great deal of personal unhappiness and misery… and we have hardly started on the list of troubles caused by having wrong or bad emotional reactions.

PERHAPS WE SHOULD TAKE MORE NOTICE

Perhaps as Christians we should take more notice of our feelings.

It is clear from experience that many Christians have feelings about which they do nothing(they may even justify them) but which the bible says is sin……..and in some cases, very black sin.

IGNORANCE

Ignorance is always a tool which the devil uses . And ignorance about our feelings is certainly used by the devil. This alone should make us concerned to understand our emotional reactions.

DISCUSSION

At this point your group could have a general discussion about the role our feelings play in our general living. perhaps the discussion could be based on the premise: The more we know about our emotions , the more quickly we can detect and deal with harmful ones: and so the more we can seek to have good emotional reactions. The more we handle our feelings correctly the more mature are we likely to be as persons.

GOOD AND BAD

Feelings may be good or bad. They may contribute to our general well being( and also to others) or they may be destructive in their effects on us.

Generally speaking the fewer bad feelings, negative feelings, destructive feelings we have, the more good feelings we have, the better for us and every body around us.

WE NEED TO KNOW

Thus we need to know how to correctly deal with bad feelings and how to cultivate good feelings.

Some people have developed habits of feeling negatively . other people have developed habits of feeling positively. They have made a habit of positive responses.

DISCUSSION

Your group may look at general topics or situations , or ways of reacting to people in which habits of negative feelings are developed.

Your group may look at ways we can develop habits of positive feelings.

Feelings, good or bad are like a lot of things about us, we have them because we have formed the habit of having them. So the let your group look at the ways we form good and bad habits of positive feelings.

BY NOW

By now if your group has got its teeth into the subject of our feelings you should be realising what important things our emotions  are.They are very much part of our lives. And we are very much controlled by our emotions, this whether we are realising it or not.

DISCUSSION

1 We stop short of letting Jesus convert our emotions.

         Could your group discuss this statement?

2. There are feelings we have but we try to hide them from others.

         Could your group list the most common feelings we want to hide.

         What results from doing this?

DISCUSSION

Most of us think that we make our decisions on common sense or because we have carefully weighed up the pros and cons , or that we have very carefully worked out the logic of the situation, or action to be taken .

More times than most of us would care to admit it is not our common sense , or the pros and cons , or logic but the way we feel about the matter that determines what we do or the decision we take.

Would your group like to to examine this?

EMOTIONS

By Frank Hunting

Leaders notes for study one. Emotions Bad and Good.

In this series of studies we are dealing with the more common emotions- bad and good.Good emotions which help us all , bad emotions which can be quite destructive to to any one of us.

There are some emotional conditions for which people need to be helped in depth and this help may need to be given by someone skilled in spiritual counselling.

One of the things which makes us seem irrational  or quite inconsistent is that we all tend to believe what we feel.

You may have very strong feelings about someone and your feelings are based on totally wrong facts or information or prejudices.

No matter how wrong the basis of your feelings you will believe what your feelings are saying to you.

This why we have so many unreasonable  and opposite attitudes held by by people who are supposedly looking at the same circumstances or situations.

Thus feelings like hate or resentment or dislike or envy distort the truth and  colour things being said  or done . How we feel frequently determines how we think-especially about people ….and this is serious.

So our study of negative feelings and how to get rid of them ---even replacing them with good feelings---is most important for every level of living.

CHRISTIANS SEEM TO

Very often  Christians seem to talk as though the only thing Jesus was dealing with on the Cross was sin.

But there are other things from which we need saving that we don’t usually list under the headings of sin. Our feelings is one of these.Yet for far too many Christians their feelings have never been converted.

IT SHOULD BE REMEMBERED

We should recognise that the conversion of our feelings does not necessarily take place at the beginning of our Christian life when we are “born again of the Spirit of God”.

Like our thinking (our thought processes ) our emotions (the way we habitually feel- especially towards people) usually needs a process of conversion.

(the above notes are background up to and including the first discussion)

GOOD AND BAD

The point of this section is :The way we feel may have been habitually cultivated by us.

For many it is normal for them to worry.They do so because they have made a habit of worrying .

Some normally criticise (adversely) why ? Because they have made a habit of doing so.

Habits or feelings should be picked up by the individual.

Perhaps one of the most helpful things you can do for the members of your group at this point is to get them started  looking at (privately) their negative, habitual feelings..

DISCUSSION

“{We stop short of letting Jesus convert our emotions”

One of the greatest things in the Christian Church to come to light in the last 50 or 60 years is that our salvation is for the WHOLE MAN(OR WOMAN)

Surely passages like Matt 5:48; 2 Corinthians 3:17-18;  2 Corinthians 5:17 have a lot to say about the conversion of our feelings. How can we become new people altogether if our emotions remain unconverted.?

“There are feelings we have but we try to hide them from others..”

We don’t hide them from people we intensely dislike.

We do tend to hide then from people we want to have a good opinion of us.

Why do we do this?

One reason is, our feelings reveal the kind of people we are at the depths . And if there is something nasty, or petty ,or evil or  selfish at the depths, we don’t want this to be revealed by our feelings to people we want to think well of us. Rather than do the right thing ,get rid of the wrong  feelings, we try to hide them.

How much hypocrisy is there in this?