The Emotions That War Within – Part 2

The soul consists of the mind, will and emotions. Therefore, in response to a sermon that encourages believers to avoid sin, the soul has three options: it can will itself to avoid sin, it can use thoughts and it can use emotions to avoid sin.

Emotions can be seen as the power behind thoughts because thoughts often have little relevance to us until they become charged with emotion. The thought of something that someone says to us, for instance, only causes us to take offence when it becomes charged with anger and a sense of hurt.

It is emotions, therefore, that we need to be mindful of. If we find that we are becoming emotional regarding a subject then it would be wise for us to take a closer look at what is going on in our soul to see if we are attempting to deal with an issue that only God’s grace is able to handle.

A great deal of a person’s sinful thoughts and behaviour will be fuelled by lust as the soul asserts that a certain thing will meet its needs. This lust can be likened to the helium in a balloon of thought that rises up out of the subconscious mind into the conscious mind.

With a Christian’s religious teaching, he may find that he is shocked by that thought which he then proceeds to deal with in the only ways that he knows how. In the absence of teaching on grace by faith, he tries to use the resources of his own soul to deal with the lust.

Straightaway, we have conflict because on the one hand the soul thinks that something will meet its needs or at least pacify its cravings for a time, but the soul also believes that if it yields to that lust then God will punish him and he will lose his blessing.

So in response to the balloon of thought powered by lust, it seeks to weigh it down with other emotions which can be likened to ballast: guilt, anger, pride and hatred. This could have the effect of suppressing the thought but it does not go away entirely. The thought resisted in such a manner becomes repressed into the subconscious where it still exerts influence and is waiting for an adequate channel of expression.

This is why it seems as if there is such a struggle going on when we try to overcome temptation in our own effort. It can feel as if there is a war going on in our soul, and in actual fact, there is. Our own character, our own good intentions can be resisted by our own negative emotions. Our own thoughts and our will can wage war against our emotions: there is a war within our own souls!

It seems that as soon as a person decides to maintain what he believes to be a good character, it seems that there is a part of him that resists the notion. And so it is with the new Christian or the Christian who rededicates himself: he chooses to shun what is sinful and decides to conduct himself in the way that the Bible says he ought – only to find that his own lusts are fighting against his good intentions.