Week 3 Day 3: Love Or Fear

"But the Holy Spirit produces this kind of fruit in our lives: love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control. There is no law against these things!" Galatians 5:22-23

Neurologists have determined that humans only have two kinds of emotions; love and fear. It is from each of those emotions that every other emotion exists. When fear is our motivating factor, the emotions we express are hate, anger, unrest, impatience, unkindness, meanness, unfaithfulness, we bully and we lack self-control. But when love is our motivating factor, we experience the emotions from the fruits of the Spirit.

Paul said in Galatians that there is no law against these fruits. In fact, Jesus showed us that when we live in the Spirit we fulfill the law. When we live in alignment with God, we will naturally obey the law…the nature of God. In other words, if love is our motivating factor, we don’t have to be told not to kill, steal or destroy. Those are things we do when fear motivates us.

The Bible says God is the source of all love and that the devil is the source of all fear. This knowledge helps us determine where the root of our thoughts is coming from. When we listen to our thoughts we need to determine if they are causing us to respond according to the fruits of the Spirit, or are they tempting us to act out of fear. Our emotions let us know who we are listening to.

Once we determine who has our ear, we must follow through with our actions. If we want to respond to a person or situation in any way that is less than loving, we must stop ourselves. Any words or actions that comes from the emotion of fear, no matter how much we think it's deserved, must be stopped.

Our feelings are indicators, not dictators, we don’t have to act out of our feelings. God didn’t give us feelings to bully us, He gave us feelings to guide us and help us know where our thoughts are headed. It's hard to stop the tide of our emotions, our habits and knee jerk reactions, but if we want to live an abundant life, we must learn how to control them. We need to “listen” to those voices, separate them out, choose the healthy ones and then respond accordingly. 

We have a choice to listen to the voice of God, the enemy of our soul, the world or our own voice. We can’t always choose what is said to us or what is done to us, but we can always choose how we respond. That is where our power lies because the ability to choose is also part of our image of God. We can listen to the voice of love, or the voice of fear. Our emotions tell us who has our ear.

When you're emotional do you think about where the root of those feelings come from? Name some times your emotions came from the good root of God and times it came from the poisonous root of Satan. 

Meditate on Galatians 5:22-23 today