'So what, have a hiney fit--we're going anyway!'

“It’s the habit of our old sin nature to use emotions to immobilize us,” says Jordan. “When emotions sit upon the throne of your will that’s when they get to be a real problem.

“When you take action based on the way you feel about something, your feelings are running your life and you'll wind up in complete revolt and turmoil, where your mind is programmed by error. It produces emotions and desires based upon error and that results in a corresponding action that comes out of the error.

“If your mind is renewed by the Word of God, and your mind is programmed with truth, with the facts of who God says you are, then you’re going to take actions by faith in that truth that result in emotions that support the actions.

“The problem is you have the thinking that produces emotions that produce the action. That’ll get you in trouble because what’s producing the action? The emotion.

“If you have thinking that by faith you execute the action based upon, what happens then? The action produces fruit, one of which is emotion.

You remember Romans 6? ‘Know ye not.’ Fact. ‘Reckon.’ There’s faith. What happens when you have your faith based in facts? You’ll have fruit. When you ‘yield your members as instruments of righteousness’ and you get out and start bearing the fruit of the Spirit, one of the fruits of the Spirit is LOVE and another is JOY. You see, it comes as a result of being who you are and living that out.

*****

“Your emotions are kind of dumb; they act on the way you think. That’s the way they’re designed to act. So what you want to do is have your life programmed by truth. Choose to do what you do in life—take the actions that you take based on the truth of God’s Word and then the emotions come along and support it, and if they don’t at the moment, so what?! You still did what was right.

“Sometimes your emotions go kicking and screaming. They don’t want to go because you’ve allowed them to sit on the throne and you know what a little spoiled brat does the first time you start making him behave: ‘Waaah, waaah, waaah!’

“You’re designed to reign in life by one even Jesus Christ. He says, ‘Come, sit upon the throne with me and let’s reign in life.’ Not you emotions. Your will submissive to God’s will. Your faith resting in an understanding of who God has made you in Jesus Christ. That’s the way your life is designed to function.

“Some time you’ll go and your emotions will say, ‘I’m not going to go!’ You say, ‘Okay, we’re going anyway.’ And sometime they’ll get in the backseat of the car and ‘Yeowhaagh!’ and you say, ‘Okay, if you want to sit there and have a hiney fit and waste your time, okay, but we’re going!’

“And you know what? You go. And if you have to go with your emotions kicking and screaming and not wanting to go, go anyway! And the next time you get up to go, your emotions will say, ‘I don’t want to go,’ and you say, ‘We’re going to go anyway,’ and sooner or later, your emotions will look at it and say, ‘Well, I guess he’s going to go; we might as well go with him but we don’t have to have a good time.’

“And you just keep going and eventually your emotions will look at each other and say, ‘Oh well, he’s going to go and, you know, he seems to have a good time when he goes. Maybe if we go and relax a little bit we might have a good time.’

“Before it’s over with, nine times out of ten, your emotions will come along and support the actions of your will and if they don’t, SO WHAT?! You still did what’s right.”

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“The biblical definition of the word ‘submit’ is ‘to give your heart over to another person’s will.’ Sub means ‘under.’ You put yourself under them. You give your heart over to your spouse’s will, for example. That’s the challenge; that’s the dare of love.

“It’s the dare of faith. And if you dare to do it by faith, because God said to do it, you’ve made the decision based upon the truth of what God’s Word is.

“It’s like a bank account. If I’ve allowed my emotions to look at something and say, ‘NO, I won’t follow!’ my emotions can look at my balance and if it’s overdrawn, they aren’t going to follow.

“And if you know what God’s Word says to do and you do it by faith and your emotions don’t follow, it’s because that bank account with your name on it is empty! If it has a balance, your emotions will look at it and say ‘Oh, hey, there’s someone who values me; I can feel good about them!’

“But if your will says, ‘Here’s your Savior, you’re to serve Him, submit to Him,’ and your emotions look at a bank account that’s overdrawn, they say, ‘Oh no, that won’t mean me good.’ And they respond that way. This is terribly important for you to understand.

“You can’t allow the tyranny of your emotions to run your life and make decisions or you’re going to wind up in the can. You’ll wind up in error; you’ll wind up in a kind of destruction.

“It doesn’t work to let your emotions run you. That’s why some little strategies don’t work. That’s why the selfish demands, and the disrespectful judgments, and the angry outbursts, and the independent behavior, they don’t work. They’re not strategies that get success. They just get more of the same.”