Emotions pt 1 | What Our Emotions Were Originally Designed to Be - More to The Story - Episode 4
Emotions pt 1 | What were our emotions originally designed to be
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Emotions. We all have them. We were designed with them.
God gave them to us in the very beginning. But what did he plan for our emotions to be? Let's explore that today. Recently, I began to think about emotions.
I think about them often because we are all feeling some kind of emotion every single day, whether it's good or bad, or a mixture of both. And I began to wonder, what exactly did the very first evidence of emotions come to be in the Bible? Also, I think it warrants, once we look at those first emotions, that those emotions should be the emotions that we aspire to have. And once Adam and Eve were removed from the garden, what emotions did they have then? And how do we get back to having the emotions from the garden? So first of all, they only had good emotions.
We know that. But let's read, um, let's start in Genesis 1. Now, let me encourage you, as always, to read everything in its full context. I am skipping around for time's sake, although I may be reading a little more than normal today, because I want you to get a fuller picture here.
And I know sometimes when I begin to read a scripture, you think, now where, what does this have to do with it? But it always goes somewhere, and it ties together. So right now, I am reading from the Amplified Bible, Genesis 1, and I am on 20, verse 26.
God said, let us, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, make mankind in our image, after our likeness, and let them have complete authority over the fish of the sea, the birds of the air, the tame beasts, and over all the earth, and over everything that creeps upon the earth.
Verse 27. So God created man in his own image, in the image and likeness of God. He created him male and female.
He created them. Now, then we skip over here to Genesis 2, 1. Then the Lord formed man from the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath or spirit of life. The man became a living being, and the Lord God planted a garden toward the east in Eden, which means delight.
And there he put the man whom he had formed, framed, and constituted. Let me stop for just a moment there. Often when we visualize Genesis and the creation, we get a picture in our head of the Garden of Eden, and that God created Adam and Eve within the garden.
But he created all of creation. He created it lush and green. He created it beautiful.
He created it perfect, all of it, the entire thing. Then he planted a special garden just for Adam and Eve, after he had created Adam. So let's read that again, thinking about that.
Then the Lord formed man from the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils. And the Lord God planted a garden toward the east in Eden. And there he put the man whom he had formed.
I think that's really special. I know this isn't necessarily on the path of emotions, but if we are truly created in the likeness and image of God, which we just read, that compassion, that love that he had for mankind, first of all, the pattern he used was himself. The very best pattern that he had to give.
So he created Adam and Eve off of the pattern of himself. Everything about him, of man, was patterned after God. So his emotions, here we go, we're talking about emotions finally, his emotions were in Adam and Eve.
His love for Adam is displayed when here he's created the entire world, beautiful, wonderful, lush. And now he's taken and he's created a very special garden just for Adam and Eve. I think that is one of the most overlooked things.
When we talk about God, we say, oh yes, God loves us in the famous John 3, 16 verse, God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten son. Yes, that is absolutely outstanding. But from the very beginning, God never had ulterior motives.
God created man because he wanted man. He loved man from the very beginning. So as soon as he created him, he said, this gorgeous creation that I've made isn't good enough.
We have to have something really special. It would be like, you know, having a house with a beautiful yard, and then all of a sudden you come along and say, okay, right here in this back corner, I'm going to make something really spectacular. And so that's what he did.
And he put Adam and Eve there. And that kind of love is all-encompassing. Stumbling over my words there, sorry.
But that kind of love is a love that we can relate to maybe more than giving away our son. I can't hardly wrap my head around that one. That one's too far outside of my wheelhouse.
I have two sons, and I have many grandsons and great-grandsons. So to try to wrap my head around that is difficult. I know it's big.
I know it's huge. I know it's far beyond anything I could do. But I can wrap my head around loving one of my children, grandchildren, great-grandchildren.
I can wrap my head around wanting to create something super special just for them. A place just for them to live in. It was their home, and it was the best of the best.
Okay, so there was one of our first emotions. It wasn't from Adam and Eve, but it was from God. After he had surveyed everything and said, it's good, it's good.
So let's hop down. So verse 15 of Genesis 2 says, And the Lord God took the man and put him in the garden of Eden to tend, guard, and keep it. Not as a slave.
Not as a, okay, I've given you this. Now you got to take care of it kind of deal. But let's face it, we all need something to do.
And so he made this fantastic garden. And then he put him in it, and he said, okay, now you can tend it and care for it. And let's face it, at this point there were no weeds.
At this point things didn't die the way they do now. So it was almost like saying, oink, oink, I'm going to give you this garden to tend to. And how easy that would have been.
And Adam would have been in this lavish garden, and he would have flourished tending to these plants and these animals. So now let's hop over to Genesis 3 and go to verse 6. And when the woman saw that the tree was good, this is the tree of good and evil that God said don't eat of that tree. Now that's a whole other discussion to wonder why did he even put it in there in the first place? But we're not going to go there today.
That's a rabbit hole I don't want to go down today. When woman saw that the tree was good, pleasant for food, and that it was delightful to look at, and a tree to be desired in order to make one wise, she took of its fruit and ate, and she gave some also to her husband, and he ate. Up until this point we only had love, we had there was points of respect, there was delight, because this is before she ate of that tree.
So anything that is good and positive, also they were naked as babies, and they didn't have a clue. There was zero shame, absolutely zero shame. So if you can think of any good emotion, that's what they were feeling and experiencing and living in.
They were in the midst of feeling God emotions. Anything that God feels that is positive and rich and nourishing, that's what Adam and Eve were experiencing until then the eyes of both of them were opened, and they knew that they were naked, and ...
(Transcribed by TurboScribe.ai. Go Unlimited to remove this message.)
More to the story episode 5 emotions part 2. 15 for brethren now this is a letter Paul wrote to the Galatia church for you brethren brethren are indeed called to freedom only do not let your freedom be an incentive to your flesh and an opportunity or an excuse for selfishness that's kind of like what I was talking about when we get angry and then we say oh it's just it we use the excuse oh it's just righteous anger we know well and good it's not but through love you should serve one another for the whole law concerning human relationships which is where emotions are the most evident is complied with in one precept you shall love your neighbor as you do yourself because let's face it we're you know in a fallen world we're very selfish 90 percent of the time until we allow God to transform us verse 15 but if you bite and devour one another in partisan strife be careful that you and your whole fellowship are not consumed by one another I love this because I think if we are looking out in the world right now and it has happened it's a progressive thing it gets better it ebbs and flows and I think social media has put a brighter light on it happening I think it was always out there I mean goodness you can look at the old west and see how much gunslinging and fighting and the covered wagons and the indians uh wanting to keep their territory and keep the the people off of it there's been warring and strife between people since the inception of man but now that we have social media the light is brighter on it and we feel like things are getting worse when I think if you will look at the stats it's not as bad as it might have been in the past but what we see with this bright social media light shining on it is biting one another and devouring one another and this is one thing that really saddens me is that if we say we are a follower of Christ if we acknowledge Jesus as Lord we should even if we disagree we should love one another and not bite and devour one another in partisan strife and partisan means that you do have a different opinion and then what they have but you should not get it to the point of devouring each other and biting each other and destroying because the enemy wants nothing more than to disunify us he wants to fracture the kingdom of God he wants to pull us apart separate us make us angry at each other so that we can't be unified and if we can swallow our pride and say okay I may not agree with that opinion but you're my brother or sister in Christ I won't bite and devour you over it I choose to join with you in unity because being unified in the kingdom of God is far more important than my little opinion or your opinion and I think that we've missed an opportunity here if we want to help the world if we want to progress the gospel if we want to win souls for Christ regardless of our opinions our differing opinions then we need to unify and that calls for maturity that calls for us to grow up put it aside put aside our partisan beefs our partisan opinions and not allow the enemy to pull us apart verse 16 but I say walk and live habitually that means constantly in the holy spirit responsive to and controlled and guided by the spirit then you will certainly not gratify the cravings and desires of the flesh of human nature without God for the desires of the flesh are opposed to the holy spirit and the desires of the spirit are opposed to the flesh godless human nature for those are antagonistic to each other continually withstanding and in conflict with each other so that you are not free but prevented from doing what you desire to do now this desire is not a fleshly desire this desire is the desire to be all that God has called us to be and I'm going to skip down here I do have um this printed out um but I would really prefer you guys read Galatians 5 and if you have access to an amplified bible you can find that online by the way bible hub any of those have it he's talking about the um bondage of the flesh he's talking about our lack of freedom because if we are living in flesh with fleshly pursuits we're in bondage to those fleshly pursuits it's like an addiction so to speak but those are and and many of these are obvious and some of them may not be to you immorality impurity indecency idolatry sorcery enmity strife now we're getting close to home enmity strife jealousy anger which is also ill temper selfishness divisions dissensions party spirit faction sex with peculiar opinions heresies envy drunkenness carousing and the like now a lot of those yeah oh yeah yeah I would never do that but my goodness when you get over here to enmity strife and jealousy I don't care how long you've been walking with the lord we're very tempted by those and also we're very tempted to have strife with our fellow Christians who don't believe the way we do and don't have the opinions we do as I referred to just a little bit ago I warn you beforehand just as I did previously that those who do such things shall not inherit the kingdom of God now the kingdom of God came with Jesus but we have to be Christ followers we have to accept Jesus we have to receive the Holy Spirit to be part of the kingdom of God here on this earth so this isn't a something ethereal way way off in the by and by this is the here and the now we can step into the kingdom of God and be partakers of the kingdom of God on a daily basis here on this earth but the fruit of the Holy Spirit the work which his presence within us accomplishes is love joy gladness joy which is gladness peace patience and even temper or forbearance kindness goodness benevolence faithfulness gentleness meekness humility self-control which means self-restraint okay there we go how do we have the emotions that please God we accept Jesus and we receive the Holy Spirit and walk with him on a daily basis allowing him to direct us and guide us and discipline us which is not a harsh thing it is conviction and then going the way that he has told us to go to do the things he's told us to do especially in the beginning if we've lived a life of all of the the things I said earlier the impurity and decency and more immorality if we were heavy into those actions then it may take us a while I believe that God can though immediately deliver us of many of those things but the challenge of walking some of those out of daily laying down that part of our flesh that still plagues us is something that God allows to build character in us and to build strength in us so we can have the good emotions we can have all of these glorious emotions love joy which is gladness peace patience and even temper we can have that that is our legacy if we are a follower of Christ and have allowed the Holy Spirit to guide us on a daily basis but just like Cain if we get our knickers in a twist and we don't want to do what father says then we can know that if things are not going to go well for us not because he's punishing us outright but it's just like saying don't go out in the road there's a truck coming and we just bow up and say I'm going to go out in the road because I want to go out in the road don't go out in the road there's a truck coming well I want to go out in the road and that is a simplistic way of showing how we often are we well I want to do what I want to do I want to get drunk all the time and I want to take drugs and I want to have sex with everybody in town because it brings me fleeting pleasure and I emphasize fleeting it may be as simple as oh I would never do that I left I laid that down a long time ago but what about strive what about jealousy are you in a job where a co-worker seems to be the golden one a co-worker seems to get all the promotions all the accolades all the pats on a bat on their back and while you sit in the corner and slave away we get very very tempted to get sour we get very very tempted to be jealous so you can't act pious and say oh I don't do any of that because we are all tempted we are all tempted with some form of adverse emotion that when we came out of the garden as a human race those things came with us so let's get back to the emotions that God desired for us in the garden think about the love the peace the joy think about the things that God designed for us for Adam and Eve while they were in the garden that's a different take on emotions I think we're all very aware of what good and bad emotions are but I wanted to kind of put a contrast on it that even when Cain was out of the garden of course he had never seen been part of the garden but when he was out and he was still in the presence of God's manifest presence he chose to be sullen and disobedient and it only brought him pain and grief so let me challenge you today each and every moment and each and every day we have a choice if something doesn't go right stop don't have a knee-jerk reaction and immediately go off in a negative bend stop and say okay Lord this hurt this was a shock this doesn't feel good but holy spirit I choose to allow you to comfort me because he is the comforter I choose to allow you to comfort me and lead me where do I go from here from this moment that hurts so bad this moment that makes me so angry this moment that makes me want to lash out where do I go from here lead me and help me to forgive I choose to forgive even if I don't feel it but think about that today thank you for listening be sure and subscribe to this podcast plus my other podcast the story with Nancy Jackson where you will hear the actual professionally narrated novel that syncs with after the story link is in the notes
(Transcribed by TurboScribe.ai. Go Unlimited to remove this message.)
