Do you have a sound mind? Are your emotions rooted in God's Word? Do you take your emotions and thoughts captive unto Christ or do you let them push you around? Dr Phil has a saying, "Do you have uncontrollable impulses or do you have impulses that are uncontrolled?" There are many conditions such as traumatic brain injury, intellectual disabilities, tourette's syndrome, cerebral palsy... That cause uncontrollable impulses. Yet, this world is full of people that do not have to struggle with those physical or mental problems and they walk around all day with impulses that are not being controlled. By the lack of peace that we see in this world it's evident that most people are just out there everyday re-acting from pure emotions and not keeping themselves in check.
Let me give you a few examples. There's the impulse not controlled of fearing to move forward. The fear will then trigger more impulses not controlled such as, making excuses, isolating, arguing with others, or developing control issues...
Another impulse not controlled is to retreat. That will trigger a domino effect of other uncontrolled impulses such as depression, isolation, panicked behavior, acting like a wounded cat or self pity...
The third uncontrolled impulse is to freeze. That will give birth to uncontrolled impulses like not doing anything to help yourself but usually putting it all on another person. They will cry, scream, throw fits because they don't want to do anything to help themselves. All they want to do is get someone to come and enable them.
I know I'm throwing around the phrase "impulses not controlled" a lot. But if you go all the way back to the beginning you will see that when a situation happens we have an initial choice. The choice is whether we will react with impulses uncontrolled and display the behaviors of an angry, frightened, needy person or control those initial impulses and be a person who sets a healthy trajectory elevating themselves to the light rather than the darkness.
When we live with bad choices it's inevitable that we will live a life with more problems. And those deep internal problems always manifest themselves outward as well. Some of the outward impulses that are not controlled are negative facial gestures, gossip, slander, verbal manipulations and abuse, a hysterical need for control, outbursts of anger, physical ebullition where your blood boils with fury and you become an offensive blowhart, flatulating out noxious, angry, hurtful words. Pretty much a person that no one wants to be around.
Or, we can take a deep breath, go sit with the Lord and read his Word as we talk to him and journal what he says back. By doing that we can have a sound mind from which to begin developing a plan or strategy of how we want to deal with the situation in a healthy and mature way.
My emotions controlled my life for many years and most of my regrets in life are from impulses that I did not control. God wants to help us change but he needs something from us first. He needs us to muster up a little bit of courage to stand up and tell him that we WANT to change. He needs us to show him that we want to let go of our old behaviors that hurt not only other people but us as well. I started by praying fervently that he would begin to make me want to change. I showed him that I was serious by spending my mornings with him, reading my Bible and doing devotionals. I began journaling and as he spoke to me through the word of God and through his Spirit I feverishly noted everything that he told me and my thoughts about it. When he saw that I was serious he immediately began to meet me where I was at and started helping me grow. Once I made that commitment and started spending time with him I can think of no other place that I want to be. He has turned my sickness into health and my depression into Joy and Hope!
Philippians 1:6,
Being confident of this very thing, that he who began a good work in you will perfect it until the day of Jesus Christ:
Philippians 4:13,
I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me.
I don't know if someone reading this thinks that they are too far gone for God's love but that is a lie from the enemy and you need to call it out as that! You are loved unconditionally and he wants to lift us up out of our mess and clean us up. It doesn't make him love us anymore after we're cleaned up just as it doesn't make him love us any less when we're messed up. When you can come to the knowledge of how much he truly loves you, your whole life will change. So, grip tightly with determination to the promises of God. Show him you're serious. He honors a persistent and fervent desire and prayer for his will.
