When your life is out of alignment with God’s Word you will almost certainly experience painful consequences. When your emotions get out of order and start to determine your well-being, you may find yourself locked in self-made prisons from which it can be hard to escape. You need to find a proper balance and learn how to trust in God. Let Tony Evans show you the path to emotional freedom.
The Urban Alternative (Tony Evans)
Day 1
Scriptures: John 10:10, 2 Timothy 1:7
Emotions are to the soul what the senses are to the body. They reveal the way we feel about life’s circumstances. People who have gone the wrong direction with their emotions struggle to survive and may feel helpless, hopeless, and worthless.
An emotional stronghold does not refer to having a bad day every once in a while. It refers to when you cannot shake the negative entrapment that has grasped your life, resulting in uncontrolled discouragement, depression, and sorrow.
Instead of doing what so many people do (which is to try to deny or suppress emotional strongholds through pills, entertainment, sex, or spending), I want to help you discover the root behind what you are experiencing so that you can overcome it. The truth is that God did not create you to carry emotional strongholds for five, twenty, or forty years, or for any time at all.
Rather, God has promised you, in Christ, a full life. Jesus said, “I came that they may have life, and have it abundantly.” (John 10:10b). He has not called you to live each day defeated. He wants you to know and trust that He is the One who is in control of all things, and that He is watching over the entirety of your life. If you are not experiencing the abundant life that Christ freely gives, it is time for a U-turn. Turn to God, and ask Him to reveal the areas where you are lacking trust and that an emotional stronghold may have set in. He wants to help you learn how to see past your sorrow—to view your life from His vantage point. He can make a miracle out of what looks like a mess.
Are there emotions that seem to have a stranglehold on your life? Are you ready to turn them over to God?
Day 2
Scriptures: Romans 6:1-4, 2 Corinthians 5:17
Let me remind you of a very important truth about emotions: they don’t have an intellect.
They don’t think. They merely respond. Emotions must borrow thoughts in order to stimulate feelings. Therefore, whoever or whatever controls your thoughts, controls how you feel. Your emotions are established and ruled by how you think about the circumstances in your life. So, if you want to master your emotions and overcome emotional strongholds in your life, you need to master your thinking.
When you align your thoughts with God’s truth, you will be set free.
Take a look in the mirror. That person you see was co-crucified, co-buried, and co-resurrected with Christ. In the eyes of God, when Jesus died two thousand years ago, so did you. When He was buried, you lay in the tomb with Him. When He rose, you did too. Even though you may only have received Christ a short time ago, God took what happened to Jesus so many years ago and has made it part of your spiritual reality.
Satan is a master at planting thoughts in your mind and making you think they are your own. Perhaps you do hear him saying something like, “I can’t overcome low self-esteem and the comparison trap. I can’t be free from this emotional bondage. I can’t resist these old habits of falling into depression.” He may say those things to you, or you may even say them to yourself, but in order to overcome them, you must stop believing the lies. All those statements may have been true when the old you was alive, but that person died on the cross along with Christ. You are a completely new creation (2 Corinthians 5:17).
What lies are you believing about yourself?
Day 3
Scriptures: Proverbs 3:5, Psalms 118:8,
One of the major emotional strongholds people deal with today is known as codependency. There are other terms that expand this stronghold to just beyond one relationship—those terms would be people-pleasing and social-media addictions. But, for starters, let’s look at codependency.
Codependency is a coping mechanism (one form of an emotional stronghold) that enables a person to deal—albeit wrongly—with a lack he or she may feel. Perhaps there is a lack of self-worth and self-esteem or strong feelings of being rejected. Regardless, codependency usually involves using a person or people to fix what is broken. I call this having a people stronghold.
God is the only One who has the power and the ability to meet our needs. The trouble comes when we insist on turning to others before we turn to Him. Throughout His Word, we read how God uses people in the lives of others. However, we never read where God is pleased when we allow people and things to take His place. In fact, the opposite is true; we have created an emotional idol. Even an addiction to social media can fall into the category of emotional idolatry.
There exists a fine line between enjoying some relationship or benefiting from social media connections and the devolution of emotional relationships or comparisons. People and relationships are a gift which we should enjoy. But we also want to be careful that we do not allow our emotions to turn into a stronghold of depression, loneliness, envy, doubt, or fear.
You need to remind yourself that, in Christ, you have everything you need. You don’t need to hold out for something from some other person to make you complete.
What or whom are you relying on for your sense of self-worth?