emotions on Weakness of Will

Descend upon our hearts, Spirit of God, For our wills are weak, and we need your power. Our spirits are dry, and we need your refreshment. Our minds cannot comprehend, and we need your enlightenment....

Every one of our sinful actions has a suicidal power on the faculties that put that action forth. When you sin with the mind, that sin shrivels the rationality. When you sin with the heart or the emot...

The only way God can strengthen his presence in our will is to weaken his presence in our feelings. Otherwise we would become spiritual cripples, unable to walk without emotional crutches. This is why...

The more one probes the workings of an emotional life the more he will be convinced of its vacillation and undependability. No one should wonder that a child of God who walks by emotion rather than by...

Choices will continually be necessary and -- let us not forget -- possible. Obedience to God is always possible. It is a deadly error to fall into the notion that when feelings are extremely strong we...

Many of us tend to be passive with our thoughts and feelings. We treat them like they rule us, like they are in charge of us, and not the other way around. We forget that our thoughts and feelings are...

If a man knows precisely what he can do to you or what epithet he can hurl against you in order to make you lose your temper, your equilibrium, then he can always keep you under subjection. It is a ma...

Social scientists define procrastination as “delaying a task for a maladaptively long time,” and it bedevils almost all of us. One study found that more than 70 percent of university students procrast...

O Lord, we are too easily discouraged when things don’t go our way, when we face trials, testings, and even persecution. Lord forgive the weakness of our faith. We too often respond in anger and hurtf...

The desire to feel loved is the last illusion: let it go and you will be free

What Jesus also didn’t do was wear his emotions on his sleeve. I brought my kids up with a mantra: Don’t litter your food; don’t litter your mood. In Edward Docxs Self Help, one of the most interestin...

Too often we are given a choice—emotions or faith and belief. Yet as Dan Allender and Tremper Longman observe,  Emotion links our internal and external worlds. To be aware of what we feel can open ...

Feelings are, with a few exceptions, good servants. But they are disastrous masters.

Many people are broken and without hope. It’s not surprising that a Brooking’s report in October 2019 noted how “deaths of despair” were affecting many sectors of society, particularly in America’s he...

But when the cross is working deeply a believer comes to know himself. He realizes how undependable are his ideas, feelings and desires.

We can rest knowing the Lord’s presence transcends what we feel. Just like the flow of the air, he is moving even if his movements cannot be perceived. And where God is not just felt but known, faith ...

The more I use stuff to fill up my hungers, the more distance I put between God and myself. And as I continue to fill up my infinite hungers with finite things (when I run through the Starbucks drive-...

Sometimes we have to “step over” our anger, our jealousy, or our feelings of rejection and move on. The temptation is to get stuck in our negative emotions, poking around in them as if we belong there...

In Eugene Peterson’s excellent book, Run with Horses, he tells the story of his frustration trying to remove the blade from his lawnmower. He had tried everything and finally his neighbor came over an...

One of my continual battles is the one that happens in my own heart and mind. I continue to discover and fight negative patterns of thought and emotion that are shaped less by Jesus and more by the wo...

Pity is one of the noblest emotions available to human beings; self-pity is possibly the most ignoble . . . . [It] is an incapacity, a crippling emotional disease that severely distorts our perception...

Our rationality is not in charge at all. We’re kidding ourselves. Our rationality is the rider. The elephant goes where it wants. Our emotions and intuitions lead us. Instead of being guided by reason...

Heavenly Father, we confess that we often forget Who it is that we worship. You, Lord, are the great God Almighty and our Heavenly Father. Yet, at times, we deny that truth by living in fear and respo...

To handle the things of God without worship is always to falsify them.

Loving God, we confess today: We don’t even know what love truly is. We talk about love when we talk about favorite television shows and foods. We talk about love as if it happens to us. We describe l...

Many of us assume that our spiritual heroes do not have to experience the same inner-wrestling that we do. Mother Teresa, beloved across the world is one such figure we might “assume” didn’t have to d...

I can remember that afternoon as if it were yesterday. I (Doug) was standing out in the middle of the green grass of the quad on campus, singing as loudly as I could. Twenty of my Christian friends an...

No physical appearance is worth not eating pasta for.

When J. K. Rowling created the Harry Potter universe, she naturally drew on her own experiences to flesh it out. This is true even for such alarming creatures as ‘dementors’. These are soulless beings...

David Seamands (1922-2006) was an author, scholar, evangelical renewal leader and counselor. In an article for Christianity Today , he shares his earnest experience of many of his patients who we...