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Answers in “Answers to Questions for Further Study”.

In the last chapter, we saw how it’s possible to live like a new creation. But maybe you’re wondering how to deal with your emotions. Perhaps you identify with one of these three people:

What’s the role of my emotions? God gave them to me, so they must be good to have. I’d hate to go through life without them or go through eternity unable to feel the euphoria of being in the Savior’s presence. But here on earth, my emotions have such a powerful influence on me to violate the will of God at times. The problem is that they respond readily to circumstances, but sometimes painfully slowly to spiritual truth.

How do I deal with my emotions? That’s the question I’ll address in this chapter. Through carefully studying it, you will gain solid answers you may have sought for years. Thousands of Christians have already gained victory over being controlled by their emotions through the simple teaching in this chapter.

To illustrate how to handle emotions, I’m going to tell a story about a man-eating bear. I am indebted to Chuck Solomon for the initial idea of the story which he shared with me in 1975. However, I will take the scenario and greatly elaborate on it, establishing a hierarchy of reactions and then applying the illustration to walking in the Spirit.

Let’s say you are a stranger visiting Alaska. You’re out in the wilderness with no one around. A man-eating bear lives in these parts, and he has just spotted your earthsuit on his turf. He’s eight feet tall and weighs six hundred pounds. About a month ago, he ate one of your friends and left only his belt buckle and cowboy boots. He’s as mean as a junkyard dog. At the moment, he is occupying himself with running at top speed toward your earthsuit! It’s going to take him about ten seconds to close the gap between the two of you and invite you to dinner. Depending on the size of your earthsuit, you are about to become either an hors d’oeuvre or a meal.

Let’s draw a picture of this scene (see Figure 8.1). We’ll put an eye on your earthsuit so you can see the bear. The sunlight bounces off the bear, through the eye, and up the optic nerve to the brain, where you get a printout of him as he runs toward you. The moment the image of that running bear appears on your picture tube, mind and emotions, which have been sort of sitting there lazily watching TV, come to attention. Instantly, mind is going to trigger off a data retrieval system, and up out of the memory banks comes all data relevant to this stimulus.

There are things in your memory banks about bears that you are not going to retrieve at this point, information such as,
Bears hibernate in winter.
Instead, you’re going to retrieve stuff like,
Bears eat meat, and I am meat. Running is an option, but bears can run faster than people. However, I could be running while I generate more options. Climbing a tree’s no good, since he’d just eat me in the treetop.
But then you spot a little cabin through the trees, and mind says,
I can run into that cabin!

All these options are recommended by your mind to your will at varying levels of intensity according to how strongly mind believes the option will solve the problem. Will is then going to have to choose from among the options presented.

Meanwhile, feeler is getting in on the action. Feeler’s going to generate but one emotion appropriate to this situation: fear! On a scale of 1 to 10, that’s a 10! Thus, feeler socks it to will at level 10: “I
feel
like that bear’s going to eat me alive, so get moving!” Now, feeler is a tremendous motivator to will. When feeler is talking 10s, will is heavily influenced to submit to its demands.

Being thus motivated by both mind and emotions, your will quickly chooses to command the brain to make the muscles propel the earthsuit into the cabin as fast as the legs will move, and they’ll be empowered by special rocket fuel injected into the carburetor by adrenal glands at feeler’s direction. Feeler has the God-given ability to bypass having to get will’s permission to trigger adrenaline flow into the bloodstream. Earthsuit then covers the forty yards to the cabin in 4.6 seconds, establishing a new world’s record for the forty in cowboy boots.

Now, this cabin is constructed of railroad ties bolted together—even the roof. It’s built like a fort. But it’s also covered with vines, so you can’t discern its construction. The instant you get inside, you slam the door, which is made of cured-oak bridge timbers three inches thick. You drop a huge wooden bar into a cradle behind the door, and when you do, you instantly become safe in the cabin.

Just as you drop the bar in place, the bear, who was right on your heels and closing fast, slams his nose into the locked door. It stops him cold. He raises up and puts an eye to the lone window (which has no glass, by the way). His head is so big that he can get only one eye to the window at a time. He sees you in there and goes absolutely bananas with rage! He begins to try to rip the cabin apart to get at the nut inside this big husk. (You can relax, now. I’m not going to let him in.)

Being a stranger to these parts, you have no knowledge of this cabin’s construction, and the exterior vines and inner darkness don’t help. If I’m a fly on the cabin wall watching you, I’m going to see you plastered against the back wall of the cabin, fearfully awaiting what you fully believe is the inevitable. You are about to get eaten alive by that bear!

But wait a minute. You’re safe in the cabin, remember? You could lie down on the floor and catch up on your daily Bible readings, since you’re going to be there for a while with nothing to do. You could even order a pizza and let the bear eat the delivery boy.

Ah, but the problem is that you don’t
know
you’re safe. Feeler is saying to will, “I feel like that bear is going to burst in here and eat me, and that’s a 14!” Mind, being thus influenced by feeler’s intensity, says, “Well, since I
feel
so strongly about this matter, I
believe
that my emotions are telling the truth. I believe I’m going to get eaten by the bear, and that’s an 8!” Will, having no input to the contrary, chooses to command brain to make muscles
act
like a man who is about to get eaten by a bear, and there you are—doing an imitation of wallpaper.

Do you see that you could actually die of a heart attack in the cabin and never benefit from your safety? You are safe and you don’t even know it.

Let’s examine this situation and what needs to happen in four steps, beginning with the fact that you are now safe in the cabin.

This
is
true. However, since you don’t
know
you’re safe, you could still die of that heart attack. So what good would your safety do you? None! It isn’t enough to
be
safe. You must believe it.

The critical factor in my little story is time. As time marches on, you are going to survey your situation and ultimately come to the conclusion,
I believe I’m safe in this cabin.
This is
faith
.

This is not Christian faith; it’s
cabin
faith—faith in the cabin and the cabin’s ability to meet your need. It will take you who have what I call “feeler flesh” much longer to arrive at Step 2 than it will others. You have a flesh pattern of believing that your feeler is usually telling it like it is. You often arrive at “truth” by trusting in your emotions; you make
them
the object of your faith. (Faith is a function of the mind; it means believing something, and it must have an object. It is never a feeling, but a belief upon which you take action. And it’s a fatal mistake to make feeler faith’s object.)

Now that Step 2 has arrived, you begin saying things like, “Oh, I’m so thankful! Without this cabin, I’d be dead!” But all the time you’re
saying
how safe you are, you remain plastered to the wall. Can you see that even after arriving at Step 2 you could still die of a heart attack
with your faith
? What good would your faith do you? None, because it is
faith without works.
Faith without appropriate action won’t do you one whit of good. You might as well not have any faith at all (see James 2:17).

Knowing that you’re now safe, why would you be acting as if you’re
unsafe
? Because the intensity of your faith (in your mind) is about a two, whereas feeler is still demanding its way at level ten. Will is choosing to go along with feeler’s assessment of the situation, even though will knows better. Feeler’s recommendation is five times stronger than mind’s at this point. Will is intimidated and chooses to go along with feeler’s demands in an effort to relieve the pressure. But remember who’s boss. Will
can
overrule feeler or mind or both simultaneously,
no matter how intensely
they apply pressure to sway his choice. Will is in charge.

This disparity between faith and feelings has a direct and important spiritual parallel. I’ve had many people come into my office during my years as a counselor and say to me, “I just can’t get Jesus to save me. I try to get Him to come into me, but He just never has. I can’t feel Him at all. I thought I did one time, but it went away.” They want to
feel
saved. Typically, these are the “feeler folks.” Unless they can feel something, they have difficulty accepting it as reality.

The Word of God never says, however, that anyone will
feel
saved. It says things like, “Believe in the Lord Jesus, and you shall
be
saved,” not
feel
saved (Acts 16:31, emphasis added). As I lecture around the country, I take straw polls, asking the audience how many of them felt Christ enter into them when they were saved. The results (among charismatics and noncharismatics alike) are about fifty-fifty. God chooses to give a feeling to some folks, but He chooses not to give one to others, and I guess that falls under the heading of “His business.”