Proverbs 25

 DO YOUR EMOTIONS CONTROL YOU??????

“He that hath no rule over his own spirit is like a city that is broken down, and without walls.” Proverbs 25:28

 Self-control. It's part of the fruit of the spirit. Temperance. It's a sign of spiritual maturity and something we all need but takes a whole lot of work to get. The internal impulses, emotions, thoughts, desires, moods, tempers all need to be controlled before the outside can be. The spirit is the inner self and to rule it means to not just resist sin but have mastery over oneself. Think about your own life. Are you governed by reason and wisdom or by impulse and emotions? 

The verse uses a simile to compare a person who lacks self-control/mastery over his spirit to a broken-down city. A city's walls are its defense system. Walls are boundaries. They keep enemies out and keep people safe within. They preserve peace. When the walls are broken, however, the city turns defenseless, exposed, and vulnerable to attack. Same concept for the spiritual life. Someone who has not disciplined himself in the area of self-control is an easy target for temptation, sin, and manipulation. Satan can overrun an undisciplined life. 

The point of the verse is not weakness. The writer paints a picture of the danger of not building spiritual and emotional defenses. 

True strength is internal - not external.  If you observe someone who flies into anger quickly, who allows anxiety to control, who turns offended at the drop of a hat, etc. you know by this behavior that his "walls" are broken down and he hasn't done any work to fix them. Controlling oneself is a greater victory than conquering others. Learn to manage emotions. In my work dealing with kids, I teach them to dig to the root. Why do they feel the way they do? What is the reason they are expressing themselves that certain way? Let's name the emotion and talk through the problem instead of cry, scream, hit, etc. Treating the surface will never fix the issue. Helping people understand emotions and teaching them proper ways to express themselves allows the process of learning self-control to start. 

There's another avenue of self-control I quickly want to touch on, and this deals with women and emotions. We, as women, should not accept the saying that women are more emotional than men because the truth is, God created BOTH men and women with the same emotions and BOTH need to learn mastery over them. It's just that society has conditioned men to suppress many of their emotions and has produced messages such as "don't cry like a girl" and "be a man" to train boys from a young age that for the most part, emotions associated with vulnerability (like crying, fear, etc.) belong to women. And because of this conditioning, women have gone along with it for centuries, and now it has turned into people using these 'vulnerable' emotions as excuses.  

(Let me just add here that I am not advocating that men should start displaying these 'vulnerable' emotions to everyone. I'm all for promoting bravery and strength and teaching boys how to be masculine men. But I also don't think girls should be conditioned to get used to crying at everything either. I'm also all for promoting bravery and strength in girls. These are not just masculine traits, nor should they, along with many other emotions, be gender stereotyped.)

In all my work with kids over the past year, I can tell you I've seen boys explode with anger, yell until the roof lifted from the house (figurative), fight, punch, break things, and hurt others out of anger, but never once have I seen a girl respond the same way. Girls get angry but they're more likely to start strongly crying or say unkind words. Interesting how boys are taught that crying is 'bad' or somehow 'unmanly' but then yelling and bursting with anger is okay???? That doesn't make any sense. Anger needs to be controlled just as much as crying does. This is partly why I love my job because I help people learn responsibility, accountability, and respect by instilling in them good morals and behaviors that will benefit society and their future families. Each person, child and adult, is responsible for his/her own emotions. That's why self-control needs to start being taught at an early age so kids will become emotionally stable and mentally mature adults.  

A baby doesn't know self-control. It cries easily, hits, and throws fits. Adults should not act the same. If you can't hold a conversation with another adult because he/she is "too emotional" or "cries easily" or can't talk without getting angry, what does that leave you thinking? Proverbs 25:28 tells us that he has never learned the strength of self-control and his spirit is vulnerable and open to attack. Plainly speaking, he has no walls. 

I was also thinking about how we can use our inner strength for God's glory. When unbelievers or even other believers see a person who calls himself a Christian but does not possess any temperance or self-control, what do they think? Does that "Chrisian" bring a good name to God? Most likely not. Others might view him as a hypocrite or Pharisee. Whether you eat, drink, work on your inner strength, crucify the old man, add to your faith, or WHATEVER you do, do it for God so he can be glorified. When we learn to master ourselves, we look a little more like Jesus and that promotes him to others. 😊

It'd do us all so much good to glare into our own loves and see where we need to work on self-control. Maybe it's an emotion, maybe it's an action. And if you have kids or grandkids, I'd encourage you to teach them how to handle emotions properly. Teach them to speak truth in their heart to build up the broken-down walls and guide them on how to rule their own spirits. Self-control is protection and a lack thereof can give Satan a foothold. Remember that the greatest battles are first fought within. Control your own emotions. Don't let them control you. 

Women with inner strength: 

May we be them.

May we know them.

May we raise them. 

Proverbs 16:32 - "He that is slow to anger is better than the mighty; and he that ruleth his spirit than he that taketh a city."