July 13, 2025 | Wisdom for the Heart

Wisdom for the Heart | Proverbs Part 20

Proverbs 12:20 Deceit is in the heart of those who devise evil, but those who plan peace have joy.

Proverbs 14:10, 13 The heart knows its own bitterness, and no stranger shares its joy... Even in laughter the heart may ache, and the end of joy may be grief.

Proverbs 15:13 A glad heart makes a cheerful face, but by sorrow of heart the spirit is crushed.

Proverbs 17:22 A joyful heart is good medicine, but a crushed spirit dries up the bones.

Proverbs 18:14 A man’s spirit will endure sickness, but a crushed spirit who can bear?

Proverbs 16:32 Whoever is slow to anger is better than the mighty, and he who rules his spirit than he who takes a city.

Proverbs 21:23 Whoever keeps his mouth and his tongue keeps himself out of trouble.

Proverbs 25:27–28 It is not good to eat much honey, nor is it glorious to seek one’s own glory.A man without self-control is like a city broken into and left without walls.

Proverbs 29:11 A fool gives full vent to his spirit, but a wise man quietly holds it back.

Proverbs 10:12 Hatred stirs up strife, but love covers all offenses.

Proverbs 19:11 Good sense makes one slow to anger, and it is his glory to overlook an offense.

Proverbs 22:24–25 Make no friendship with a man given to anger, nor go with a wrathful man, lest you learn his ways and entangle yourself in a snare.

In this final message from Proverbs, Jed Gillis walks through how God's wisdom speaks into our emotions: joy, sorrow, fear, anger, and shame. Emotions, he explains, are like dashboard lights. They do not control the direction of our lives, but they signal what is going on beneath the surface. Proverbs calls us to neither obey our emotions blindly nor ignore them entirely. Instead, we are to understand what they reveal about our hearts and submit them to God's truth.

Gillis emphasizes that our emotions are often mixed and personal. No one else will fully share the depth of your joy or sorrow. But Jesus, our faithful high priest, truly understands. While others may not feel exactly what we feel, He knows and cares. Proverbs also warns of the danger of a crushed spirit. When emotions go unexamined or are bottled up, they can lead to spiritual shutdown. God’s goal is not emotional numbness but joyful, godly engagement with what we feel.

The message points us toward self-control, a fruit of the Spirit. Self-control means learning to recognize emotional signals and respond wisely, not reactively. Gillis urges us to check the condition of our hearts when emotions flare up and to bring our fears, anger, or sadness before God and into godly relationships. God's Word and Spirit, like a skilled mechanic, help us repair what is misaligned in our hearts.

True wisdom with emotions means remembering that they are not enemies to fight or rulers to obey. They are messengers meant to help us walk more closely with Christ.

Transcript of Wisdom for the Heart | Proverbs Part 20

If you've been with us for a while, you know that we've been doing something a little bit different for us. We've been looking through the book of Proverbs, but not just going from verse to verse in Proverbs. Uh, we've been going by topics, and this is the last one of those, uh, because we could stay here forever, but we're gonna move on to some other things as well.

So today we're gonna be talking about what Proverbs says about our emotions. How Proverbs talks about wisdom as it relates to joy and sadness, and fear, and anger and shame. Now, if any of you sit here and say, I've got that all figured out, great. I'd like you to help all of us, the rest of us learn how to do it.

But I imagine I could go down that list and you would say, I need wisdom to know how to handle it when I feel anger, when I feel fear, when I feel sadness. We might think we know how to handle joy, but we really need wisdom to know how to do that too. And as we've gone through the book, we've been reminded that God has built patterns of wisdom into his world based on his character and that he, he calls us.

Remember the first few chapters of Proverbs, he entices us to wisdom. He doesn't hold before you and say, here's the wise path, and it'll be bad for you. He calls you and says, this is what is good for you. But we also saw in the beginning of the book that Folly calls, foolishness calls, and it tempts us. It seduces us. It flatterers us.

And I think one of the hardest places to resist the temptation and flattery of foolishness is our emotions because we experience joy and sadness and fear and anger and shame, and you could go on and on and have a long list. We experience these things, and it feels to us like whatever I experience is, it's definitely true and right.

Most of us don't think, really, we don't think, well, I feel this great fear, but I know there's absolutely no reason to be afraid. We have this sneaking suspicion. There actually is a reason, right? And we could say, well, nobody else seems to be angry about this, but I'm angry about it. And so we think because foolishness calls to us and says, you are the measure of what's right. You are the one who decides what's right and what's wrong.

Trust in the Lord With Your Emotions

So as we talk about emotions today, thankfully we have Proverbs chapter three, which gave us a pattern to talk about really all of these wisdom patterns.

First thing it says is don't let God's steadfast love and faithfulness depart from you. Keep it there. Remember, in giving you hearts that feel, that have joy, that have sadness in giving you those hearts, God has been good to you. God has given you this great gift that you can feel in these ways. Don't let his steadfast love and his faithfulness depart from you. Remember it. Keep it with you.

Trust in the Lord with all your heart familiar verses we looked at weeks ago. Trust in the Lord with all your heart and don't lean to your own understanding in all your ways. Know him. Remember him and he will direct. Don't be wise in your own eyes.

In other words, when you come to look at emotions, I think sometimes we can say yes, I don't need to be wise in my own eyes because I don't know everything. We also need to not trust our own emotions as the authority in our lives, because scripture says, trust the Lord with all your heart. It says, be not wise in your own eyes. You could say. Don't trust everything you think or don't trust everything you feel.

What Does Proverbs Say About Emotions in General?Emotions Are a Check Engine Light

So for our purposes today, I want to give you a mental image, an illustration. It's not perfect. If you want to argue with me about the details, I am sure you could, but I think it'll help us think about one specific piece of what an emotion is.

And this image is this. If you imagine your life, you are a car. You're a very complicated car, but if you think of yourself as a car, emotions are like the lights on your dashboard. They don't drive your car. They're not the wheels. They're not the steering wheel. They're not the engine, but they are lights that tell you something about what is going on.

Now some of those lights tell you something bad. You know, you get a big red oil can on your dashboard. Better stop. If you have the little light that shows your bright lights are on, that might be great. They tell you different things, but they tell you something about what is going on in your life.

Now I'm gonna make a couple distinctions at the beginning, so hopefully we're, you know exactly what I'm talking about. I don't mean the actions that come from our emotions.

So, in other words, sometimes you feel a flash of anger that happens, right? And when you feel that flash of anger, that's a light on your dashboard that says, Hey, here's a problem. Now if you decide I want to use that flash of anger to go punch somebody, that's not a light on your dashboard, that's running into something on the side of the road.

So joy is not exactly the same thing as laughter. Laughter comes out of joy. Anger is not exactly the same thing as harsh words. That's the way we show our anger. But you all know sometimes no harsh words escape your mouth, but you're seething inside. That's something different.

When we look at our emotions in Proverbs. Here's what I hope to do today. I want us to think through what are wise patterns for how we deal with the fact that our dashboards have a lot of lights and they flash really bright at us sometimes. So how do we drive our lives or to use the picture they actually use 'cause they didn't have cars.

 Deceit Is in the Heart of Those Who Devise Evil, but Those Who Plan Peace Have Joy

How do we walk the path of wisdom? When it comes to our emotions, if you'll turn to chapter 12 of Proverbs, we'll start there.

Chapter 12 in verse 20 says this, deceit is in the heart of those who devise evil, but those who plan peace have joy.

So when you have joy, what he tells you, here's the pattern. If you plan peace, if your soul is oriented to desire and plan and devise peace, then what should come out on your dashboard is joy. There's something inside and that light tells you something about what's going on.

Now, the way Proverbs works, the way the parallelism works throughout Hebrew poetry, the first part of it, he tells you something a little bit different. Instead of saying sadness is in the heart of those who devise evil. He says, deceit is in the heart of those who devise evil, but the poet, the poetry, the parallelism points to both of those being true.

So when he says, if you plan peace, you have joy, he implies, but if you devise evil, you'll find sadness. When he says deceit is in the heart of those who devise evil, he says, so those who plan in peace, truth is in your heart.

One of the beauties of proverbs is poetically, they're, they're trying to say in as few words as possible, some significant truths for us to think over.

So we can look to this as one example and we'll see as we keep going. I just wanted to give one example upfront. When I say emotions are like dashboard lights, that's the kind of thing, I mean, I mean, when you feel joy and that flashes across your dashboard, you say. I'm probably planning peace in my soul. That's the pattern. Those who plan peace have joy.

So our emotions can be good. Our emotions can be bad. Our emotions can come from sinful postures in our soul. So if you say to use this verse, we use this language. If you say, I'm planning evil, I'm devising evil things. I'm trying to get back at that person who did this to me. I'm trying to trust in myself for my provision and not trust in God. Here. I'm planning to be bitter here. Like you're doing all these things. That's what's going on in your soul. Don't be surprised if some pretty negative lights flash up on your dashboard. You say, oh, I see sadness.

Another verse in Proverbs we won't turn to. It says, envy makes the heart rot. Like you see that, you see this jealousy in your soul and you go, Ooh, there's something going on down there that's not good. Just like when my check engine light comes on.

Now, depending on your car, I realize some of us just perpetually drive what Check engine lights. Sure. But most of the time you want to at least find out what it is, right? Say, okay, yeah, it's some sensor I don't wanna replace. Fine. But there are other problems. You go, no, I need to actually deal with this problem. Right?

So when we talk about here's what's on our dashboard, it could come from the engine is malfunctioning, our soul is aligned. You say, I am gonna control my life and trust myself. Well, that's not how your engine is meant to run. And so you might find a whole lot of anger, a whole lot of frustration, a whole lot of bitterness, all these lights that pop up at you.

And if we could make a press the illustration a little bit sillier, can you imagine you're driving along, this light pops up on your dashboard and you forget about everything else on the road. You just stare at the light. How's that gonna work for you driving? You know, pretty bad, right? Because, these lights can come from your engine malfunctioning or from sinful a attitudes in your soul. They can also lead you to sinful actions.

So if you feel the flash of anger that's telling you something, if you go punch somebody over it, that that's gonna be running off the road. But if you look at it and say, well, what's going on in my soul that's making this anger flash? That's how we're supposed to walk with wisdom.

God has given you graciously all of these things that tell you something about what's going on in your soul, and he wants to help you walk in wisdom in all of that.

Turn over to chapter 14. Well, we're gonna look at a couple things like this, truth and a few others that relate to emotions before we talk about some specific ones from Proverbs, because Proverbs does talk about anger and fear and some specific emotions, but we need to know what category we're talking about before we go look at it.

Our Emotions are Often Mixed

So emotions are like dashboard lights. Second thing from chapter 14 and verse 13, our emotions are often mixed.

Verse 13 says, even in laughter, the heart may ache and the end of joy may be grief. Have you ever experienced that? Have you experienced where you're in a situation that is, it's so sad that you can't pretend it's not sad? Maybe it's around a loved one who is sick and about to pass away, and yet even in that moment, sometimes you, you share an inside joke with a sibling and, and you laugh. Sometimes then you laugh about memories maybe after your loved ones passed away, and you laugh about the funny things they did and the memories that are there, but your heart aches at the same time.

See, we're complicated. I said you were a complicated car. I, I meant it. You'll have a light that flashes joy over here and one that flashes sadness over here, and you're like, what do I do with that? Even in laughter, the heart may ache and the end of joy may be grief.

Also, one thing you may know, I'm gonna keep pushing this picture as far as I can. Just fair warning. One thing you may know. So if you have a check engine light and you fix part of the problem, does the light instantly go off all the time?

No, it doesn't. It's a lagging indicator.

So sometimes the light of sadness flashes in your life to say, here's a problem of what that's going on in your soul. And you go to God and you say, okay, I want to deal with this. I want to turn from this sin. I want to trust you and, and maybe it works. Does your sadness immediately disappear? Probably not. Sometimes, not always. Because these are, these are lights that tell us something about the way your soul evaluates or relates to the world around you.

I want you to think about the nature of some of these emotions. When you, in your inner being, when you look at something around you and you find it pleasing, we call that joy. You might look at something inside of you and find it pleasing and find joy. You might look at God and find it pleasing and find joy. But in essence, you look at something and you say, that's good, and you experience joy. If you flip that around, you look at something around you and say, that's bad. You experience sadness. Or when you evaluate something that's that's just wrong, we call that anger. When you evaluate this is dangerous, what do we call that fear?

So your soul looks around, and in fact, you might evaluate, I am wrong, which might feel like anger to you, or it might feel like shame, but it's all these lights that pop on on your dashboard.

And you know what's interesting to me? I think what, what we do most commonly, what I do most commonly, the anger light flashes on on my dashboard, and I assume the problem is in somebody else's car. When we're driving down the road, that makes no sense, right? I don't look at your car for the check engine light in mine, but we sit here and go, I feel this great sadness. It must be your fault.

It's complicated. I don't wanna oversimplify it. Can they have contributed? Sure, sure, sure. But we've gotta start, our first step if we want to walk in wisdom, is to realize that when these emotional lights are on, God wants to draw you to himself and he wants to change you.

Only One Can Truly Feel Your Emotions Like You Do

In chapter 14, a few verses earlier. Verse 10. We see this statement. The heart knows its own bitterness and no stranger shares its joy. That's probably not your favorite verse from Proverbs, probably not the one you've memorized repeatedly, but it's an important idea for us. Whatever you feel, no matter where you feel sadness or where you feel joy, no other human being is gonna feel it exactly the same way.

No other human being is going to know every bit of your sadness. They're, they're not. They can't, no stranger shares. Its joy. The heart is too complicated. My car doesn't develop a misfire in cylinder three, just because yours does.

Right? They're not gonna know that same way. And this can have a devastating impact on relationships because if you think that somebody else has to feel your emotion exactly like you do, all kinds of bad things happen.

Like you might struggle to forgive somebody because you think they haven't felt the pain that I've felt. If they only really understood how hurt I was, then I can forgive them. Well, since they don't, sometimes we sinfully say, well, I'm gonna try to cause them more pain so that they feel it, and we're chasing something that will never happen. They'll never feel the depth of our pain exactly the same way.

You might struggle to say, I'm gonna step forward, I'm gonna do what is right, when you say they don't really understand me, they don't really understand all my joys. They don't really understand where, what makes me angry. They don't really understand all of it. No, they don't.

They might get closer, but there's only one person who really knows your heart, and that's our high priest, Jesus. And where nobody else can satisfy. They'll never feel the depth of all of your pain. They won't. They'll never fear, feel all of your fears and understand them perfectly. Even the most emotionally helpful people around you can only do a fraction of that, but Jesus knows all of it. He's a high priest who can sympathize or feel with our weakness.

So when you feel like your fear is absolutely going to overtake you, if you reach out to all the people around you and be like, I hope they can give me all that I need to understand my fear. I hope they can solve the problem in my soul, they can't. But if you go to Jesus, the high priest who understands all of those, he does.

You say, the people around me don't understand the shame that I feel about the sins that I have committed. Jesus says, I understand shame. I hung exposed on the cross for you, and I know your heart better than you do.

No mere human is gonna feel your emotions the way you do, and Proverbs teaches us no stranger ultimately shares that joy. And if you look to mere humans to know how you feel and to experience it perfectly. You'll find they fail you over and over. You've already found that. All of you have. But Jesus knows.

A Crushed Spirit is Devasting

So emotions are like warning lights for our souls. They're often mixed. Looks like a Christmas tree up there with all the lights that are popping on for us, and nobody else fully understands your feelings except Jesus alone.

And before we look at specific ones, I wanna do one more statement, and that's this. Proverbs teaches that a crushed spirit is devastating. Turn to chapter 15.

See our lights of our emotions tell us about what's going on in our soul. But what can happen is we, we shut down the car. We just say, I'm not gonna feel anything. I'm not gonna move anywhere. I'm not gonna do anything. So we have chapter 15, verse 13. A glad heart makes a cheerful face, but by sorrow of heart, the spirit is crushed.

Turn over to chapter 17 verse 22. A joyful heart is good medicine, but a crushed spirit dries up the bones. Chapter 18, verse 14. A man's spirit will endure sickness, but a crushed spirit who can bear?

We need to be careful about the way we handle the lights on our dashboard, because if we don't handle it the right way, it can lead to shutting down the car, a crushed spirit that says, I'm just not going to feel anything.

It's devastating. You aren't made to live that way, none of us are.

A Look at Some Specific EmotionsFear

So let's see some specific things that Proverbs says. First, think about fear. Think about the emotion of fear. When the fear light flashes, what do we do? And if we're gonna make the simplest statement, here's what you do. Every time the lights flash on, check the engine and stay on the road. Not real complicated in the in the picture, check the engine and stay on the road.

The fear, you say, I'm afraid of something. All right. Why? What am I afraid of? Check the engine. What's going on?

We often fear people. We have a Sunday school class on the fear of man that's been going on and contrasting the fear of man with the fear of the Lord. Remember Proverbs said, the fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom, which means that the fear of man is the beginning of folly. Foolishness.

When that fear pops on and we say, oh no, somebody else may not approve of me the way that I want to be approved of. You notice the light and then you say, wait, what's going on in my heart? What's my engine doing? Is it working or is it not?

Chapter 28 verse one. There are tons of passages we could go to to talk about fear. Chapter 28, verse one says, the wicked flee when no one pursues, but the righteous are bold as a lion.

If you want boldness, you have the fear of the Lord that says, I'm in a right relationship with God. And then you say, now it doesn't matter to me who pursues me. I am bold as a lion. I'm not afraid. I'm not always performing, trying to get enough applause from other people because I'm afraid they won't approve of me. That makes you just run in fear.

But instead we say, I have a right relationship with God because I come to him through Jesus. So I'm bold when fears happen.

All of us have our own set of fear lights over different things. When that fear flashes, what do you do? Well, first you say, why am I afraid? Is my engine, is my soul working properly?

If you're afraid, because I'm not in control of my life anymore. Good news, you never were. You see, it's a light that's flashing, but sometimes our lights don't work right. So you go back and you check the engine. You say, no, my trust is in God.

And then you also say, now this light's flashing right here, which means it's really easy for me to get distracted and run off the road. It's really easy for me to say, here's fear. Oh no, I'm gonna sit in my corner and, and just worry all the time. Well, we know that's, we know worry is wrong. We know the anxiety is wrong. It's easy for me to be bitter. God, you didn't work it out the way I wanted you to. We know that's wrong. So you say stay on the road while you check out the engine. Say, what is driving this fear? Am I, am I just afraid of man? Instead of being afraid of God? Am I looking for approval? What is it that's driving me?

Anger

We could talk more about fear, but I want to just look at the pattern with different emotions. Let's think about anger.

We'll turn over to chapter 19. We'll get there in just a minute. I think anger is one of those that's really hard for us because we know Jesus felt anger, so we know there's such a thing as righteous anger. We're not really sure how to decide what righteous anger is and what sinful anger is, and so then we decide either, well, I'm just gonna try to never get angry. That's probably what most of us try for. Or we justify whichever anger we really feel strongly and say, that must be righteous anger. And well, let's think about how do we know what righteous anger is?

First of all, righteous anger is not out of control. Think about jesus. If I say Jesus being angry, probably all of you think of Jesus flipping tables in the temple.

Yes, he was flipping tables in the temple. He wasn't slaughtering people in the temple, just to be crude, like he was controlled. He knew what he was doing. He wasn't anger, whipping Jesus around, right? Jesus chose to act in wrath at that moment in anger, but it was control.

Second, righteous anger is not based on fear. Think about Jesus in the temple. Was he afraid of anything? No. A perfect example actually of the righteous being bold as a lion. Righteous anger is not based on fear. See, most of the time I get angry because I'm afraid because I've lost control somewhere. That's not righteous anger. We feel out of control, so we feel fear. Our souls don't like that. That's wrong. We respond in anger. No righteous anger is in control. It's not based on fear.

And then righteous anger is not self-oriented. If you look at chapter 19 and verse 11, good sense makes one slow to anger, and it is his glory to overlook an offense.

Even when somebody has done wrong to you. Like actually done wrong. I don't mean when you say somebody did something I didn't like. I mean, somebody has actually wronged you. You say, well, I, I get to be righteously angry at that offense. Well, the principle here is it is your glory to overlook an offense. It's something to be boasted in. It's something to say, yes, they did wrong to me. But I'm not gonna go on the crusade and the war path. I'm not gonna go spread around how they're really terrible and how they did these things. I'm gonna say no, I'm gonna overlook this offense, because good sense teaches you to be slow to anger.

It's not self-oriented. Righteous anger isn't. You did this to me, so I'm gonna get angry. Even when Jesus is flipping tables in the temple, right? Jesus says, you've taken my father's house. I know Jesus is God. And we could have the conversation, how does that work? Right?

And we could do the theological dance, but just notice the way he words it. He doesn't say, you did this to me. In fact, when they hurt him on the road to the cross and they mock him and spit on him, and they do all these things to him, he doesn't revile back. He doesn't exhibit righteous anger at that moment, right? Righteous anger isn't about you did something bad to me, so I'm angry at you. Righteous anger would look at something done that is wrong by God's standards and says, I feel in my soul I'm gonna let this light flash and I'm gonna say, yes, good, about Christians being persecuted and beheaded in countries around the world. About babies being murdered. About things that you say, this is against God. About blasphemies and false teachings being proclaimed. Say, yes, it's good for my soul to feel anger about that.

I still don't go on the crusade war path, but that's wrong. Not against me, it's against God. I'm grieved by it, but I'm also angry. Be angry and sin not, Ephesians says.

Righteous anger is not self-oriented. It's not based on fear, it's not out of control.

How To Handle Our EmotionsBe Slow to Anger

So what's the number one statement in Proverbs about anger? We already read it one place, but I just wanna read a few more. Turn to chapter 14.

A man of quick temper acts foolishly, and a man of evil devices is hated. Verse 29, same chapter. Whoever is slow to anger has great understanding, but he who has a hasty temper, exalts folly. Turn over one chapter 15 verse 18. A hot tempered man stirs up strife, but he who is slow to anger, quiets contention.

The number one thing Proverbs says, and there's about three more. Be slow to anger. Don't be quick, even if you think it's righteous anger. Now we live in a world by the way that traffics in outrage, like the whole economy of the internet is built on attention, often based on outrage. You're supposed to read that news article and be offended by it. That's how they get you to click on the next one, right?

We live in a world that says, be quick to anger, make a quick judgment, be outraged about everything like that. That's just the air we breathe in. Proverbs says, that's the wrong air. So does James, by the way, be swift to hear, slow to speak, slow to wrath. Be slow to anger. Always.

So what happens when the warning light comes on? You say, I'm going about my life. I feel this flash of anger. What do I do now? Say I'm ready to go lift weights or chop wood or something, which can be a good thing.

Go to God

What do you do when the warning light comes on? Check the engine and stay on the road. So first of all, you say, I need to examine my soul. Why am I angry? Am I really angry because someone is offending God over here? Or am I really angry because someone hurt me? Am I really angry because I'm out of control and I want to be in control? Or am I really angry because it looks like this person has done the wrong thing? Like, what is it in my soul?

You check your soul, but when you do that, treat your soul a little bit like a bad neighborhood. Don't go there alone. I say, do you need, do I have to take like everybody around me to the deepest part of my soul? No, that's not the point. Although that will help some.

Take God. Go with God into your soul. Say, God, I feel angry right now. Don't hide that from him. He knows it anyway. I think we do this. Sometimes we feel anger and we go like, oh no, I'm not supposed to feel anger, so I'm not gonna do that. I'm not gonna even think about it. Just gonna pretend it doesn't exist. We take like electrical tape and we slap it over our dashboard. Here's the light. Nope. Not gonna see that anger that only works for a little while and it doesn't solve the problem. Your engine's still running wrongly.

So you go and say, God come with like, help me. Take me to the depths. I say, come with me. It's not really come with me. It's take me there. Take me to whatever it is that is making me feel this anger that's lighting up this light on my dashboard.

Remember First Peter when we went through the book of First Peter, how do you guard your souls? You proclaim God's glory. That's what he made you for. You worship him and in doing so, you guard your souls against all of these other sinful desires that come up.

So you go and say, God does this anger that's flashing in my life, does it fit with worship and rest in you or not? When Jesus flipped tables in the temple, he did so because his Father deserved perfect worship and he completely trusted his Father.

If I'm honest, most of the time my anger when it flashes up is not because I have this incredible worship for God, and I doubt yours is most of the time. So you go there, you say, God, take me there.

The Psalms give us a perfect example of this, how to handle different emotions, don't they? When you go to the Psalms, what you do is you find, he expresses, I'm angry, I'm about to fall. What are you doing? God? But he takes it to God and says, God, show me what's going on in my soul. And then by the end of the psalm, almost every time you already see, he's worked back around to, but I will yet praise you again.

Find Examples in Scripture

A little bit like, I told you, I was gonna push this illustration as far as I could. When I, my a light comes on on my car, the first thing I do, well, the first thing I do is pull out the thing to read the code. Okay? But then once I find out the code and say, oh, here's the code, I go to YouTube. What about this car? When it has this problem, how do you deal with it? What might be causing the problem in your soul?

Guess what the Psalms are like your biblically inspired YouTube for your soul. You go in and you say, I feel this anger. I wonder what it could be. Well, if I go to the right Psalm, maybe I find because it looks like the wicked or prospering, and then he tells you how to fix it. You might say, because it feels like my soul is just crushed within me. Why are you cast down on my soul? And you find the YouTube answer from Psalms, hope in God for you'll praise him again. You're helping your salvation.

You might go to Psalm 91 and you see, I will not fear the arrow that flies by day, nor the terror of night. And you say, wait, the light on my dashboard is saying, I will fear. So how could he say, I will not fear? And you keep reading and you get to the end and he says, from God's voice, it says, because he knows me, I will answer him and show him my salvation.

You say, yeah, this light of fear is popping on on my dashboard. There's something in my soul. I'm not resting in God to answer and show me and love me and pour out his steadfast love on me. The Psalms guide you step by step better than YouTube does. How do you fix your soul? Because God doesn't leave you to fix it by himself, and it's not just YouTube. It's his Holy Spirit coming alongside as the best mechanic that ever existed. The comforter to say, I wanna fix that part of your soul. So you go with God.

Seek Help From Godly Friendships

I would encourage you too, go with God's people. We all need friendships. You need every one of you guys. I'm probably talking to you more than the ladies in the room, but every one of you needs friendships that you can go to look them in the eye and say, I've been getting angry because of these things. Help me. I'm afraid for these reasons. Help me understand why. Pray for me.

I was sitting with a brother earlier this week who did exactly that, and it was a beautiful illustration of this text. Said, here's where I'm struggling with an emotion. What do you guys think about that? Pray for me. That's what we should do.

We could go down a whole list of emotions. Interestingly, we could talk about anger, but if we went to chapter 27 and verse four, Proverbs holds something else as a bigger problem. Wrath is cruel. Anger is overwhelming. But who can stand before jealousy? See at its best anger says that's wrong, and you react against it. Jealousy says that's good, and you react against it.

But what do you do when you say, I feel jealousy? What am I supposed to do about that? You check your engine with the spirit, maybe with God's people as you have opportunity, and you say, God, help my car to run right. Help me walk the path of wisdom. Help me respond to this light the right way. Maybe I do need to say, this light's on and there's something in my soul that's a problem.

Maybe you say, this light's on. I feel anger, but I really shouldn't. It's weird. And so you say, okay, I'm gonna ignore that feeling for now, and I'm gonna follow the path of wisdom that's laid out for me. And maybe the spirit takes you back later and shows you here's what's actually going on. God knows how to do that.

We could take feelings of shame. Again, it's a light on your dashboard. What is going on in your soul that brings that light? Don't just put electrical tape over it. Do you feel shame because you refuse to turn from your sin? That's one reason that light could come on. Do you feel shame because you're afraid other people will disapprove of you or do disapprove of you, or do you feel shame because you refuse to believe that God is gracious and loving and forgiving?

Those are all different reasons that light might come, may come on, and if we're gonna walk by wisdom, what we need to do. Is take that truth to God's word and say, gosh, show me. Fix the car of my soul again.

Practice Self Control

God cares about all of your emotions and the phrase that he uses in scripture to talk about how you walk in wisdom, the word he uses is self-control. Proverbs talks about that if you turn to chapter 16. See, self-control is, is primarily about, I have these impulses inside of me, these emotional impulses often, how do I handle those pressures?

It's not always the ability to stop the lights from coming on. I want you to hear this carefully. I'm not saying that self-control means I never feel fear. I never feel anger. No.

Self-control is the ability to guard your soul well before the lights come on, and then to wisely interpret them when they come on while staying on the road. That's self-control.

Chapter 16 verse 32. Here's how great it is to have self-control. Whoever is slow to anger is better than the mighty, and he who rules his spirit than he who takes a city.

The best thing you can do is say, how do I by God's grace? 'cause remember, Galatians tells us self-control is not something you work up by yourself. It's a fruit of God's Spirit working within you, so his Spirit works within you so that you then can guard your soul well, which hopefully keeps some of the negative lights from coming on. But when they come on. When you feel that flash of anger, self-control keeps your fist out of the other guy's face, while you stop and say, wait, why is this, God, help me to deal with whatever unbelief, whatever lie in my soul is leading to this sinful desire of anger.

Chapter 25. Verse 28. It says, A man without self-control is like a city broken into and left without walls. If every time a light on your dashboard blinks, you jerk the steering wheel of your life as hard as you can one way or the other. It's like being a city without walls. Your insurance premium's gonna be really high. You can't live that way.

If you don't guard your soul at all, you're gonna have all kinds of crazy lights going off. So you guard your soul. That's part of self-control by proclaiming God's glory. And then when the light pops on, you say, wait. Why is this light on? What do I need to respond to? You ask God's spirit to teach you, so that your life is not like a city broken into and left without walls.

We live in a world where we don't really do walled cities, but back then before drones and bombs and grenades and all these kinds of things, the protection of a city was its walls. If you didn't have walls, not only could opposing armies, but animals, predators, all kinds of things could come.

That's part of what makes the story of Jericho so great, by the way. They had these great walls that they thought would protect them, and God says, no, your protection won't work.

We need self-control. He rules his spirit is better than he takes a city. A man without self-control is like a city broken into and left without walls. Or Chapter 29, A fool gives full vent to his spirit, but a wise man quietly holds it back. Chapter 29 and verse 11, A fool gives full vent to his spirit. That's the opposite of self-control.

So you take every light that comes on and you say, I'm gonna jerk my car in relation to it, and everybody around me needs to jerk their car with me. That's what the fool does. They give full vent to their spirit. I felt a little bit of anger. Everybody's gotta know it.

Say no. The light comes on. You go to God's word, Psalm version of YouTube, and say, fix my soul. God help me. Help me to have control to know how to adjust my actions so I stay on the road. Help me to have the posture in my soul that it won't throw me off when these lights come on. God cares about your emotions.

Emotions Are Messengers

This is a framework for how to think about emotions, not an exhaustive study of each emotion. You could go through that in Psalms or in Proverbs or Psalms, and I would suggest that it'd be good for all of us to do something like that, but emotions are not enemies to conquer. They're also not God's to obey.

Emotions are messengers to understand what is going on in my soul and what is true about God and what am I not believing? They're messengers to understand. God's solution for you is not zero emotion. That's what's called a crushed spirit in Proverbs. That's not what God calls you to.

One of the commentaries that I've quoted a few times, by Ray Orland, I'll quote again. He says this, Christ finds us and receives us as emotional jungles, but he does not turn us into emotional deserts. He finds our emotions and they're all jumbled like a jungle, but he doesn't say the solution is to be the Sahara desert. He cultivates us as emotional gardens with life and color and order where our drivenness and compulsiveness and all the rest are redeemed into a holy and beautiful freedom and intensity.

God doesn't want you to solve the struggles with your emotions by not feeling anything. He wants you to feel in a way that's aligned with his heart so that you experience the fullness of joy.

Maybe your emotions feel like they spin out of control and run your life. Maybe you just feel dead inside because you'd say, I've suppressed those emotions so much. I don't feel anything. Either way, the answer is the same. Run to the one who does know the depths of your heart. Run to Jesus. Give yourself to him so he can repair your soul where it is broken.

Take the next step of wisdom with the one who loves you best. The one who deeply knows sorrow. The one who carried all of your shame. And the one who takes away your fear.

God wants to walk with you like that. Will you take that step with him? I invite you just to take a moment, bow before our father and respond to him. Ask him for his grace, and then we'll sing.