EQ (Emotional Intelligence) is the primary key for you to walk in maturity and reach your destiny.
EQ is the skill that will enable believers to truly walk in Kingdom Living, to Take the 7 Mountains of Influence and reach the world with God’s love.
What is EQ?
EQ is the ability to read your emotions, respond to them rather than react to them, and then use them to understand what is happening in your heart.
Some people might protest here – “We need to have authority over our emotions.”
This authority teaching has been emphasized a lot, maybe too much. Let me explain. There is a difference between being led by your emotions and simply listening to them.
Here’s a funny example. Picture the emotion of anger as Joe’s tour guide for the day. Anger’s voice is already directing Joe as he starts to leave for work. He prompts Joe to yell at his son to work harder at school and to fling on his wife “the look” because there was no ham for his lunch, only peanut butter and jelly. Joe then follows Anger down the street, complaining at people in his way the whole time. Anger then directs him into his office where he shares harsh words with his secretary and inwardly despises and criticizes his boss. Joe’s entire day amounted to one stressful moment of anger after another.
How You Can Have Emotions With Objectivity
The Bible says, “be angry but sin not.” (Eph.4:26) This speaks of objectivity. You can consider the fact that you’re angry without allowing it to take over your life as Joe did that day.
By doing this, it allows the anger to be looked at and resolved.
If you think of emotions as gauges it helps objectivity. For example, if you see the water temperature gauge in your car reading past the red line you don’t think, “I don’t receive that message; I can’t be led by that.” Of course not. You realize that the gauge is telling you your car engine needs some attention.
How to Read Your Emotions
Reading your emotions is how you cooperate with God in His sanctifying work in you.
Reading your emotions tells you what needs attention in your heart. If you know the radiator in your car is low on water, you simply take the step of adding water and your car no longer overheats.
Emotions, then, are key to being Spirit-led. For instance, you might feel angry because someone has violated your boundaries. Now if you can be open to look at that rather than immediately “taking authority” over it, you can realize some steps you may need to take. Maybe you need greater care or a different tone of voice with how you interact with that person, for example.
Being in touch with your own emotions as you interact with life and people, empowers you to be in touch with the emotions of others. And this is what makes for excellent people skills, or EQ.
Emotional awareness is the key to healthy leadership as well as issue resolution.
Consider walking in the fruits of Spirit – emotions are key. You can’t do it if your are triggered. Yet, when you listen to your emotions and resolve triggers (emotional unrest), you naturally express love, kindness, patience, etc., toward others.
Even non-Christian movies get it. In Rocky III, Rocky is despondent, just going through the motions. He finally admits he’s afraid to fight Clubber Lang (Mr. T). As he becomes aware of what’s happening in his heart, acknowledging this fear, he gets forward movement. Why did this movie resonate with so many people? There’s truth here.
Your emotions are the gauges of your heart. They tell you how well your heart is cooperating with the Holy Spirit and internalizing God’s truth. So as you face a challenge responding with the fruit of the spirit in a given situation, you can work through it.
It’s not as important whether you perfectly displayed the fruit of the Spirit in a given event or not, as to whether you could read the emotional gauges of your heart in the situation. Because if you can learn to read your heart, then growth can occur.
These gauges – your emotions – will tell you what’s happening in your heart and give you the insight to take appropriate steps.
Feel free to email me any comments or questions. Did you find this helpful? Is there a topic you’d like to hear more about? Do you have a question on this topic? I respond personally to all emails.
Christina says
Fantastic article! I appreciate everything you shared. Really drives home the point that “emotions are messengers of the heart” and are important to “hear” as opposed to “stuff.” (And I needed that reminder today, so thank you!) 🙂
Robert says
Thanks for the comment Christina.