Demolish the Emotional Walls
Carl H. Stevens Jr.
Table Of Contents
Introduction
Examining The Soul Structure
Drawn Near By Love
Bridges Across The Breach
Conclusion
Introduction
People often find comfort within walls. Walls almost always speak of protection, separating whatever is within from hostile outside forces. In Zechariah 2:5, God Himself is a wall of fire round about believers, protecting us from m the attacks of our enemy, Satan.
There are, however, walls of division where oneness should be. Often, we build walls to “protect” ourselves from the ones who care the most. These walls are usually a product of unhealthy emotions, and they can prevent us from having godly relationships. Though the cause of a problem may be hidden, scars from old wounds may remain in our unconscious mind, feeding our emotions with thoughts that produce negative reactions.
Though we are quick to play the blame game, the cause of many problems in our emotions is not a person or an event, but a wrong relationship between us and God. This booklet shows that the walls of division — whether between a brother against his brother or a man against himself — need not exist.
When Jesus Christ died for us at Calvary, He broke down the middle wall of partition that separated us from the healing love of God. That alone will demolish the emotional walls that divide.
Examining the Soul Structure
“Now I beseech you, brethren, by the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, that ye all speak the same thing, and that there be no divisions among you; but that ye be perfectly joined together in the same mind and in the same judgment” (1 Corinthians 1:10).
“Eat thou not the bread of him that hath an evil eye, neither desire thou his dainty meats:
“For as he thinketh in his heart, so is he. Eat and drink, saith he to thee; but his heart is not with thee.
“The morsel which thou hast eaten shalt thou vomit up, and lose thy sweet words“ (Proverbs 23:6-8).
“The spirit of a man is the candle of the LO R D, searching all the inward parts of the [emotions]” (Proverbs 20:27).
“But there is a spirit in man: and the inspiration of the Almighty giveth them understanding” (Job 32:8).
God created man in His own image. Just as He is three distinct Persons in one — the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit — so we were designed to function with three distinct parts: the physical body, the human spirit, and the soul.
The soul of a man is his essence. The Bible often refers to the soul as the heart (1 Samuel 16:7). It includes the operations of the mind, volition, self-consciousness, conscience, and the emotions. For many people, the most common problems — physical, spiritual, and mental — are linked to the emotions.
To understand emotions, first we need to understand how thoughts are processed.
*The left hemisphere of the brain is where information is first received. Sometimes referred to as the perceptive lobe, it is the place of first impressions, awareness, and knowledge. Anything we see, hear, smell, taste, touch, or otherwise sense is recognized here first.
From the perceptive area, the incoming information must be processed by transferring data to the right side of the brain where it becomes practical — ready to be applied.
Naturally we are self-conscious, but the human spirit, designed to function in the right side of the brain, is God-conscious. It is the lamp of God’s revelation to the soul (Proverbs 20:27; Job 32:8), imparting the breath of God and the life of God. In a Spirit-filled Christian, perceptions are processed through the human spirit, by the Holy Spirit, to the mind.
T h rough the transforming power of God (energeia), the Holy Spirit transfers what we perceive from the Word of God, through the human spirit to the soul. There the Word of God becomes available, and we can apply it to our situation. As we purpose to have a daily intake of Bible doctrine, the Word of God goes into the new heart (Ezekiel 36:26-27), giving us a new frame of reference, divine viewpoint, and a new p remise for thinking and meditation. This provides us with new conclusions for making decisions.
Detours after the Fall
Because of the Fall, all men since Adam are born with a lifeless human spirit. That presents a problem, since the human spirit is the only place where God communes with man. So, until the spirit of a man is quickened by the Holy Spirit of God, he has no way to operate with the mind of Christ. As a result, the perceptions of the unsaved individual and the carnal believer (one who has grieved or quenched the Holy Spirit) are transferred directly to the soul. Having by-passed the cleansing power of the Cross in the human spirit, those perceptions now affect the emotions.
The emotions, which are part of the soul, were designed to respond to and appreciate the things of God. According to Jeremiah 17:10, the plural form of kilyah (translated as “reins” in the King James Bible) speaks of the emotions as having two parts.**
The “upper” emotion re p resents spiritual capacity. Connected to the human spirit, the upper emotion receives the truth and life that is stored in the memory center by the Holy Spirit. Operating from the upper emotion helps us to experience victory, courage, happiness, peace, and joy that is our strength.
When the human spirit is not functioning, the “lower” emotion often becomes dominant. The lower emotion deals with temporal values and security for the flesh. Living in this emotion causes a person to be troubled most of the time because it does not receive eternal provisions from God for life.
Volition — the ability and freedom to make choices — was God’s first gift to man. It gives us a choice to go either positive or negative toward God’s initiations. The old sin nature was imputed to us from Adam, but it was crucified with Christ at Calvary. Therefore, if we agree that we are dead indeed with Christ, the old nature can stay dead, powerless, as we choose to take up our Cross daily. Otherwise, we can choose to activate the old sin nature through negative volition toward God.
The Cause of Separation
“Their heart is divided; now shall they be found faulty: he shall break down their altars, he shall spoil their images” (Hosea 10:2).
“A double minded man is unstable in all his ways” (James 1:8).
When the old sin nature is connected to the lower emotion, the first thing to happen is that the heart becomes divided, even in a Christian. This makes a man “double-minded” (dipsuchos, in the Greek). The divided soul operates either through the new heart given by Christ or the old heart inherited from Adam.
A divided heart immediately affects relationships as it becomes negative. Negativity, in the form of bitterness and mistrust, is established in the lower emotion. If it goes unchecked, walls of separation go up. There is a lack of forgiveness, a lack of grace, and a lack of God’s love towards the other party. Next comes the blame game. The person who lets these walls go up will blame someone else for the way he feels in his emotions (which are now controlled by the temporal “lower” emotion).
Blaming others is usually followed by name-calling. The Pharisees called the Gentiles “dogs” (Matthew 15:26). Name-calling springs from arrogance and pride with the false notion that we are better than another person.
Right Choices, Great Rewards
The greatest rewards given by God when we stand before Him will be given for what we have done in our bodies (2 Corinthians 5:10-12) — for choices we have made along the way.
Choose to stay positive, agreeing with God, and we will live in the consequences of God’s love, God’s mercy, and God’s grace. But if we choose to go negative, there will be division and separation and we will reap the effect of the negativity that we sow.
Sadly, Satan has been very successful in bringing division and separation into the sacred institutions of marriage and family. But when the upper emotion is in its proper relationship to the human spirit, connected to God-consciousness and being filled with wisdom, we will produce life, divine vitality, and the fruit of the Holy Spirit. We will truly love others with God’s love.
Do everything you can before God to have godly relationships. Be very kind, very gracious, and always forgiving. Build up one another and offer understanding, even when you are weary and tired. Give honor and esteem as unto the Lord. This will bring some of the greatest rewards in heaven (I Corinthians 3:14).
*For more about thought processes in the soul, we suggest reading The Hearing Heart, by Pastor Carl H. Stevens Jr.
** Living in the Spirit, by Pastor Carl H. Stevens Jr., clearly describes the principle of two emotions.
DRAWN NEAR BY LOVE
“But now in Christ Jesus ye who sometimes were far off are made nigh by the blood of Christ.
“For he is our peace, who hath made both one, and hath broken down the middle wall of partition between us;
“Having abolished in his flesh the enmity, even the law of commandments contained in ordinances; for to make in himself of twain one new man, so making peace;
“And that he might reconcile both unto God in one body by the cross, having slain the enmity thereby:
“And came and preached peace to you which were afar off, and to them that were nigh” (Ephesians 2:13-17).
“For we dare not make ourselves of the number, or compare ourselves with some that commend themselves: but they measuring themselves by themselves, and comparing themselves among themselves, are not wise.
“But we will not boast of things without our measure, but according to the measure of the rule which God hath distributed to us, a measure to reach even unto you” (2 Corinthians 10:12-13).
Jesus Christ did away with the problems of the heart on Calvary. He abolished separation and tore down the walls that separated us from the Holy presence of God. Today, He wants to remove the walls that divide where oneness should be. He wants to remove blaming and name-calling through His Blood that was shed on the Cross of Calvary. Our love has a source on the resurrection side of Calvary. We don’t have to blame others, compare ourselves to others, or measure ourselves by others.
Instead, we can love with God’s love the way one beautiful Christian woman I know did. She was 21, a junior in college, when she was left partially paralyzed after a drunken driver crashed his car into her car at a high speed.
From the hospital, she called him at the jail and said, “If there is any bail, I want to post it for you. I want to help you because I am sure you are filled with shame and guilt right now.”
Later, she led this man to the Lord and then pleaded with the judge to be lenient with him. Why? This 21-year-old woman did not have enmity in her heart. Her upper emotion was connected to her human spirit. There was no wall separating her from Christ’s compassion, and she lived in an eternal value system. Rather than live with bitterness and resentment, she took this opportunity to show unconditional love toward someone who had hurt her.
Love Breaks Through
Emotional walls go up so easily.
Years before she was married, a woman had been raped, but she never told her husband about it. She admitted to me that she became mean and hateful to her husband, whom she described as a wonderful man — “one of the best.”
Aeries of messages on the power of love released her totally. She told her husband the story and asked him to forgive her for being so mean and hateful toward him. They were recently baptized together and are now enjoying a magnificent life as born-again believers.
Love broke through the wall of partition, bringing the healing presence of God into this woman’s emotions. “I was blaming my husband for something another man did to me,” she said. “I was so wounded, and I could not get delivered.” The love of God broke down that wall.
Two brothers I know became enemies. They would not speak to each other. There was plenty of blaming and name-calling until a terrible accident claimed the lives of one brother’s wife and daughter. The pastor in that town visited the families, and several members were led gloriously to Christ.
Finally, at the end of a memorial service, the brother who lost his wife and daughter embraced the brother with whom he had been so angry. He wouldn’t let him go. Today, they are closer than any brothers I know.
The walls of division are brought down through the Cross of Christ. He tears down the walls we have been conditioned to raise up through the years. Jesus Christ is in the breaking down-walls business to release our emotions.
Bridges Across the Breach
“Now it came to pass, when Sanballat, and Tobiah, and Geshem the Arabian, and the rest of our enemies, heard that I had builded the wall, and that there was no breach left therein; [though at that time I had not set up the doors upon the gates;] (Nehemiah 6:1).
“He in the first year of his reign, in the first month, opened the doors of the house of the LORD, and repaired them” (2 Chronicles 29:3).
“If she be a wall, we will build upon her a palace of silver: and if she be a door, we will inclose her with boards of cedar” (Song of Solomon 8:9).
Beyond tearing down the walls in our emotions, Jesus Christ also repairs the breaches and fortifies His walls of protection. Godly walls of categorical doctrine can be established in our souls — walls of gold and silver, walls of truth, proven in fiery trials.
Jesus Christ takes a divided heart and floods it with the filling of His Holy Spirit, His grace, His mercy, the forgiveness of His Cross, and a peace that is mature because of His impartation of thinking. He brings us into a large place and rewards us according to the righteousness He gives us (see Psalm 18:19-20). Our coasts, our hearts, are enlarged because the walls of partition are gone.
Peace and Reconciliation
“And, having made peace through the blood of his cross, by him to reconcile all things unto himself; by him, I say, whether they be things in earth, or things in heaven” (Colossians 1:20).
When the walls come down, there is a bridge. We can meet others on that bridge of love and grace. The blood that Christ shed brings peace and reconciliation through the Cross. I can relate to others without putting up walls, regardless of how they relate to me. Great peace have we who love Christ Jesus — nothing offends us (Psalm 119:165).
Have you been offended recently? If so, it means that you don’t have an intimate relationship with the One who breaks down the walls of offense.
Silver Words of Redemption
If anyone had a right to raise up a wall and keep it up, it was Joseph, the son of Jacob. In Genesis 37-45, his brothers put up their own emotional walls against him and it led them to sell him into slavery. Later, Joseph was falsely accused by his boss Potiphar’s wife of attacking her, and he wound up in jail for several years. Another wall could have gone up right there. Instead, he lived before God and the seeds of the Word of God he sowed in his life sprung up and bore fruit on branches that grew beyond the physical walls around him.
God said of him, “Joseph is a fruitful bough, even a fruitful bough by a well; whose branches run over the wall” (Genesis 49:22).
Jesus said, “Love one another as I have loved you” (John 15:12) and “love your enemies” (Matthew 5:44). We must not let emotional walls come between us. Do not say even one unkind word about your enemies. We have been given a silver tongue of redemption (Proverbs 10:20). Let God’s redeeming love demolish every wall that is not of Him.
Conclusion
God has given us a ministry of reconciliation. We preach the glorious Gospel, liberated from the bondage of our emotions. We know what it means to be free in Christ.
Many Christians have walls in their emotions. There is no Cross in their relationships, thus there is no unconditional love or resurrection power. There is no divine patience, no waiting upon God.
Are you in this state? Receive something that will really make a difference in helping your mind, your emotions, and your conscience. Let the river of the Holy Spirit produce the fruit of the Holy Spirit through your streams of consciousness so that your heart can think with God. Receive the mind of Christ.
This will not happen because we merit it. It will happen because we take advantage of the opportunities, provisions, and privileges that Christ achieved on our behalf. We can enjoy the tremendous privilege of being free. We can have glorious liberty from the wounds of childhood, from the bondage of Satan’s infiltration.
This can happen when we set the Lord before our faces and have only God between us (Psalm 16:8; 1 Samuel 20:42).